Memories of Music

I started playing the violin when I was ten. This is quite a late age for such an endeavour, but it was then that I got my first violin, straight out of a factory in Russia. I didn’t know, then, that this was possibly the worst kind of violin that you could get.

That was more than twenty years ago. Twenty years, of which the first ten were spent practicing very regularly for long hours; and the latter ten were spent practicing and performing sporadically with small groups when I got an opportunity. Over the last year or so, I haven’t played at all, and, what’s worse, I haven’t missed it.

Yesterday, I turned on WorldSpace and Beethoven’s ninth came pouring out in full flow, with all its glory and grandeur. As I was swept away by the torrent of sound, I relived all too briefly, and from far too great a distance, a few, precious experiences of my past.

I have joined many music groups over the years, some large, mostly small, working together for a few weeks or weekends on some familiar or obscure pieces to be staged before a small audience (usually in a large, empty auditorium). Many of the performances were humdrum – to put it mildly. Many left me with – more than anything else – a deep sense of dissatisfaction, and un-fulfillment, with the restless knowledge that I had been unable to do justice to the music, even to the extent of my limited abilities.

But there, hidden like a needle in a haystack of memories, were also some deeply satisfying moments. There were the sort of experiences that transgress the boundaries of reality and lift you to – for want of a better word – a spiritual, a sublime world. Those were the almost-holy experiences.

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1

The first was my first orchestral experience, in 1993 (or so). I was playing as an insignificant back-bencher of the second violins. We were to perform Beethoven’s Fifth, a work that I knew well to listen to. Our guest conductor, a Russian (like my first violin – I was already on to my second by then) was not world famous or anything like that (and I don’t think he ever achieved that level of fame) but he knew what he wanted from the music, and by god he was going to have it. Even if it meant that he had to keep this motley bunch of musicians (Woodstock meets Delhi Police meets Delhi School of Music teachers and students) prisoners while he drove them to play just four notes again and again and again till they got it right or all turned blue in the effort. (For those of you who know the piece, think of the famous dum-dum-dum Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.)

It was tiring and thrilling and infuriating – but it was never boring. At last, the day of the concert came, and I still remember my mother hurriedly stitching a straight, dead-black ankle-length skirt for me, as I hopped around anxiously and did some last minute practicing. And then, trembling to my stocking-ed toes, I took my insignificant place on stage.

I don’t know anyone who could vouch for the performance from the audience’s perspective, but from where I sat, surrounded by the sound and the fury of a deaf and long-dead Beethoven, it was an amazing experience. It was more than sound, more than harmony, more than music that came pouring out of this bunch of would-be musicians that day. It was a wave of sheer energy. It was the sort of one-ness that comes when everything that you are at that moment aware of around you, is perfectly in tune with everything in you, with every part of you yourself.

2

And then there was Handel’s Messiah. This is a glorious composition. The Hallelujah chorus, which comes towards the end, has always been music that makes me want to close my eyes and let my spirit soar away where it will. It is more than prayer, more than worship, far, far more than words and music.

Ok, I realize that this is pure drivel for someone who doesn’t know the music, and also for those who know it but don’t feel the same way about it. But think of something that does that to you – a song, a photograph, a painting, a place, a line from a book or a movie, something – and you’ll know what I mean.

It was somehow in my fate that one fine day after Beethoven’s Fifth had faded away into history, Handel’s Messiah should come my way. It was several years ago, and I now don’t remember where we performed, or what other pieces were part of the program. I remember only Handel’s Messiah.

Unfortunately, the orchestra had very, very few practice sessions with the choir. So when the day came for us to go on stage, I was still not quite prepared for what followed. Sitting at the back of the second violin section as usual, I found an army of vocalists massed directly above and behind me (they were standing, we were sitting). We got through the first so many songs somehow and then suddenly, at last, the Hallelujah chorus burst upon us with full force, roaring with all the glory and majesty of a pride of lions, rushing upon us like waters just released from the floodgates, drowning us in a torrent of triumphal harmony. I don’t know how I kept on playing my part, or even if I did in fact keep playing; but if I did, it was just my fingers doing their job: my mind was gone, flowing with the sound to join the rejoicing in the heavens.

3

The third experience that stands out was a performance of a Bach Overture. I think it was No. 3, which has a Flute solo, with the famous Badinerie at the end. At this time, I was playing with a small group of ten strings; there were no more than one or two players for each section. We had practiced weekends for many months and had developed a sort of comfortable camaraderie; which, nevertheless, did not extend beyond music.

On the day of the performance, we were at the venue well before show-time. Sundry chairs and music stands cluttered the stage in no particular order and everyone was in varying stages of attire for the performance. One violinist had spread his music on a chair in front of him and was working his way through a tricky patch. His stand-mate joined him, standing nearby and bending over the score. At the next entry, I joined in – a feat I felt quite pleased about, I still remember, because it was a tricky entry for second violins and I had got it right without a cue.

Then a cello joined in and then, suddenly, beautifully, right on cue, we heard the flute. The soloist wandered casually on to stage, playing from memory. And so we all played along, without a conductor, weeks of practice flowing out of us without effort, each of us just doing our parts and smiling and nodding at each other. It was wonderful, like a car rolling along quietly on a level road, without a driver, without brakes and without a horn! It was beautiful. It was sublime!

We ended, all together, with ever so slight a flourish from the flautist and we relished the applause we didn’t hear from the audience that wasn’t there.

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Twenty years of learning and so little to show for it – but even that little means so much! Some day, probably, I will pick up my violin again, train my fingers and my ears, and my feet and my eyes and my brain… some day, hopefully, I will find a group, small or big, young or old, Indian or foreign, a group of people who come together for music and don’t mind about anything else. Some day, maybe, some day I will again make music, again make memories, pour my heart out without words. Some day.

A Walk in the Park

Last Friday, I worked from home. On Sunday, I developed a mild cold. On Monday night it turned into an extremely painful ear infection. By Wednesday evening, the infection was under control and I had been on sick leave for three days, and away from office almost an entire week. I was feeling apathetic and distinctly un-energetic, but I decided to go to the neighborhood park just to get out of the house. So off I went at the blissful hour of 5.30 pm.

The park was full of children of all ages, playing and running around. It is a large park, neatly divided into two parts. One part is full of manicured lawn with lush green grass and well-kept borders. The other part is a large, sandy playing field. Between the two parts, dividing them, is a set of high steps running the width of the park. After I had strolled around the park lazily a few times, I went up the steps and sat close to the top with leafy ferns brushing my hair.

From this vantage point, I could see three parallel games of cricket in progress and one football practice session. The cricket pitch closest to me had two small boys and two bigger boys comprising four teams (one per head, as is the way in such neighborhood games). One small boy was bowling and after a couple of balls, he decided (unilaterally) that the innings was up for the big boy at the crease. A certain amount of bargaining ensued at the end of which it was decided that the big boy at the crease was entitled to bat two more balls, and then he must retire (whether he was out or not).

After which, the two small boys started negotiations for the next batsman at the crease. Negotiations involved a variety of methods such as the old paper/stone/scissor method and the even older I’m-bigger-than-you method. Eventually the other big boy intervened (not the previous batsman), and (probably by dint of being bigger) was sent in to bat. The other big boy bowled, and at the first ball, bowled him out. This was hotly contested by the big boy at the crease, though it looked pretty indisputable to me. All sorts of fancy phrases thickened the air, from No Ball, through Dead Ball, to Wide. (Bowled out on a wide???)

Finally, the batsman cajoled the bowler to bowl again. This time he whacked the ball over the head of one of the little boys, standing at forward short leg (or long on, or long off, or gully or something; it’s all the same to me). The little fellow, seeing the ball coming at him with the speed of a bullet (actually, more like a punctured cycle), ducked his head, did something with his feet, and promptly fell down. Meanwhile, the cricket ball sailed well over where the little boy’s head had been and went and got entangled with the football.

Once it had been retrieved, the bowler bowled again and promptly bowled out the batsman. Again. The decision was contested this time too, but by now the batsman’s varied arguments distinctly lacked conviction.

One of the little boys took the bat, and the other little fellow bowled to him. Soon enough, he was bowled out too. But not before the batsman had taken a few swipes at the football which every so often wandered across the pitch.

In fact, the footballers didn’t seem very successful at keeping their ball in their arena – they mostly sent it across one of the three cricket pitches and had to wait for the cricketers to return it. At least they managed to keep it in the field – which is huge. The other day, when Chris and I had gone for a walk to the park (yes, we had; even if it sounds very Jane Austen-ish; we even carried apple juice and wafers and we picniced on the grass!) a football came shooting out of nowhere and hit her hard on the leg. And it really is a large field, I tell you.  

Based on all of which, I came to the conclusion that:

• There is hope for the next generation of Indian bowlers,
• But not so much for the batsmen,
• And practically none at all for the footballers.
• And, that a walk in the park is a better cure for an ear infection than antibiotics.

It’s a Dog’s Life - Part 3 - Cassie

We got Cassie when I was in my early teens, and entirely at my insistence (we already had two). From the start, Cassie was My Dog. She was a mongrel, the youngest of an unexpected litter of the Dachshund pet of a friend of ours. She grew up to be rather squarer and taller than a Dachshund, with no sign of bow legs, and with triangular bat-ears which she eventually learnt to prick up, most un-Dachshund-like; but with the same characteristic colours on her face.

When she came to us, she was meek as a mouse, but in a very short time she became the little tiger of her new little kingdom. She adopted us with the fierce loyalty mongrels are known for - and woe be to anyone who tried to enter her kingdom or harm her people.

Cassie was as energetic and spirited as Steffi was regal and gracious. She loved to play and would often jump on Steffi and tug at her ears or nip her in a friendly way, to get Steffi to play with her. Steffi would eye these athletics with an indulgent air and eventually would roll over onto her back, and allow Cassie to jump all over her and do as she pleased. At last, if greatly riled, Steffi would lumber to her feet, displacing Cassie from wherever she happened to be at the time, and then the two of them would run around the house, jump on the beds, roll over each other and generally put on a show for who-ever happened to be watching, the way dogs always do.

Another game that Cassie loved was tug-of-war. For years, we would present her with some scraps of rag, usually with a substantial knot tied somewhere in the middle. These she would joyfully grab and toss around and shake most viciously like an errant rat. If she could get either Steffi or one of us to grab the other end, she would be overjoyed and would play tug-of-war till the rag was in shreds. Needless to say, none of the rags lasted very long.

Cassie was unlike Steffi in almost every possible way. She was intelligent and could only be trained to do those activities that made sense to her. She could let herself in and out the door to the garden without pausing for thought. She knew how to use her nose to nudge the door open towards herself when she wanted to let herself in. She was even smart enough to figure out what to do if the door were so slightly ajar that she could not get her nose into the crack. She would stand up on her hind legs, balance one front leg on the door frame and use the other front leg to push the door shut, upon which, it promptly rebounded, not sharply, but enough to allow her to push it aside with her nose and scamper inside. But she could not be trained to do meaningless things like shake hands!

Cassie loved to be outdoors and free. On more than one occasion, she got off her leash when she was being walked, and then she would take off at lightning speed, for a sprint around the block. She would chase down and bite humans and animals alike, and wasn’t afraid to get into scraps with larger canines for no reason at all. She would return from these escapades muddy, and missing a few hairs, but thrilled to bits with herself.

And it was on one such bid for freedom, when she was still very young, that Cassie got into an accident. She wasn’t badly hurt, but she lost a large part of the skin off her stomach. The wound healed eventually, but she grew blond hair on that part of her stomach, instead of black, and it never looked quite the same again. On another occasion, she got into a tangle with a barbed wire fence and almost had the tip of her tail torn off.

Cassie hated the rain and would not go out at all if it was raining. But on afternoons when it wasn’t raining (which was most of the time), Cassie would make it clear that it was someone’s duty to take her out and play ball with her. She loved that. She would sprint after the ball, leap with all four feet off the ground, catch it in mid air, prance around with it joyfully, then bring it back and drop it at our feet, waiting for us to pick it up and throw it again.

Steffi loved to play ball too, but her idea of playing ball was very different. She would lollop after the ball at a comfortable pace, her over-long ears flapping around her face. Then she would pick up that small tennis ball in her huge jaws and almost swallow it whole, her flabby jaws closing up so that you could hardly tell that she had a ball in her mouth. Then she would stand there and wait for someone to come to her and take the ball from her. It wasn’t easy getting the ball out of her. It usually took a combination of dire threats, pleas, and plain brute force.

Cassie was also different from Steffi in her approach to food. She was quite finicky about food, and had to be cajoled to eat at mealtimes. She was usually healthy, but when she was still quite young, she suddenly developed kidney stones. We had her operated upon at once, and it was a long, slow, agnoising wait for her to recover, but recover she did, and fully. After that, for the rest of her life, she was on medication, four weeks off, two weeks on.

Cassie was probably the most voluble of our three dogs. Not only did she bark at birds, cats, and strangers, she also howled when we all went out, and practically tore the roof down when we returned. She would directly jump on the bed and shriek hysterically, expressing her joy and demanding to be patted by every one of us before returning to a state of relative calm and quiet.

The years passed, and Cassie, unbelievable as it had always seemed, grew old. Her kingdom was overrun by cats. Her bat-ears flopped and would not stand up. Her sight dimmed and she once went so far as to bark furiously at me, mistaking me for a stranger. She developed a lump on her abdomen, which slowly grew bigger and bigger, till it was almost as big as a tennis ball, and it looked like it would burst any day. I had left home by then, when my family called me and told me it was time.

That was five years ago, but even now, whenever I see a dog with Dachshund markings on its face, regardless of size, or gender, or character, or breed, I think of Cassie.

It’s a Dog’s Life - Part 2 - Steffie

It’s not easy to eat properly, if your ears keep falling in your plate. This is what usually happened to Steffi. And Steffi loved to eat. She would eat just about anything - specially raw vegetables. If you were shelling peas, she would eat the shells; cutting cauliflower and she would BEG for the stalk; scraping carrots, the scraps would disappear before your eyes. Apples and oranges she could gobble up whole, if only you would let her. And if you didn’t let her, she would stand there in front of you, hopping from paw to paw, drooling bucket-fuls of saliva, her large, liquid eyes fixed imploringly on you, till it became impossible to resist her mute but oh-so-eloquent appeal.

Steffi’s love for food often got her into trouble. She used to ransack the garbage can so often we had to ensure that we firmly barred the kitchen against her raids. And any food left unattended on the dining table was not safe, as we found out one day to our dismay.

We had been gifted a large turkey from a nearby turkey farm. My mother, in one of her rare fits of cooking-enthusiasm, had roasted it whole in our cavernous and ancient gas oven. We had invited some guests for dinner.

When the turkey was done, it was carefully placed in the centre of the large and elaborately-laden dining table. This done, we all retired to dress for the guests. When we emerged, a few minutes later, what a sight met our eyes. Steffi had managed to nudge one of the chairs away from the table; she had clambered up on to it, stretched her upper body across the dining table, and in this ungainly posture was tucking in to the turkey greedily.

She was stupid enough not to run, when she was caught red-handed, but to stay there with a guilty-as-hell look on her face and an expression that said louder than words: “But it’s so delicious! How can you blame me?”

Using her brains was not something Steffi loved to do. Being eager to please, she was easy to train so, having nothing better to do, I trained her to shake hands with her left paw and with her right paw, and to clamber up and put both front paws in my lap. In these mundane activities, she would readily oblige. But, except when it came to obtaining food, on her own initiative she would not use her brains for such things as, for example, opening the swinging screen door to get outside to the garden, or to get back indoors. Instead, she would stand in front of the door wearing a doleful expression and wait for someone to open it for her. Sometimes, she would go so far as to scratch its frame with one long claw, but that was the sum and substance of her efforts.

Steffi was famous for her hunting skills. In those days, there were plenty of rats in the neighbourhood, and every so often, one of them would get into the house. Blackie, who was partially blind by then (but had been a reasonably good ratter in his younger days), would nevertheless run around sniffing furiously. Cassie, sharp and quick as an arrow, would get on the trail right away. She would follow the rat under furniture and behind curtains, until she finally had it cornered. Then she would wait for it to make a run, and, more often than not, she would kill it joyfully. Then she would come and lay it at our feet proudly and wait for us to praise her and admire her kill.

During all this, Steffi would be running excitedly behind Blackie, or behind Cassie, or behind one of the humans. She knew she was supposed to run and look excited and she even sort of guessed that this might be a game of some kind, maybe involving a rat or maybe not. But she was never very sure which direction she should run in. So she tried her best by running in all directions. Still, since she wasn’t altogether sure what she was supposed to be looking for, she made sure that she was never in the way when it was found.

In the rainy season, Steffi discovered that there was such a thing as frogs. What’s more, she found that frogs were actually quite harmless. She would find one sitting on the ground outside the house some day and would go and stand near it, looking at it, and getting a thrill out of it looking back at her. When it at last tried to hop away, she would put out a big hairy paw and pull it back. The frogs didn’t seem to mind this, but when they tried to hop away again, a while later she would stop them again. After a while of this game, the frog would change tactics and hop towards her. With a startled squawk Steffi would hurriedly jumped away from it. The frog would then give her a sneering look and lumber away, knowing it had finally got the better of her.

Steffi liked the rain. She would go out and stand in the rain in a rather goofy, surprised way, as though to say, “Hey, what’s this, it’s all wet!” Then she would romp around in the mud and get caked with dirt and come back looking thoroughly pleased with herself.

The other game that Steffi liked to play was with her water bowl. She would amble over to her water bowl, drink a little water, look at it carefully, then deliberately put one big hairy paw on the side of the bowl, so that the bowl tipped over and all the water spilt on the floor. This accomplished, she would then gleefully slide the upside-down bowl into the living room, where she would push it under the edge of the carpet. Once it was well covered by the carpet, she would scrabble at the carpet furiously with her front paws, trying to get it out again and ruining the carpet in the process. Then, tired, she would go off to the bathroom and drink water out of a bucket.

Being a pure-bred (she was officially christened Stefanie Louise) Steffi used to fall sick quite often. For one who loved her food, it was agonizing to see her sniffing at it disinterestedly and wandering away. And sadly, that was how it was at the end. She went off her food again, but that time she never recovered. In front of our eyes, she wasted away, touching neither food nor water despite our best efforts. The vet called it a kidney failure and at last we had to put her out of her misery.

It’s a Dog’s Life - Part 1 - Blackie

In my growing up years, at my parents’ house we had, over quite a long period of time, three dogs. These were (in order of appearance) Blackie, Steffi, and Cassie.

Blackie was for a long time thought to be a Tibetan Terrier, but after many years of thinking him so, we decided (for reasons unknown) that he was not a Tibetan Terrier but a Tibetan Spaniel. Whatever the truth may have been (and it probably lay somewhere in-between) the fact remains that he was small, hairy, black, and of a notoriously unpredictable temper.

In this last respect (and in some of the others) he differed sharply from the other two dogs. Steffi, a very large Cocker Spaniel, was almost always sweet-natured - except for the time she bit me and left a permanent scar in one finger, which is another story.

And Cassie, a part-Dachshund mongrel, was fiercely loyal and highly excitable; which is to say that she would bite anybody and everybody except immediate family members.

Blackie entered our lives when I was about 3 or 4 years old, and stayed with us till I was about 18. Over the years, I grew expert at judging when he was about to snap at me, and I would grab him firmly by the scruff of his hairy neck to prevent him from doing so. This alarming tendency of his to snap at the nearest passing object usually subsided as quickly as it arose, so it was usually safe to let go of him after a few seconds. On one occasion, though, he got the better of me, because he got a good, firm grip of my other hand, which was dangling negligently and enticingly in front of his face and I almost lifted him off his feet by this means, before persuading him to let go of me.

Most of the time, he was not so irascible. He would come running to greet us when we got home, and would wind himself around our feet just like a cat. If someone were sitting on a high chair and he wanted to get into their lap, he would put his feet up and demand to be picked up (which was sometimes a risky operation). And at meal times, he would beg atrociously - but adorably.

Blackie was on the whole a healthy dog - apart from chewing grass and throwing up every so often, he rarely fell sick. He got cataract on both eyes, eventually, and was as good as blind for many years, but even though we shifted house after this, he managed to find his way around the new house, by bumping into various pieces of furniture and sometimes growling at them.

Blackie was our only dog for many, many years, before Steffi arrived and usurped his place of pride in the family. He had always been highly antagonistic to other living creatures, specially dogs, so we were a little anxious about his reaction to the new puppy. He wandered around her in an extremely puzzled fashion for several days, then retired to consider the matter. I don’t recall that he ever attacked her, though he never grew very fond of her. And he never lost the puzzled, slightly hurt expression that he acquired when this strange new addition to the family appeared and refused to go away.

It’s been close to 15 years since we laid Blackie to rest in the little patch of grass outside the gate of our house.