Ramu Learns to Write

Sing. Smile. Dance. Blog.

There was a young teacher who got married and left for the US of A. Then there was the young teachers old teacher who left to go live with her son in Anand. There was the teacher with the irritating grandson who went to visit her other grandsons and never came back – they were presumably easier to live with. There was the teacher who sounded like a toad with a cold on the phone and beautifully powerful when she sang, she shifted to Hyderabad, presumably to be with someone near, dear and not irritating. Not to be outdone, we left the next teacher, we didn’t go anywhere, we just stopped going there one day (I’m still hazy as to whether we told her we were dropping out).

AS a result of such intensive and extensive classic carnatic music training, today when I sing (Rasputin by Boney M being my favoured song) I bring tears to the eyes of my friends.

In his autobiography “Moab is My Washpot” Stephen Fry, the Gay-ly Profane P.G. Wodehouse, rants, in capital letters spelling out F-bombs about his inability to connect with his peers because of certain musical shortcomings. I empathise. When you can’t dance without tripping, sing along to the latest singalong song without people leaving the room, you’ve lost out on a very important and primal form of socialization, of connecting at a level beyond words, you my dear friend are out of sync with the rhythm of life. To make matters worse as Fry points out, its’ not like we’re tone deaf, If Fry and I were tone deaf we wouldn’t know what we were missing. But for someone who traces her cultural awakening to watching “A Hard Days’ Night” and falling head over heels (literally, when I tried to dance to them) in love with the Beatles, its just plain old cruel. With apologies to Brendan Behan, It’s like being the eunuch in a harem, you know how its done, you hear it being done every day, you just can’t do it yourself, it’s like being a critic (gasp)! Shudder.

This weekend I danced, I shut my eyes, stopped caring about my hair getting messy, what other people might think, other peoples feet and danced. WooHoo! Jodhpur Riff, I went to listen to Dharohar, a project/collaboration between Rajasthani Folk Artists and Jason Sigh a Beatboxer, it was absolutely fantastic, you just had to get up and dance to them, I started out with foot tapping, swaying, and bobbing my head trying to look dignified, until I finally gave in and started jumping around like crazy. Then there was Swarathma, an urban-folk-rock band from Bangalore who have issues with this classification according to their facebook page, but since I don’t know anything about their music except that it kept me dancing and I have been listening to it all Sunday and all through the writing of this post I will submit to the superior wisdom of the writer of the RIFF Pamphlet, use the classification and declare myself a fan of urban-folk-rock-bands. I went to listen to Antonio Rey one of the world’s top three Spanish guitarists, and watched Farruco a third generation flamenco dancer seduce the crowd. I didn’t dance, but I definitely drooled. And for the finale there was Sivamani, the most recognizable name in the line up, I danced again, but mainly I watched and admired the potted out hippies grooving to his beats, until that is, Dharohar came up to Jam with him, and kicked his ass. Ramu does dance. To Dharohar, with enthusiasm. With a smile.