Curious Music Incident No.2

I'd love to see this experiment transposed on the Mumbai concert-going crowd.

The 'Queue'rious Incident of the Music-Lovers in the Night Time

I hate queues. I especially resent the way their tortuously slow pace perversely coincides with me being in a tearing hurry. I hate the effect they have on me- the welling frustration, the rising blood pressure (almost as bad as when I have my regular bouts of road rage), the mounting tension. But I hate them the most when they lead nowhere, and by these standards, Friday’s line outside the NCPA leaves the rest of the field far behind (GLC fee-paying days included) when it comes to picking the most sadistic queue of them all.

The upcoming Mehli Mehta Foundation concerts have been garnering a lot of print space- they’re about the only events on the Western Classical Music scene in Mumbai which could ever attract any media attention. The only time I’ve read a piece on Sangat, Mumbai’s annual chamber music ‘festival’, they’d got the spelling and date wrong (the latter by a few odd months). And while I would ordinarily have been thrilled at all the publicity being generated, I’d have given anything on Friday for no one to have heard of Zubin Mehta or Daniel Barenboim or Pinchas Zukerman. Hell, I wouldn’t have cared even if people thought that chamber music was something weird that counsels listened to in a closet.

Obviously, I haven’t got tickets to hear only some of the greatest musicians ever. And consequently, I’m more shocked than delighted that people in Mumbai care enough about music to queue up outside the NCPA (or rather, send their drivers and peons to queue up…) from 3:00 a.m. the preceding night when the box office was supposed to open officially only at 10:00. Naturally, I didn’t stand a chance in hell when I landed up only an hour before the opening. (Token No: 277!!) But I’m beginning to have doubts about this new-found enthusiasm. I caught some very dubious snatches of conversation while I was sweating it out in the queue. There were several murmurs about how one couldn’t pass up the chance to see such ‘celebrities’, the underlying sentiment being that these concerts were the place to be seen if you wanted to make a mark on Mumbai’s social circuit. And I distinctly heard one lady say that she thought ‘chamber music was too classical (whatever that means) for her liking’ and that there were times when she positively disliked the sound of the violin, if you please!! What on earth was she doing there then??? Actually, the answer’s pretty obvious- she was going to snap up as many tickets as she could (they were rationing 2 tickets per person per show) and then sell some of them off for as much as she could milk the genuine music-lovers for. Apparently, some of the night-long vigil people weren’t actuated by a profound love of Mozart or Beethoven either. There were very credible rumours doing the rounds that the token numbers were going for a song the next day on the black market.

Needless to say, I am very, very disappointed that I haven’t managed to lay my hands on even one ticket. Of course, I’ll be staking out the Jamshed Bhabha theatre on the concert evenings in the hope that some other violin-hater like my queue lady will be looking to offload a ticket. In the meantime, anyone with suggestions on how to procure one will earn my undying gratitude and unwavering devotion!

Give Me This Day My Daily Book

I don’t generally care much for translated works, but this translation of Gulzar’s poem by Pavan Varma (whose original book, Being Indian, I enjoyed very much) touched a chord. The poem is entitled Books and here’s the first verse:

They peer from beyond
Glasses of locked cupboards,
They stare longingly
For months we do not meet
The evenings once spent in their company
Now pass at the computer screen.
They are so restless now, these books-
They have taken to walking in their sleep
They stare longingly

I hope, very much, for all book lovers, that this verse is completely untrue. Tragically for me, it is a cruelly accurate description of my current relationship with my most favourite things in the world. The last novel I read was Sea of Poppies two months ago. That has to be a record (albeit infamous) - the last time I had such a long, bookless period is before I became literate! I know that reading is a very integral component of many people’s lives, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s my identity card. It defines who I am…it’s the activity that until recently, took precedence over all others- much to the exasperation of relatives at family functions where I’d always be safely hidden in a corner with a book; much to the despair of my father who has tried, in vain, to explain the physiologically harmful effects of reading and eating simultaneously; much to the frustration of my sister who has had to endure countless agonizing moments banging away at locked bathroom doors…

That impostor, the internet, is partly culpable for this unnatural estrangement. It has usurped even those last ten, precious minutes before sleep that were always reserved for my latest book. Now they’re spent obsessively checking my e mail. (I have got to cure myself of this habit- it’s invariably a fruitless exercise, anyway!) I suppose that I also don’t have the time to let books consume me the way they used to- it was always a very demanding relationship- a case of ‘all or nothing’-and now I cannot afford to submit to their exacting demands with my former alacrity. Or else (and I know that what follow are ridiculous, but frightening theories, nevertheless), I’ve simply fallen out of love with books. Maybe I’ve exhausted my quota. Maybe there’s only so much love for books that can go around and my passion is being sucked up by my sister, who has begun reading increasingly voraciously (a possibility which always seemed as remote as the Tinkle digests being short listed for the Booker).

The more rational explanations probably are (a) I am losing my attention span as I advance in years and (b) I am making all the wrong choices/am being recommended all the lousier books. Whatever the reason, I am determined to end this literary drought immediately. Mercifully, I am unable to log into Gmail and a leather-bound Victor Hugo is giving me a most accusing and peremptory frown!

P.S. I shall put up the original Hindi poem when I have the time and patience to figure out how that particular application works on Blogger.

P.S.2. Is it technically correct to use ‘post script’ on a blog?

Getting Over Writer's 'Blog'

It is quite some time now that I have been thinking of starting a blog, though I’m not very sure of the reasons myself. It is not as if I am always particularly abreast of current affairs that I am able to comment intelligently on all of them or hold informed opinions about every new development. It is also not the case that I have family/friends abroad who would care for a blow-by-blow account of my day. And I certainly don’t wish to put all my emotions on public display.

What then, am I supposed to blog about? I suppose it’s eventually going to turn out to be a mixture of all the above three. After all, even my bleary-eyed perusal of the TOI with the morning milk has got to count for something. (Of course, I also read Le Monde, but how accurately I absorb the news is a point open to debate!) And I’m sure that with a bit of restraint, I can cut down on the verbiage and spare my prospective readers a tedious recital of the day’s events. As for the ‘emotions’ bit, I’ve changed my mind- writing has always been cathartic for me and there’s no point to blogging if I don’t write about what I feel. The purpose could be served equally well by a diary, it’s true, but I’ve realized that with blogging, I’d have the dual advantage of thrashing out stuff not only with myself, but also with the precious few who are going to read this and with whom I would otherwise have conducted separate phone conversations or to whom I would have addressed separate e mails.

But most importantly, blogging is going to satisfy my need to write ‘x’ amount of words everyday. Writing requires exactly the same discipline as playing the piano. You’ve got to do it everyday. To be sure, your fingers do inevitably find the correct keys even when you’re sitting down after a goodish hiatus; but the piece is bound to turn out a little hesitant. It’s the same with writing. (I was going to embark on the second part of my analogy, when I realized that the piano jargon that I’ve employed viz. ‘keys’ and ‘piece’ can equally easily be substituted if one were talking about writing- especially now that paper and pen have become virtually obsolete…sigh).

I’ve just realised that my first post is along practically the same lines as a 7th Standard article for my class magazine. Desperately lacking an original idea (I was already creatively bankrupt at the age of 12!), I spun out an entire debate on what the article should be about, without actually writing anything substantial. Either life has come full circle or the abovementioned creative bankruptcy persists!

Here’s to more concrete posts…….