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28 June 2004
Nattakuranji
After a long and inexplicable break from listening to music, I was privy today to an exquisite RTP in Nattakuranji by M.S. Gopalakrishnan and M. Narmada. I seldom attempt to describe listening to music wary of what Arun so insightfully observed at the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra concert -- one could literally use the same words to describe wine-tasting as one does to describe the experience of listening to Western classical music and none would be the wiser for it. Of course, there is very little if anything to support the idea that this would apply to Carnatic music as well and so I shall hazard it once to imitate the plethora of avid listeners who swoon easily to a combination of euphoria, sympathy for their uninformed society, verboseness and rememberance of words long forgotten.In my own case, the experience was a moving one in more ways than one as I ambled back home feverishly, keenly transfixing all my senses on the puny music jukebox chested in my kurta pocket and flailing my arms about to match metre with the brisk flourishes of the bow and rich ghamakam. The occasional rishabham leaves me goose-pimply and as the fingers steadily climb up the fingerboard to scale the upper reaches of the last octave, gently swaying about the gaandhaaram and madhyamam I myself yearn to leap beyond the San Gabriel to my right daring its visible front to vouch for its elusive posterior ridges. An Oriental couple in checked shorts walks ahead of me briskly with quips flying about in nasally inflected dialect through yellow teeth fronted by awkwardly protruding jawbone on each palette, but is no match for my own pace and Narmada's concluding vigorous sketches as she touches on the sancharas for the nishaadham before descending down the shadjam and finally sating (or whetting?) my regained appetite with the dip and suppression of the bow at the lower octave. As the music dies out on the shadjam confluencing through the touch of the bow with the panchamam I am conveyed with tears at their brief yet contented nuptial.
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