Some sights and sounds stay with with you long after you have seen or heard them. They are rare and special and call for minute powers of observation. Birds' twitter, dews' diamond like glint on green grass, fan's whirr, ladies earrings' dangle, gusts of wild wind pregnant with rains with the coconut leaves swaying violently, shuffling pages of yellowing old books, cows burping after a fulfilling lunch--I suddenly find myself all eyes and ears. I will not enlarge this list any further for fear of losing my way in the beauty and simplicity of such small joys of life. Let's just admit I love to soak them all in. Today I just want to share with you a sound that I hold very dear, ones that make me feel things are alright with my world after all, notwithstanding my best efforts to turn them upside down.
There is this apartment block somewhere in South Delhi I have to visit at least once in virtually every week. I normally use gate numbe two possibly because this is the shortest distance to the apartment if you are walking in. a little up this way, on my right, there is an apartment where someone plays mandolin. I do not know s/he is, nor do I wish to. But everytime I walk past this place, by some starnge coincidence the anonymous mandolin player practices some haunting tune or the other. I have occassionally heard tabla and guitars too, and I suspect they probably are trying to set up a band or some such musical ensemble. But it's the robust sound of Mandolin that I always look forward to listening. Mandolin, as you would know, is not an Indian instrument and U.Srinivas is the only Indian who is known to have integrated it with the intricacies of Indian classical music. But of course, there must be many not so well known musicians experimenting with this instrument, including this anonymous friend of mine.
I am always drawn to the sound of mandolin, and I have no clue why. It may be because it is at the same time robust yet plaintive. This is also the reason why Salil Chowdhury's music appeals to me so much, this effortless tonal fluidity breaking down the traditional distinction between happy sounds and sad sounds. This is not the Wordsworthian dictum of sweetest songs telling of saddest thoughts. On the contrary, here is a sound that can be alternately read as wildly celebratory and equally, if not more, as arising from depths of utter despair. It is at once schizophrenic and non-dual, black and white, rapturous and remoreseful, or just plain two in one, if you will. Well, not really. I have always found so many shades of gray as well.
May the mysterious mandolin player go from strength to strength. I am so grateful that s/he is around. S/he turned so many bad days of mine into bright cheerful evenings, and lovely, dreamy nights, without knowing it herself of course. I guess that's what music does to you, soothe your tout nerves and put you to sleep when the world gets too much, and motivate you to wake up and have another go just when you would have thought you have been sleeping a tad too long.
