The Wedding Diaries- Part 2

Whew. Part 2 is finally here...

I have a confession to make. I have never been a fan of marriage. Sometime when I was in 3rd or 4th grade, I decided never to get married. The idea of spending one's entire life with a stranger simply freaked me out. This was perhaps because of the kind of marriages I saw then. (They were all "arranged marriages". Dating was a word unheard of in our circles, and "love marriage" was a term used with tones worse than "murder" and "embezzlement".) Most marriages involved two people meeting once (ONCE!) and talking for about half an hour before deciding to get engaged. At the time, this sounded too scary- with half an hour of conversation, I wouldn't even be able to say if someone would make a good friend or not, how was I to decide whether I could live with them? What if the person I met didn't like Enid Blyton? Or didn't know what treacle tart was? (By the way, I have never actually tasted treacle tart in my life. It just sounded delicious when Blyton wrote about it. So did apple pie and fresh strawberries and cream. In fact, I think Enid Blyton is partly to blame for my sweet tooth and general love of food. The rest is probably genetics. Oh wait, I digress.) I think my worst fear then was that I would get married to someone who liked DragonBallZ. (Little did I know my worst fear would come true!!)

Anyway, my biggest qualm with marriages (or "arranged marriages") was that I couldn't commit to marrying someone I didn't know well enough. I knew most people around me were OK with doing that, but I wasn't. And the Sujatha short stories of women who got married to intellectually incompatible men didn't help. (Mom, I hate to admit it, but you were partly right all along. The books WERE to blame!) Nor did the K.Balachander notions of "love"- by which he often meant "connecting with" a person, not stalking them after seeing them once in a city bus. (Aside, I am sorry that no other Tamil director ever picked that idea up. Tamil heroes still think stalking a woman till she relents is ok, and Tamil movie love is still mostly about "eye candy", not compatibility.) Anyway, I didn't think I could live very happily if my husband didn't "get me" and the chances of finding someone who did, didn't seem very high.

Of course, as I grew up, I expanded my definitions of the marriage process. More people talked about having things in common and talking/meeting multiple times before getting engaged, so it wasn't half as bleak. But during that time, my expectations grew as well. By the time I was 20, while I no longer cared about having the same favorite authors, I did care about sharing common goals (do we really want to buy a house before 30?)  and values (are we put on Earth with a higher purpose?), conflict resolution (can we find a good method to decide who does the dishes?) and most of all, about understanding the way each other thinks. Which, to me, meant an even lower probability of finding Mr.Right over a few conversations.


This is also the time I realized that if I was skeptical about marriage in general, I was 100 times more skeptical about arranged marriages. I barely made friends with people, how was I going to find someone who could be much more than a friend to me? Plus, finding someone who I liked, who understood me, and who fell into the same stratum of society that I did, while coming from a family that my family would get along with and happen to run into during the process of "searching" was like trying to find prime numbers larger than a googol. And unlike mathematics, I didn't have infinite time on my hands nor did I care enough to spend that much time on a search process. But more than anything else, I didn't see this kind of search as practical in my family. I could picture exactly what would happen after I said "No" for more than 3-4 horoscope matches:
(The following conversation is imaginary and a tad hyperbolic. No offense to my mom.)

Mom: Now what was wrong with THIS boy? Why did you have to reject him? (Sounding a lot like Ambi saying "Enaku oru concrete reason venum, Nandhini").
Me: This is not going to work out ma. We are just not compatible.
Mom: What compatible? IITB and Harvard MBA. He is earning so well. You can live like a princess. And he looks so good also, ajanubahu-va, fair-a Hindi actor maadhiri dhaane irukkan.  
Me: It's not about being fair ma. He doesn't like reading and his idea of trying new cuisines is molagootal. I don't even know what to talk to him about. We just won't gel. 
Mom: What gel, paste and all..  Last time the boy's profile said he likes reading and you still rejected him.
Me: Amma, that guy was too mature. We had similar interests, but there was no chemistry. We would make good friends, but that's about it.
Mom: What chemistry, physics and all, talking like Vijay TV anchors! Are you going to participate in Maanada Mayilaada after marriage? Why do you need chemistry?
Me: I don't know how to explain it, amma. The spark wasn't there. We had a lot in common. Maybe too much in common.
Mom: Now you are talking like KamalaHassan only. It feels like you are saying something, but nobody can understand what you mean. See our pakkathu flat Ananya. She married the first boy her parents found and now her son is going to preschool in Boston. I think all your reading is spoiling you.
...

Which brings me to a different point altogether. "Chemistry". Also called the "seeing someone that way". I cannot imagine ever explaining that to anyone, definitely not my family. I have interacted with many men with whom I have a lot in common, yet I couldn't possibly consider getting married to any of them. However, in the arranged marriage process, I was bound to run into a few "perfectly fine" people whom I would have to refuse , and provide explanations to my family about; all the while feeling a little guilty and wondering if I was letting good opportunities slip through my fingers. It sounded too stressful to me.

But beyond all of this, I had one big reason why an "arranged marriage" would never work for me. It was the same reason I didn't think "dating" would work for me either...

(To be continued..) 

P.S: The title has been changed from "The Marriage Diaries" to "The Wedding Diaries" after someone pointed it out. I started out the series hoping to write about the "marriage" but it's only been a few months and the series is mostly in the wedding territory, so changed.

The Wedding Diaries- Part 1

I have been married for more than a month now- technically, a month and 13 days. That is, a month and 13 days when I started this post, not when I posted it. By the time I posted it I had been married 2 months and 21 days. Procrastination and all that....

For a long time, I thought I would refrain from writing about my marriage. I do not really agree with the line of thinking that marriage is the most important event in your life, just as I never agreed with our teachers' vehement insistence that "Class XII is the turning point of your life" (TBH, every year of school, teachers said THAT year was the most important school year. Much like mankind in general deludes itself into believing we are at the turning point of human civilization, our generation makes a tryst with destiny and so forth. Anyway, I digress. As usual.) My point was - I don't need to really dedicate a post (or a series thereof) to marriage.

But, then again, just as Jon Stewart gets constantly tempted to mock Fox News,  Rajkumar Hirani cannot resist adding father-daughter senti, Kamal cannot stop mentioning rape* and making fun of Tambrahms (or using "Pallaandu Pallaandu in his songs! :-/ ), Nolan cannot help hiring Michael Cain even after he becomes a tottering old man, and Krish Ashok has to fall back on TR any time he cannot think of anything else** and ... oh, well, I got lost along the list, didn't I? I meant to say that writers and artists tend to go weak in their knees when they see obvious material, and I am no exception! Even though I think marriage isn't all that big a deal, there was so much involved that had to be written down for eternity (or until whenever the Google servers last), that I couldn't resist.

Music. And kids. - Part 3

(Continued from Part 2. Part 1 here.)

The reason most kids enjoy taking classes for a skill or a sport more than they enjoy school is because the rewards are quicker. Education seems pointless to most kids because it involves a great deal of effort for 10-12 years but does not seem to produce anything more substantial than smiling parents during that time. Winning a match or giving a good performance in front of people (even if they are just your neighbours) gives a sense of achievement.The problem for Carnatic music, of course, is that it is as much of a long-term penance as school education. With 6 months of cricket coaching, one would start playing small matches. With 6 months on an instrument like the guitar, one can play "Nenjukulle" when family friends visit. In comparison, Carnatic music is an anti-climax. In 6 months, one learns multiple combinations of SaRiGaMaPaDaNiSa on different scales and some geethams, which sadly do not even qualify as thukkadas in concerts. Any Tambrahm kid can tell you there is no applause for singing "Sree gananaadha".. in fact, the visiting maami/maama is bound to interrupt you during the anupallavi and ask their eldest son to sing a good pancharatna keerthanai preluded by a solid alapanai.

Oh, that reminds me. Most maamis/maamas would not condescend to making corrections in a film song. (In fact, I know some who would not even listen to light devotional music- "Too populist, I say"). But no self-respecting musical Tambrahm would desist the from making the most minute corrections in the Carnatic song a kid is singing. This, even if their own voices are no longer functional or they have forgotten most of the song and/or they have lost touch. The younger the kid, the more emphatic the corrections. I remember protesting to someone once with a feeble "But this is how our paatu miss taught us" and was snapped back with a stern "Unga paatu missku onnume theriyaadu". Of course, I was smart enough not to repeat that statement anywhere around said paatu miss.

Anyway, the point is that rewards are slow with Carnatic music, however sure they may be. And more often than not, a kid is bound to meet more obstacles than encouragement on the way. It should be no surprise then that many kids switch over to learning guitar/keyboard after 6 months of Carnatic. And might I add, thoroughly enjoy it. Of course, there is a "coolness" factor associated with the guitar, and new age tambrahm parents don't necessarily frown upon playing "kanda kanda cinema paatu". But that doesn't discount the fact that Carnatic music is, by design, complicated and more of a marathon than a sprint. 

Interestingly, that is precisely what makes it both beautiful and enjoyable. The inherent complexity, the structured approach to music theory and the strong emphasis on basic training makes Carnatic a pretty formidable tool in the hands of a good teacher. (Cutting the fancy MBA style sentence out, I just meant to say that I believe even donkeys can be trained to sing well with this disciplined an approach!) While some part of that journey requires innate talent, a lot of it is just grit.

Which means that there is a lot to gain from redesigning the incentive system of Carnatic music. Like most dieters and marathon trainers would say, focus on small wins. Music teachers sometimes teach small bhajans in the first year of training, but often they are too small/light for the kid to feel a sense of achievement. The key is to strike the balance between overstraining the voice (a serious debate among opera trainers that I won't talk about today) and oversimplifying songs. 
The other aspect to the "wins" is that adults around should encourage the learning process instead of using the opportunity to prove their own virtuosity. It might also do some good for teachers to admit that Carnatic music learning is a structured long-term effort and to reiterate that the rewards are at the end of the tunnel somewhere.     

As for the fidgety 5 year old kid who thought it was a chore to learn music, her parents persisted and encouraged her long enough for her to continue learning. But more than that, strangely (and somewhat luckily), something deep within her appreciated the beauty of the intricately interwoven swaras and made her stick to it till the end :)

Glossary
Unga paatu missku onnume theriyaadu- Your music teacher does not know anything!

kanda kanda cinema paatu- random(?) song from a movie. The "random" has a mild negative tone here. 


P.S: During the entire series, I have not talked about kids who actually did the fancy neravals :P Partly because their story was too obvious to discuss. But mostly because I believe that a few success stories do not imply that a system cannot be improved.

Music. And kids. - Part 2

(I know it's been a while since I put up part 1. As usual, couldn't find the time to edit Part 2.  By the way, this piece became too long and spilled over to a Part 3.. Knowing my great sense of punctuality, I hope to put that up before these musical kids become adults ;) :P )

When I was 5 (and probably for most of my school life), everyone around me hated math. Sadly, I loved it, or worse, was in love with it. By the way, notice I didn't talk about aptitude. I used to think I was good at math until I talked to a real mathematician in grad school and truly understood the phrase "it's greek to me"! Anyway, this star-crossed love for math often put me in a bad spot on friend-group-hierarchies, but more importantly, it surprised my kid-brain a great deal. Here was a subject that needed minimal studying/memorizing effort once you got the idea and I dared not tell reveal this to any soul in school because they seemed to share a singular hatred for it. Of course I hadn't heard of "Damnant quod non intellegunt" at that time.
Like that proverb effectively states, the reason people hated math (and the reason I didn't care too much about music classes) was fear.

In one of my first few music classes (I changed teachers quite a bit, partly because my family moves around every few years), the teacher just opened the contraption called shruti box and said "What shruthi should I keep? 5?" For all you know, I might have thought shruthi (scale) was another synonym for age. As any nice Indian kid was taught to, I politely agreed. Nobody actually told me what an octave was, what pitch meant and how it was different from loudness/volume until we studied high school physics. I know some of these sound too basic to be explained. And they are basic, but not to a 5-year old. And of course, a few years later, I was taking way more advanced lessons and it was too late to ask what pitch meant.

You might argue that Carnatic music, like most traditional Indian arts is taught by the ear- you hang around for sometime and you learn to identify when you are singing out of scale. Fair point. In fact, I even think that music teachers expecting kids to pick up stuff on their own is fine if they would also encourage questions just in case. Did I just say questions? I was in the heart of conservative India.. who am I kidding? Obviously, if you do not know something (even when you are 5) and dare to ask, the teacher would scornfully announce you are not only too stupid , but also too impolite. Lest you think I am exaggerating, one of my music teachers actually lamented to us about how "kids these days" come to music class without even knowing what "mela kartha" means. You can imagine a 5-year old mustering the courage and pointing out to her that it was part of her duties as a teacher to spread that light of knowledge...

Wait.. you say.. that's just a lot of regular Indian-education ranting. After all, if all you wanted to say was that there is no freedom to ask questions in India and people use your lack of knowledge (or your thirst for it) as their own power, why bring up Carnatic music?

And yes, you are right. All of that applies as much to math as to music. But there is more to this tale that might apply to math but is mostly particular to Carnatic music...

(To be completed..)

7 years. and counting.

Before I say anything else, the part 2 of Music and Kids will be published later this week. Sorry for not publishing earlier, I fell sick sometime last month, plus got very busy.

Now that that's out of the way.

It's exactly 7 years since I started this blog. 7 years. Seems like a long time. It is, when you realize that the iPhone had only been released a week before, Instagram was non-existent, the US had never had a non-white President until then, and the last Harry Potter book had not yet been published.

To some extent, I don't even remember what I used to be like when I started this blog- I know I started on a whim because I liked the date (you  know, for a sense of symmetry- 7/7/7). I remember typing from a Pentium 4 (our first desktop) and I intended the blog mostly for poetry (and feminism, but I never got around to writing much feminism). Clearly, things didn't happen as planned :D

I was mostly using what was then called SMS-language, something that I now think is a way of butchering English. (Talk about growing old, huh!) I used to mostly write on paper first (and later MS word), partly because I felt my thoughts would flow better on paper, but mostly because the internet was both slow and expensive- every minute was to be taken seriously.  My topics and style tended to be serious as well- I wanted to treat the blog as a medium of social change (something that never happened, and of course, an idea usurped by Twitter, which was barely a year old then, by the way).

Anyway, while I am still not as regular with posting, I have enjoyed every bit of it. To be honest, when I started I did not have much of an idea of what I was getting into. The blog was mostly a way for me to write in an eco-friendly manner. Given that I wanted to write more serious and socially-relevant material, I did not expect to have many readers. I did not know what SEO was, and social media was an infant (I did not even have an orkut account at the time, and orkut will be gone in a month!), so I wasn't trying to publicize actively. But slowly, I got more readers, mostly friends, but some from outside as well.

I have since realized that writing is not an individual process. Yes, the idea is created in the writer's head (especially with fiction), but the very act of writing involves a reader, if only an imaginary one. With each comment I have received, I have felt more motivated to write. And I like to believe my writing has become better in the process.
So, thank YOU.

Actually, let me repeat that for emphasis. Thank YOU.
For commenting, for liking these posts on facebook, for making me a better writer and a better person in so many ways. 

But mainly, for reading. 
Thank you for keeping that magical connection between a writer and a reader alive...