Pilgrimage home

Not so long ago , in the days of , "Regional kendra's will continue" , the period between 6 to 7 was the high drought.
The period to transition between the dust of the play ground ,the graze of the asphalt on a street cricketer's knee and home work.

In this twilight , one had to endure 'Krishi karyakrama' with portly gentlemen in safari suits expouding on legumes or 'Aralu mallige' , that middle class aspiration of that day , to dress kids in 'Inspector dress'.

Sometimes though , there was Hari Kathe.

With its , unblemished-by-DD's-tacky-sets , honest voice . The voice that calls out to the cattle when they stray off the evening path.

Even in that age when one's sub-conscious was in rapture of the electronic music of Kamal Hasan's "Vikram" , it plucked a certain chord in the bosom , but only so faint then , as to sit through it. (no remote or not much use for a remote then)

Evenings passed , of pre-ganesh chaturthi loud speaker hearings and summer-vacations in Cuddalore , listening to the tales of Anjaneya that rode the dusk breeze across the pudinha fields from the temple . Evenings that started with the raucous home-coming of the birds at the railway station trees , as we awaited the the next-door maid who would thrall us with stories of the spirits in the neem trees. ....all in the lap of the loud speaker not far away.

Through these surreal evenings of synthesis , the sound found its home in my home . In my home in my head .


*
The Kathakali Man

“It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen.. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.

To the Kathakali Man these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up with them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadow he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughs at it because he loves it. He can fly you across whole worlds in minutes, he can stop for hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey’s tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the crafty ebullience of a rakshasa with a new idea into a gossipy Malayali with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna’s smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory.

(From , The God of small things , Arundathi Roy)
*

Or Devendra Banhart in A Sight to Behold
It's like finding hope
In an old folk song
That you've never ever heard
Still you know every word
And for sure you can sing along


*

Small tragedy of urban India , people like me , cannot sing along even if we know the words - they're the words prompted by the voice that speaks without words.

A palanquin of vocal transcendence carried by the harmonium and gentle drums.

Its a pilgrimage back to where I come from.

*
"Hey paramatamaaaa!!!!! , Kapaadu devaaa kapaadu" ....yendu beydidaaga
Ivara sankatavannu kandu sahisaladare .. shirmad narayana prathyakshanaada.
Pratyakshaanaagi helidananthe "Aiiyya.....!!!!!!"
*

Bhakta Prahalada and more can be found here.