One tambura, many feelings

I chanced upon a video footage of a well-known Bollywood actress presenting some ideas. I was instantly drawn and naturally too, to the tambura that was standing beside her. When I first saw the still photo, I thought it was be a promotional video for an actress learning classical music. It was far from that and the subject had little to do with music or any form of art, including cinema. Now what was that tambura doing in the frame?

The entire set-up looked simple, ordinary and could pass off for my house or yours. Perhaps, that was the intention, in order to woo the general public. Perhaps the producer of the video thought that a tambura in the room added a touch of aesthetics, simple elegance and a “non-Bollywoodien” element, thereby appealing to a larger section of viewers. Perhaps the producer thought that a tambura stands in most living rooms like a lamp or a Ganesha statue or some odd knick-knack. That was my surmise. I could be wrong. But I knew surely that the tambura had no relation to the content of the video. It stood forlorn in the picture. It was standing on the bare ground. That tugged at my heart’s strings. Why was it not on a pedestal. Could they not have placed it on a carpet beneath?

In the late Eighties, we took some musical instruments to a studio in Kings’ Circle to get them photographed. The collection included my husband’s cherished inheritance — two robust old mridangams, played and well-loved by the legendary vidwan Tanjavur Kunju Iyer during his lifetime. Those were the pre-gadget days and the photo studio was the only option. The photographer came into the room, arranged the screens for the light effect, organised his trivia, made himself seem important, scuttled in and out doing some insignificant flecks of work. After testing our patience with all this, he strode in once again into the room and then did the unthinkable. He hoisted one foot up and kicked one of the mridangams with the intention of changing its position. We were too horrified for words and rendered speechless by this blasphemous act. Why blasphemous, you might ask?

I am revolted when I see books placed on the dirty ground in libraries. I despise musical instruments being shabbily treated. I shudder when a musical note is displaced. I shrink when I see a crack on an instrument. Why? Because I have grown up in an aesthetic culture that reveres sources of knowledge. Not just because they have a divine connect, as our ancient texts reveal and as it is inculcated in most artistes, but also because knowledge itself is held as sacred, touches the soul and is to be venerated. Over the years, I have imbibed skills that enable me to see the world from a larger prism, help me fit into a wider scheme of things; I have acquired those qualities that make you what we call today as “world citizen”. What is Indian and what is not? This debate has been raging, but I can clearly say that this part of me is profoundly Indian. The bare earth and the feet have symbolic connotations in the Indian context that go beyond religion. You do not kick a musical instrument; in the same way, you will not place it on the bare ground or on the street or on your shoes. Folk musicians in India too are raised with this same sentiment of reverence. This reverance embodies respect, understanding, a singular oneness that encompasses a wider array of things signifying reverance for life itself and for other elements in creation.

This pattern is so entrenched in you that being and doing otherwise comes to signify a mark of total disrespect. You would not want to slight that which you are so attached to, would you? The photographer, the producer of the video and the actress, were clearly far removed from this scheme of things.

Dr Vasumathi Badrinathan is an eminent Carnatic vocalist based in Mumbai. She can be contacted on vasu@vasumathi.net