Let the learning percolate

Being part south Indian, memories of my childhood are incomplete without recollecting the aroma of freshly ground coffee bean and the preparation of decoction which percolated slowly in the large, brass coffee filters that provided the unlimited amount of coffee, served hot in stainless steel tumblers and bowls. But the irony is that I do not drink coffee and remain a staunch ‘tea person’!

My exposure to Indian classical music began when I was a toddler and I began training in Bharatnatyam and Carnatic music a little later into my childhood. Unfortunately, I was unable to sustain my interest in dance but continued learning music, albeit, with the intermittent breaks when academic pressures took precedence over everything else. The training in music taught me important life-lessons that I carry with me to this day - the arduous learning process taught me the virtue of patience, the immense depth of it, humility, and the vastness of it, that the process of learning never ends! 

The situation with students these days seems a tad different, though; I see students in a hurry to perform to a public audience, shifting the focus of learning from the self to the others. While the learning of a raga does involve mastering the specific grammar that identifies it, it also requires the student to absorb the essence of each raga, replete with the underlying emotion and expression.

That stalwarts spent years learning a raga may seem too hard to believe but learning classical music is not meant for those in a hurry! For them, there is the instant coffee, which can never come close to filter coffee.

I would like to share a beautiful rendition of raga TilakKamod by Pt. Mukul Shivputra