Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. (20 page)

My thumbs did a little dance on the keypad without coming to a conclu
-
sion about where they wished to land. I could already visualize how this
was going to end. I was going to put him in the zone that no one can get
out of – because ‘I haven’t thought about us like that, you know. I hope
you understand. Let’s just be really good friends.’

19.
Hamsanādam
Pavithra Srinivasan
“Have you been doing your stretching exercises?” Dr. Shankar asked,
peering at me over his glasses.

“Sort of,” I said, sinking back into the wheelchair, exhausted again.
“‘Sort of’ is not good enough, Ria, you know that.”

I nodded. My legs were still shaking, and I clutched them silently, willing
them to stop.

 

“One thing at a time, young lady. If you don’t stretch, they won’t stop
shaking. Your legs need some strength before you can try the next step.”

Time was something I had plenty of. Patience, though, was a different
matter; I never was one for waiting, for building up to a moment, when I
could tumble into it instead.

***
I was one of those who would always turn up late to dance class.

“Thath thai thaiyum thath thām, kitathaka, tha thai thaiyum thath thām
tharikita”

I remember that day was no exception. The opening
sollu
, the rhythm of
the alārippu, drifted down the stairs. The alārippu is traditionally the first
piece presented at a dance recital, and over the years, most of my group
had accepted that we must start each class by running though its geomet-
ric precision. My Guru was insistent about tradition.

As I rushed in, she tilted her head slightly and smiled, while her eyes
seemed to say, “late again?”

“Sorry, Akka,” I whispered, and dropped off my bag. Tying my dupatta
into an impromptu saree, I weaved through my friends to begin the series
of practiced moves. For the next ten minutes, the hall was filled with the
sounds of feet pounding the ground and arms slicing through air.

Afterwards, as I wiped the sweat off my brow, I sat down before Akka.
“Does the alārippu bore you, Ria?”
I knew I should have laughed and brushed it off. But I had to ask her.

“Akka, why do we have to follow the m
ārgam always? Why must the
alārippu and jatiswaram be followed by a varnam? Why do we have to
end with the thillānā?”

Akka chuckled slightly.
“The word “mārgam” – you know what it means, don’t you?”
I did. It meant “the way,” the path to a destination.

“Correct. It is not just the path to the destination. To artists, who do not
care very much about where we are headed, it
is
the destination itself.
And tell me this: can there be mathematicians who do not begin by learn-
ing that two comes after one? And would you be able to write without
knowing your alphabet?”

We were quiet for a while, until it was time for the next piece. Akka ran
her thattu, a short wooden stick, over the flat-based kazhi. Slowly, quietly,
at first, sending a murmur of wood on wood that was a sign to stop chat-
ting and put the water bottles away. In the gathering silence and the rustle
of re-tied dupattas, a giggle turned into a loud laugh.

The thattu-kazhi rang out twice, sharply, and it was quickly muffled. Back
in our places, we began the jatiswaram. The second piece of a traditional
mārgam is a mix of more complex steps, choreographed to music less
prosaic than the alārippu. The whole piece feels more joyous than the
first, really, but it’s a controlled display of nritta – pure dance – before we
get to the emotive aspects.

“But Akka,” I argued silently, “words use a finite number of letters. They
are just ordered differently to signify different meanings. And sentenc-
es use a finite number of words ordered differently to mean different
things.” I knew I was slackening my pace, but I could not help thinking
as I danced. “So would a recital with a jatiswaram at the end change its
meaning altogether?”

“Let me ask you this,” she said, as we sat down to dinner later that night
with her family. “Do you think I would say, “you well dance” rather than
“you dance well,” just because you can put one thing before the other?
The verb has to come before the adverb, because you need to have done
something for me to tell you
how
you’ve done it.”

We laughed, as Akka continued.

“The al
ārippu is a gentle beginning, a predictable blend of feet and eyes
and hips and neck. The pieces then build up in complexity. The shab-
dam is the first piece that lets you use your face to paint your heart. The
varnam, then, brings this emotion together with rhythmic steps to reach
a crescendo. Then the crescendo softens, and we move to the world of
pure heart: jāvalis, padhams – these are gems that let you express com-
plex emotions more deeply, less metrically. The pace slows, but the heart
swells and swells until it bursts once more into the thillāna, a farewell
piece that takes you back to feet, eyes, hips and neck. One short emotive
segment past, the final crescendo is reached on the stairway to God.”

“And is that the destination of the mārgam? To reach God?” I asked.
“To some, yes. To many, it is a glimpse of a never-reached destination.
You heard me – the journey itself is sufficient sometimes.”
***

 

“How was your session,” Amma asked, arranging the cushions against
my neck as I leaned back.

 

“Tiring. Dr. Shankar isn’t happy.”

 

She only let the furrows on her brow show for a heartbeat, before wiping
them away with a smile. “How did you manage to trouble him now?”
“I hate stretching, Ma. It hurts, and it’s pointless. What, am I preparing
for a performance or something?”

I saw the words cut her deeply.
“But this is important, Ria. You promised to listen to the doctor and fol-
low what he says. It’s...”

“For the best, yes,” I finished her sentence.
“I meant to say that it’s the only way,” she said. “How can you try stand-
ing up if you don’t strengthen your muscles? One thing at a time, Ria.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.

“You sound as if you’ve been speaking to Dr. Shankar! He said the exact
same thing. As if I have anywhere to go and anything else to do. As if I’m
not trying, as if...what is that?”

Amma had turned on some music on her laptop, and a forgotten note
filled the room.

 

“I don’t know, it’s something your brother sent. He said his band tried
some fusion – Carnatic and rock. He thought you would like it.”
Bantureethi kolu viya vaiyya Rāmā
...

Of course I did. Amma murmured an apology, and quickly tried to turn
it off, but an unfamiliar beat raced through the familiar words of the
Thyagaraja composition.

“Let it be,” I said, sitting back and shutting my eyes.
***

I had danced to those words so many times. It was a wildly popular song,
sung over the ages by stalwarts and children alike. Of course, when I say
wildly popular, I do not mean to conjure images of head-banging and
screaming crowds: emotional swaying and a quiet chorus of “shabāsh”
would be more appropriate. The rāgam, Hamsanādam, seemed to con-
tain a throbbing cry to God. My heart would begin to pound when I tried
to convey the depth of devotion in its nuances – like water reaching boil-
ing heat, but finding itself trapped, for eternity, in that moment between
bubbling and overflowing.

“No, no, Ria, not like that. That is too much, just too much. Don’t throw
your arms out so abruptly and beg. Let them unfold, gently, asking for
God’s gaze to turn to you. Don’t demand it like that, don’t jump for it. Be
still, as you prepare to receive that gaze.”

It was hard to be still, when the warbling strains reached the familiar cre
-
scendo, and the singer begged for God’s name to be his sword. But Akka
was adamant, and wouldn’t let me perform the piece on stage.

“That is how my Guru imagined it. You need to learn to be still in order
to leap. If you are not ready for it today, keep trying. I know that some-
day, you will be.”

***
The fusion came to an end in a clash of cymbals. As Amma left the room,
I knew she was remembering all of those classes as well.

Many years ago, I gave up attending Carnatic music lessons, deciding that
my brother could be the Semmangudi of the family, and I, the Balasara-
swati. I had attempted some lessons, dutifully practising a rāgam taught
to all newcomers as the fountainhead of musical notes. Seven swarams,
or notes of S-R-G-M-P-D-N, had to be intoned in steady ascension and
descension. Several uncontrollable coughing fits later, my teacher could
see that I had a severe case of asthma that would come on only in her
dusty, veenā-lined room. After that, I was allowed to focus on my Bhara-
tanatyam lessons instead.

But the music never ceased. I danced to it all the time, and took secret
pleasure in recognizing names of rāgams that fellow dancers would have
to memorize with difficulty. I tried dodging it, but it resonated in every
pathway my brother traversed. It echoed in our house when he moved
away, and in the letters he wrote describing his newfound home: the col-
lege music club. Sometimes, it came back over summer holidays in his
audio-cassettes, plastic windows onto a world that fused Carnatic and
rock music. It seemed to me that the world was a large, strange place
filled with mysterious marriages.

And it came to me, especially at moments when I found it hard to un
-
derstand how to wait for a gaze in stillness, when every note seemed to
demand abandon. It had come to me again, now, reminding me of halfforgotten emotions and unlearned patience.

I keyed in “how to learn Hamsanādam,” and one of the first links that
came up led to a site called Rāga Surabhi. It contained weekly tutorials on
rāgams and looked very professional. Under the rāgam’s name, it read:

Ā
rohanam
: S R2 M2 P N3 S
Avarohanam
: S N3 P M2 R2 S

An
ārohanam is the ascending scale of a rāgam, and the avarohanam,
its descending. Each ragam – and there are thousands – has a signature
permutation of the basic swarams represented by these S, R2 and N3
symbols. Each breath of air must be contoured differently to represent
each swaram. As each swaram follows the other in a particular order, a
rāgam is born: change one swaram around, and the flavour of the whole
rāgam changes. And above all, as the singer winds upward in a particular
sequence of swarams, so must she travel back down that unique route
too.

I tried to sing S. “Saaa,” to be precise. Or “suuuh,” to attempt to be even
more precise, but precision can falter when turning sound into script.

“Suuuh” was the easy bit. I remembered this much from my aborted
music lessons. What about M2? Why 2? Did that make the “Maa” sound
I remembered? Did the 2 indicate something vaster, or something nar-
rower? Rāga Surabhi, that beautiful website, also uploaded audio clips of
a woman going through the scales. First, she went through them all at
once, like a maestro clearing her throat before an audience – an audience
that is meant to hear, but not know. And then, more gently, more slowly,
like a teacher faced with a coughing student. M2 sounded like it needed
to be intoned by barely opening the mouth. My lips, in fact, had to be
held just as far apart as I would before a slow kiss. This was its defining
note, I read, because it set Hamsanādam apart from rāgams with mere
“M”s adorning the centre of the swaram sequence. It amused me, think-
ing that if I were to open too wide and prepare to utter a rebuke rather
than request a kiss, my Hamsanādam would slip into a different rāgam, a
different identity altogether.

“Muhhh,” I sang, stopping the audio, and drawing it out again in uni
-
son with the recorded voice. That “2” made it sweeter, more rounded,
I thought. I made a note of its peculiar effect, of its ability to turn the
“Maa” into a playful, pleading waterfall draping over a mountain and
plunging into a valley.

So M2 held the key to the stillness of the r
āgam, I thought. All day, I
could not stay straight without feeling the urge to bend and – suddenly –
drop. I weaved my head slowly to the drawn-out note, and tried moving
my unresponsive body along the swaram’s curve. I thought I could un-
derstand the gentle, initial rise of the “Muhhh” and its sudden plummet
at its conclusion if I could move my hips and head
just so
.

I must have looked a sight, moving my upper body in an arch with no
warning as we went out that evening, tasting the sea breeze. When we
stopped in front of the ocean, I asked to be left alone before attempting
“P”.

“Paa”.

A clear, clarion call. I remembered this from those old classes, it was just
the same. The familiar swaram was a friendly signpost that said “well
done, this is known territory; you may pass quickly on to the next un-
known.”

“Niii,” sang the recorded voice. I had to hold my head up high, as high
and straight as I could, to do justice to the sudden lift in the swaram. The
sign of 3 beside the N seemed to pluck the sonorous note off theclothes-
line, past the aerial scale of the 2s, and leave it vibrating high above, like a
drop of dew suspended on a scale all of its own. The tension in my legs
grew, as my body tried to straighten itself out along the line of the “Niii”.
I was moving higher and higher, climbing the ladder of the rāgam, while
my body could do no more than stretch an arm out pleadingly.

The final “Saaa” of the
ārohanam left me in much the same position,
my body taut and my arm stretched in prayer. But when I listened to the
avarohanam, the descending cascade of notes, I could sing along easily.
All the way back down, the rāgam wound, in that particular order com-
posed centuries ago. Slowly, my body relaxed, and I felt the tension leave
my legs. My arm dropped, tracing the path back downward. So that was
where the stillness in the song lay: in following the quavering crescendo
back down to the depths it rose from.

Through the long, sleepless night, and the days that followed, I repeated
the notes. For once, I forced myself to climb up the flight of swarams
and follow it back down, rather than tumble into its climax.