Imported Scales

This is a slightly longer story, and has just appeared (more or less as below) in BITSAA's Sandpaper, Spring 2009 (http://sandpaper.bitsaa.org/htm_files/scales.htm).

Hey Sally,

Re: your last email, I hope the rain’s eased up a little there. Not fun when you’ve a few weeks off and have to spend them indoors. Here, on the other hand, the sun’s been blazing away as usual. (That used to be the title of a column by an ex-cricketer in the newspapers here: ‘Blazing Away’. My dad would read aloud from it in the mornings, chuckling at its indiscriminate use of quotation marks ... but of course cricket means even less to you than it does to me.) Remember all that stuff we read about Orientialism and the Othering of the Tropics and what not? I’m no Orientalist or Other-er of the Tropics, but I’ll swear I’ve been spending most of my time sitting with a tumbler of lemon juice, the fan overhead whirring at full speed, staring out at the coconut trees, hot, green and still. It’s only in the evenings, when the sea breeze sets in, that even the trees begin to perk up a little, swaying ever so gently and looking a softer shade of green.

In fact, I’ve been doing so little that my parents and that over-serious brother of mine have begun to get irritated. So the other day, when I told them I had to buy something for a friend at uni, they were more than thrilled to let me have the old Fiat with the driver (or ‘Premier Padmini’, to be exact. Those were the days when we had joint ventures, and foreign makes being manufactured locally under licence, and what not. How fares the Fiat in Italy today? We must ask Fabio when term begins). Not that I couldn’t have taken a bus or an auto-rickshaw, but it just made things easier. Anyway, off I went to the conservative heart of our southern metropolis, a locality named after the peacock but where the only birds you see these days are crows – as in the rest of the city. It’s a place that’s so familiar to me, and yet I struggle to paint a picture of it for you. Suffice it to say that I was on a street densely packed with shops, pavement stalls, the odd temple, and crowds of shoppers – there are still crowds of them despite the competition from the new, kitschy malls sprouting up elsewhere in the city.

The shop was on the ground floor of a two- or three-storey building. I pushed the door open, and felt a familiar sense of relief as I realised there was air-conditioning. I had hardly taken two steps when a severe looking man dressed in white cast a pointed glance at my feet. For a moment I was confused. But of course! I went back outside, a little annoyed that I hadn’t expected it. On one side of the door was a pile of footwear. I shook my sandals off and went back in.

Wood was everywhere: wooden panels, wooden shelves, wooden instruments. There were two connected rooms, one serving as a sort of ante-chamber, where the silver-haired inspector of feet was polishing things with a rag. To my right ran a long windowpane, tinted to keep the sun out, against which were suspended gleaming wooden violins, veenas and flutes. Elsewhere rows of mridangams and tamburas rested against the wall.

‘Vaango,’ said a smooth, assured voice. Its owner sat on a comfortable swivel chair, tucked into an alcove, behind a sturdy desk. On the desk were various bills and a large calculator with the display tilted slightly upwards. The wall behind the chair was covered by garlanded portraits and a glass-fronted display with golden figurines against a backdrop of red felt cloth. A series of bulbs framed the display, lighting up one after another to create the effect of a single light orbiting the figurines.

‘Tell me, Madam. What can I do for you?’

He was generously built, a terylene shirt doing its best to envelop his frame. Large glasses covered his face, and his hair was plastered back with coconut oil (how do I know? You can smell coconut oil from a mile away, especially if you’ve used it everyday for half your life).

‘Sruti-petti...’ I began.

‘What type, Madam? Electronic, manual, with taalam or without taalam – we have all the varieties. Starting from round about thousand rupees to about five thousand.’

I felt a bit out of my depth already. Somehow or other, I had not had the customary Carnatic music classes as a young girl, and although I was no stranger to it in general terms, I sensed that I was about to be pinned down a bit on something I was quite hazy on. An early declaration of my status as a novice seemed to me the best strategy.

‘What do you suggest? You see, it’s for a friend, not for me. I don’t know very much about these things. But I’d like to look at something quite basic to start with.’

‘No problem, Madam. Lakshmi, show Madam the electronic variety sruti-pettis,’ he said, addressing one of the sales assistants behind a long wooden counter – although this seemed a bit superfluous, considering that she had been listening attentively to our conversation. She began to scan the shelves behind her. I stood awkwardly, wondering if I should consider the conversation closed and move to the counter. Desk Man, though, cleared his throat. He was in the mood for small talk.

‘The person you are buying it for, beginner or...?’

‘She’s not learning formally at the moment. She was exposed to Hindustani music years ago, but wants to start learning Carnatic, I think.’

Something about the way I said it, or maybe the fact that you weren’t there to do the buying yourself, suggested to him that the aspiring musician was not quite in the Carnatic heartland herself.

‘Where is she based?’ he asked.

‘US,’ I said (without the definite article, as one says it in Tamil). No matter how often this happens, I always feel a bit, I don’t know, awkward. I guess I’m just about old enough to have grown up with a feeling that visiting abroad, let alone spending years there as a student, is a privilege, a rare opportunity. So whenever someone asks me what university I’m at or where I am currently ‘based’ (though in this case only indirectly), I have to modulate my voice to reflect just the right tone: nonchalant, yet not boastful.

‘Oh I see.’ He said it in a tone that seemed dismissive and deferential at the same time. ‘We have a lot of customers in US.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes.’ US? OS. I had to turn the corners of my lips down as they began to curl into a smile. He continued, ‘They come here during the summer every year. Some of them come during the Season. They attend all the concerts, buy CDs, instruments, notation, everything from our shop. They get a better price here obviously.’

‘Yes, I can imagine. Also can’t be easy to find some of these things there.’

‘Oh, it’s available. But they have to buy it in action.’

I waited for him to explain.

‘Many Carnatic instruments go for action. Some people offer too much – they don’t know the correct value.’

Realisation dawned. I felt that ‘action’ was indeed the appropriate word. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? The auctioneer banging his gavel, looking up above the rim of his glasses; eyes darting around the room, hands and brochures going up and down, breaths going in and out. Well, as far as I can tell from the movies.

So those who didn’t care for the action came here.

‘Yes. We know the proper value of an instrument, don’t we? We have been in the business for so many years.’ There’s a particularly brahminical ‘we’ that can be used to refer to oneself despite being a single person.

By now, the assistant had climbed down the ladder from the upper shelves and begun taking the boxes out of the boxes. I mean, the sruti boxes out of the cardboard boxes. She showed them to me one by one.

‘This one is thousand two hundred and fifty. Basic model, but manual. If you want automatic, you can go for the electronic one. It’s the latest model. Just switch on and use the Plus and Minus buttons – no need of anything else. It will show you the scale alphabetically also. Taalam also you can add.’

I fiddled around with it for a while. Just the gradual scaling up of the base note reminded me of summer afternoons at my aunt’s place where an old vaadhyaar used to come to teach my cousins. I switched on the beats – you could choose from among several tempos.

‘How much is this one?’

‘Three thousand four hundred.’

That was way beyond the budget you’d set, of course, and I knew you didn’t want most of the jazzy features (you wanted only Carnatic-y features, didn’t you?).

‘How about a basic one, but electronic?’

Desk Man looked up at the assistant. ‘Show her the Elkaysons model.’

This one turned out to be the simplest electronic sruti-petti, and so I chose it. The lady began to pack it quickly and efficiently, and gave me the warranty card to fill as she went about it.

‘Where is this one going?’ a voice asked. I turned to my left to see an elderly maami further along the counter, smiling at me. She was clutching one of the more advanced models I’d been shown.

‘US,’ I said, a little bored to have to say it again.

‘Is it so? This one is going to Canada,’ she said, pointing to hers. ‘My sister’s grand-daughter is learning. Do you sing?’

‘No,’ I said, smiling politely. ‘It’s for my friend.’

‘I see. Who is the guru?’

‘Oh no no, she’s not learning seriously or anything. She’s just interested and wants to try.’

‘Very good. My grand niece learns from M.V. Vaidyanathan. He is based there nowadays. You must have heard of him. You know, sir,’ she continued, turning to Desk Man, ‘nowadays so many people are learning outside. They have everything, they organise katcheris regularly.’

‘Oh yes. Our customers come here from so many countries, US, Canada, Europe. First class, very talented.’ He paused. ‘But whatever it is, you can’t get the training that you get here. Many of the parents bring their children during the school vacation and put them under some vaadhyaar here.’

‘Yes, that’s there.’

‘But sometimes they come here to buy things, and not all of them really know what they’re talking about. But we have gnyaanam of most of the instruments, don’t we? So we tell them what is what.’

Meanwhile, the assistant was done with her packing. I paid and collected the packet. A group of customers walked in, asking for the Gaanaamruta Bodhini and Gaanaamruta Varnamaalika in Kannada. Desk Man looked over at them, and I had my cue. I nodded to him and the Canada lady, and turned towards the exit.

‘If you need anything else, come straight to us, Madam, we will help you,’ he called after me. I looked back and nodded. Outside, as I was putting on my sandals, I saw Silver Hair leaning against a pillar, holding a glass of tea and looking very serious.

So, Sally, when you become a famous singer, remember the story of how you got your first sruti-petti!

Lots of love,
Susheela

Palanivel

Smoking was no longer allowed on campus. When Palanivel felt like a cigarette (or simply bored), he clambered onto his rusted bicycle and began the five-minute ride along leafy avenues and tracks. Once at the side gate, he rested his cycle against the inner wall and made his way through the revolving iron grill, emerging in a magical instant from wooded island of learning into sweltering sidestreet of petty commerce. He looked in at Murugan's shop and asked for a couple of filter tips. He then stepped back from the counter, where assorted customers had their arms outstretched, money in hand, trying to catch Murugan's attention. On the wall just outside the shop was mounted a soot-blackened lighter. Palanivel leaned in towards it, cigarette in mouth, and clicked a switch below as the familiar orange-red glow appeared. He stood upright and inhaled, stepping aside for the next man in line with the easy camaraderie that is born of shared weaknesses.

Palanivel set on a ledge. In some ways, the new rule was a blessing. At the very least, it gave him an excuse to get away for a few minutes in the afternoon, when the oppressive, soporific heat made it impossible for him to keep his eyes open and his back straight when he sat in his usual seat on the fifth floor of the library. As a clerk in a reading hall that housed esoteric journals and reports and publications of other institutions, Palanivel seldom had much work to do during the day. In the evening he had a little work returning to their places the handful of books and magazines left lying on the tables. He had joined the library seven years ago, had risen, literally, from noting visitors' names at the entrance on the ground floor to his current position on the top floor, with several steps in between. He saw dreams of students coming to his curved desk and asking him to help them locate a specific journal, to understand the subtleties of the Dewey Decimal System - a system that, after monthly training sessions and years of experience, had become second nature to him. But none came. The few who made the trip up to the fifth floor brought their own books and notes, using the hall purely as a quiet place to study. The occasional scratching of a pencil or creaking of a chair across the floor would divert Palanivel for a while, but he was acutely aware of his own redundance - nobody came up to him and asked for anything. The only exceptions, he thought, smiling at the memory, were external researchers who had come to the library in search of some specific material. On such days Palanivel's withered spirit briefly unfurled itself as he shuttled around the shelves, spoke animatedly on the phone to his colleagues downstairs, and led his visitors across and between various reading rooms. But such days did not come often.

Palanivel stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, and stood up. He tipped the ash off, disposed of his cigarette, and mounted his bicycle.

The gadget that wrote

(March 2006)

He sat at his worktable, looking with admiration at the wonderful piece of gadgetry that had been entrusted to him. He wiped a drop of sweat off his brow and continued to wipe with his oil-tinged cloth the semicircular array of metallic levers. In the background, the little radio that he had assembled one dreary weekend made whirring noises that resembled a popular song. Naresh brought out a slim box from a drawer, and from it, a carefully preserved ear-bud of dubious quality (he had bought a pack of hundred at a traffic signal). He dipped it in a bit of anti-corrosive fluid and began to clean the little serrations that crowned the aforesaid metallic levers, smiling to himself as he realised that he could recognise a laterally inverted letter in his sleep. Here, in the loop of a 'b' was a small clot of dirt, which was causing smudges of ink on the paper. There, nestling in the hook of the question mark, was another grain of dust. Having cleaned all the letters, digits and punctuation marks to a sparkle, Naresh oiled the rails of the carriage. He pushed the carriage left and right, making sure the motion was smooth, until the little hammer at the bottom of the rails coiled itself and struck a Ting! to signal that the end of a line had been reached. He tried the knobs on the carriage; he made sure the keys at the front were sparkling white. Give him one of these works of art any day, he could repair it no matter what was wrong with it. The pang of joy he felt when one of them went back to its former days of glory, typing line upon line of sparkling text on a clean white sheet of paper, in this, the age of ever-cheaper printers!

Airborne

(June 2005)

Captain Sharma looks out ahead of him. The glass window in front of him is shaped like a horseshoe, stretching out from behind the plane that joins his eyes and curving ahead, a couple of arms that meet three feet ahead of him in a clasp just above the shiny black nose of the aircraft. The runway is a taut grey-black ribbon, streaming backwards. He holds on to his controls, and feels, not for the first time, a bizarre sense of kinship with the cowboys he has seen at rodeo shows in the American Midwest, riding giant animals, clutching at their horns. The screens, knobs and dials before him merge in a dazzling melange of flashing colours that blinks, twists and bobs about at a pace that becomes increasingly frenetic. Meanwhile, the sound of speed emanating from the tarmac becomes more and more insistent, until the combined aural and visual effect is one of some ridiculous symphony of machines. Captain Sharma would not be surprised to see row upon row of little machines in evening dress waiting to applaud rapturously at the end of the movement. What he does see, through the corners of his eyes, is a landscape that becomes increasingly blurred – trees, isolated buildings, hillocks. Then he takes a deep breath and lifts the controls just the right bit – until the mammoth machine turns its shiny nose up at the tarmac like some high society snob, and then begins its dizzying ascent. The city becomes smaller and smaller until it is a modern-day Lilliput, and Shirish Sharma sits back, smiles, and removes his special goggles. “Great going, guys,” he says to the eagerly waiting men standing behind him. “This game is a sure winner. Why, even Disneyland would buy this from you.”

Jean in Paris

(May 2005)

It was an especially hot day by Parisian standards, the temperature hovering around eighty on the Fahrenheit scale. Jean Maigny squinted up at the clear blue sky with a few silvery-white wisps of cloud floating about, and, as a drop of sweat formed at his brow, wished that it were a little cooler. Around him were ranged fifteen thousand people, three towering walls of humanity glaring at him, and one more behind him. Some of them seemed very excited, and some looked stiff and bored, as if they expected to see nothing new today. The younger people revelled in the sunshine, their faces covered with zinc cream, while the older lot carried elegant white umbrellas. High up on Jean’s right was a sleek cabin, all glass and silver-grey metal. Inside sat a couple of men in suit and tie. He could barely make them out from where he sat, but a closer observer might have noticed that one of the men was suavity personified, while the other was a tad grizzled and looked very uncomfortable in his Savile Row suit, like one who has spent much of his life in T-shirts running around in the sun. Jean looked down at the bright, orange-red clay and the neat white lines that ran all over it, making right-angled patterns.

For a few moments his mind wandered back to his neat little cottage in the countryside where he relaxed in his free time, lying in his hammock and gazing up at the Pyrenees. A slow smile began to dribble across his face. Then another drop of sweat made a plop! as it fell delicately from his brow onto the tip of his nose. Duty calls, he thought. He glanced down at his watch, then leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. ‘Mesdames et Messieurs, silencieux s'il vous plait.’ The busy hum that had been travelling around the arena like a thousand bees in concert suddenly ebbed, and trailed away in a hush. The defending champion served.

Udit and Rohit go the Hills

(May 2005)

Udit and his friend Rohit motor along the Himalayan road. In the winters, says the driver of the tourist van, the slopes are covered with snow, and one can ski. He rattles off a list of Hindi films that have had scenes filmed here. Almost instantly, Udit can see in his mind’s eye a young actor scream, “Yaaaaa-hoooooo!!!” and land on his knees, making furrows through the snow, his hair flying in all directions. The road is lined with tall pine trees, and the air is clean and fresh.
They come now to a clearing. There are a number of vehicles, and the hillside calm is mildly challenged by automotive cranks, whirs and honks. From this point on, they must go on foot or horseback to a peak from where they will have, they are promised, a breathtaking view. Being – well, we won’t say sissies, but city-bred, they hire a pair of horses, paying a brisk businessman sitting in a tin booth. They clamber onto their mounts clumsily, getting a foothold on the stirrups after many attempts and cringing slightly at the equine smells that waft up to their nostrils. They are led up the incline by a couple of Pahari horsemen, subdued but skilful. They are not of the talkative tourist guide variety; in fact they barely seem to be comfortable with Hindi, preferring their own mountain dialect.

The view from the summit is, alas, no match for the wondrous description that preceded it. It is, instead, a touristy spot where they can buy or rent any of a number of things – views from a telescope, photographs of themselves in local costume, popcorn, chips, cola.

Slightly weary but with a sense of accomplishment (one more item on the sight-seeing list ticked off), Udit and Rohit clamber back onto their horses. The descent is trickier, the hooved animals having to grip the soil with every step. “Somehow, I’m enjoying myself more now,” says Udit, inhaling a lungful of clear air as the conifers began swaying ever so slightly. As Rohit nods, he is aware of a lilting melody. Closer inspection shows that it is his horseman who is singing, softly, a Pahari tune. “Zor se gaiye, bhaisaab,” Rohit says, nodding encouragingly. The other smiles self-consciously, shakes his head, looks at the ground, looks at his fellow horseman, grins again, then suddenly musters courage and breaks into song, loud and clear. The music seems wedded to the environs, and the hillside reverberates with its joyfulness. The hills are alive/ To the sound of music, remembers Udit, and likewise the city duo is alive to the experience of the hills. Further joy awaits them as their guides branch off on a dirt track to reveal a small shrine shrouded by branches. It is hewn from stone. Its antiquity and beauty are soothing beyond description.

As the party comes closer to its starting point, Udit feels a rush of gratitude for these two men who gave him a glimpse of what he had actually travelled a thousand miles to experience. He tips the horsemen generously though not lavishly. They seem embarrassed, and murmur their thanks.

Udit and Rohit walk off, contented and full of the essence of human goodness. As they get into their van, they see the horse owner emerge from his little booth and stride towards the two horsemen. He puts out his hand in an impatient gesture. The tip, Udit’s offering of gratitude, is produced and placed on his palm.

Tranquillity!

(May 2005)

He sat at his desk, eyes closed. The room was large, shaped like a trapezium, and the desk was along one of its parallel walls. Further along the wall ran a cabinet, rich teak, stacked with books, CDs, cassettes, and a music system. A warm, intricately patterned rug covered the floor before the cabinet. The only light came from the table lamp, a shimmering, suffused yellow that swam around the contours of the room and its furniture.

On the desk lay a CD cover, a blue sky in the background, and a magnificent, gleaming black grand piano in front. Bluethner, it said, proclaiming its make in stylised light brown italics just above the gleaming keys, black, white, black, white. As the room resonated with notes from the piano, he could almost feel the keys in the picture move; he saw the pianist’s hand rise with a flourish each time there was a rest, a gap, between notes – the back of the palm curving upward first, then the delicate fingers leaving the keyboard in a languid, graceful movement. Tchaikovsky – Klavierkonzert, said the CD cover. The melody was slow and poignant, the deep bass notes near-spiritual.

So he sat at his desk, eyes closed.

A strident, insistent Tring! ran through the room. The notes from the Klavierkonzert shuddered.

He sighed, switched off the music, and reached for the telephone.