My Lodgings

Hotel Sky Park, unlike my previous two temporary abodes, turned out to be a quiet place, a bungalow turned into a hotel with limited rooms.

I recall the weather was warm but not at all beastly as it turned into, slowly, over the weeks. Right now after a little more than two weeks, Chennai alternates between virtually a hot plate where I feel like a fish being fried without oil, and when it's cloudy, I feel like being inside a pressure cooker with ten million souls to keep me dubious company. The two wheeler riders here can beat the crazy Puneites hollow in purely kamikaze style of stunt-riding.

It was a Sunday, and late afternoon. Not having to report to work, I eased up and watched the umpteen channels on TV most of them making no sense to me. The news channels in English these days have lost their originality to the extent each one seems to be going overboard be it the flash fire in a trade fair that claimed two thousand lives or more, or creatively bankrupt politicos riding their Raths [chariots] to whip up hatred between communities.

It gets very depressing to see seven views of the same thing happening at all the channels, sigh, copycat channels seem to be the order of the day. The first surprise was a musical one. I had completely forgotten that I was in Mecca of Carnatic music -something I have loved intensely since schooldays. North Indians are as a rule allergic to this great art form, and though I owe allegiance to my own father, dear Abbajan whose exquisite tastes percolated down my childlike conscience like filtered coffee -well, I used to resent his contempt for this noble genre of music.

The only exception he used to make was, the redoubtable M.S. Subbuluxmi whose Meera bhajans have been unparalleled in music history. He would ask me to play them every morning, and oh boy, what a day it would be when I got my batteries charged by this angel of a singer, always putting her heart and soul into whatever she sang.

The surprise then, was two youngsters sitting soberly facing the camera. One played the violin, nearly every second person here seems to be a virtuoso on that difficult instrument and the other one was playing a slide guitar like a country star from Texas. Seemed rather odd to me, and my reaction was, as if I had suddenly seen two matronly ladies from South sporting mini skirts or hot pants or worse... but the music was divine.

It just enveloped me like a well-meaning miasma, lifted my soul to heights unsuspected and let me float around where even eagles won't dare. The raag sounded very similar to Kirwani, which in the Hindustani stream has been borrowed from the Carnatic stream I believe. The violinist seemed to be playing his instrument with much practised ease, and the slide guitarist gave him solid support.

When I spied notes of Bhairavi [can't remember the Carnatic name] I squirmed. After a few minutes, I thought there were strains of Piloo, even Khamach... and then I lost track. It was a raagmala, a medley or raags... but there were more jolts to come. When I heard the unmistakable strains of Mozart's symphony number 40 in D minor, my heart skipped a bit.

Before I could gather my jaw by now lolling at my feet on the floor, I heard Für Elise by Beethoven, one that my pianist daughter Mimi keeps playing daily. There were plenty more blasphemies to come creeping in, and though I am not at all a conservative, I felt violated for some mysterious reason.

There were credits in what appeared like Telugu script to me [ I go by the visuals of bird flying, sitting, looking up, or lying dead with feet up in the air, that's what the characters look like] it was a sort of clue for me to see the English alphabets USA in their names. So the youngsters were NRIs trying out their own brand of fusion. Went for a long walk, had a good dinner, watched more sickening news and went off to sleep long before midnight, something unusual for me -the night creature who hates sleep.
(c) Max Babi, April 2006.