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Season's Gratings
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 Dear Venkat,I landed this morning travelling via Frankfurt; Chennai is awful as it has always been - the potholes in the roads are many and deep. The death wish of almost all the motorists, two wheeler drivers without helmets, pedestrians, even cattle is palpable. You know I do not dare to drive in this ancient city of nearly four hundred and more years old. But one thing has not changed and that is the music fever in the entire city. What with more and more music sabhas coming up in the suburbs and in the main city, easily more than one thousand five hundred concerts are being held. However I feel the annual influx of crazy t-shirt clad boys and girls from our cities and from neighbouring Canada may be less due to a few causes including the increasing 'bench cases' and of course, Osama bin Laden and his mayhem of recent vintage. I would strongly advise to pay heed to what I have heard and seen and transmitting to you via this anthrax free mail. What has been happening? Sabhas are accused of badgering potential sponsors within and outside the country for more and more money and at the same time the sabha secretaries are widely believed to be paying only a pittance to the performing artistes. The artistes in turn are badgering the sabhas for more and more programmes without giving even a thought to their performances and hoarse voices, after one or two concerts. The main artistes are not taking care of their accompanists who dread to perform well and corner an applause or two lest they should be de-linked by the jealous main artistes. The tampura player is the worst hit. Though his drone is hailed as the 'mother of music' (sruti mata) he is palmed off more often than not with a shawl and nothing else. One tampura artist confided that his annual collection of shwals is always returned to the same shop for a pittance. The so called music lovers who throng (?) the venues behave in an utterly ill disciplined way while the concert is on that I am ashamed that I might hve behaved like this earlier when I was in the Chennai IIT along with you ! I do want children to take a liking to music but not when they run around the aisles shrieking and calling one another! Then the last class of villains of the December season - the music critics, the all knowing critics who take you sky high one day but drop you like the WTC the next evening. They will wrtie about you and what you sand even if they were not physically present. You could do one thing if you were influential that is you can write your own version of what you sang and 'how wonderfully' and hand it over to either the critic or his news editor and the next morning you can take a clipping of it and send it across to your jealous colleagues in Detroit or wherever and who could not make it this year, to Chennai. All this is authentic and corroborated by a book which was released in the evening of Sunday the 9th December. Well all this may not be pleasant music now but we, all the four sections - the music sabhas, the artistes, the music lovers and the critics - all of us have to sit down and hammer out a better future for carnatic music before the requiem comes on. Preferably the talks can be held in one venue after another so that all of us can taste the delicious eats served in the various venues during the season. Hope to see you the cafeteria of Music Academy in the next couple of days. Do not forget to get the latest bunch of t-shirts from there! Yours, Kalyani RECENTLY ON JAAL: Osama In Bollywood Sab Maya Hai If The Taliban Win... Vox Judicutura! Wanted: A Governor Gift Cow Et Al Diaspora Disgust Chitti Chitti Bong Bong Off Course Pol Poll: Are You A Neta Wannabe? The Raj Strikes Back The EMail Of The Species Kandahar Ka Kaana Raja The World Is Not Enough Back To Squire One Poll Gita Where There's A Bill, There's A Wait DotComs, By The Numbers GoI-ing After Veerappan The Bore-Gush Race Hack Attack! Eee! Governance! Justice Unbound Small States, Large Stakes Con Banega Crorepati Salesman No. 1 Cat And Meows 25 Years After Paswan Goes DOTty Child's Play Toilet Paper Drought And About Boer Boar The Joke's On You The Coming Of Bill T Kannan SEND US YOUR FEEDBACK ABOUT THIS ARTICLE: ?
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