7 years of learning Indian Classical Music

It starts around July 25th, the tender start of my 4th std. My parents were very fond of the SaReGaMaPa Marathi Show on TV and they wanted us siblings to learn music early in life (4th wasn’t quite early). A day later we were taken to the nearest Music Class/Academy called “Vyankatesh Sangit Vidyalaya” believed to be a very good music academy in the greater region of Solapur. It all started in a very small room in the Choupad called the Old Solapur these days.

I was enrolled in tabla and my sister chose Harmonium to begin with. If you are someone who has been in the scenes of Music, especially classical then you know Indian Classical Music has a very long history. My Guruji was a Brahmin “Gharanedar” Musician who had learned music from his father and grandfather. He was someone who moved to Pune with his Family a couple of years back and used to travel every week for 3 days to Solapur for classes and then return back to Pune to take classes there. Everyone around used to be amazed by how he used to manage traveling so much, I honestly never understood what drove him either.

It’s totally different when your four fathers or parents have been into music a lot. You are growing in that environment all the time. Hence, Environment always felt the most important thing to me. As a kid, we used to form a group of 4-5 kids of the same level (level as in the exam we were going to appear for) and we used to practice.

Back in those old days (when I wasn’t a part yet), he used to be a very vicious, and strict teacher and everyone in the pure space of classical music has been the same. There’s an Idiom in Marathi “छडी लागे छम छम विद्या येई घम घम” which he strongly believed in. He had a break-point after which he would get up and give a tight slap. I remember it was the same year and once I wasn’t able to grasp a lesson. So, I had received a tight slap too :-). It was quite fun, later all of the other big kids in the class used to make fun of each other on that. But in my memory, that was the only slap I remember in the whole 6-7 years of learning under him. I think I was the only student who had learnt under him without getting a lot of slaps.

He would tell us stories from his childhood of learning and his grandfather’s days. It was always very fun to stop for 5-10 minutes during the class and listen to his stories. He used to tell us about all the fun stuff he did in his times when he would travel with friends for music shows and rehearsals. Somewhere as a kid, I wanted to replicate his life into mine. And, stories from learning are always important even more than money.

Me and my sister in the beginning I got to participate in Balnatya Sammelan - a show of art in Solapur. It was a big choir of around 100 disciples of him together on a stage singing a music style called “Tarana” which was based on Rain. One of the best experiences I had in my early days of learning music. Quite a lot of fun things happened in those 1-2 months.

I was always a fast learner and most of the time used to learn things by looking at more. We were also taught a bit of harmonium/piano in our school and I picked that up just out of curiosity but honestly, that instrument is only what is peaceful to me in my mind.

When I used to sit for practice in class often people came to come for inquiring about enrolling their kids for the classes and some or the other parents used to ask a super annoying question, “When Will my kid complete it or when will he perform on stage”. And my guruji would answer “There’s no guarantee of him learning it in the first place, all of these things take a lot of time and you need patience if you want to play the instrument very well”. I do vouch for the statement, practicing Tabla for 6 years I never felt I was a good player, there were a lot of irregularities and inefficiencies in the way I used to play. All the maestro’s started playing when they were 2 or 3 years old and they still don’t feel satisfied with their playing. It also boils down to dedication and how much fun you have while playing the instrument or singing.

In 2017, I was again going to play in another program, where there was also a flute performance by one of my seniors in the class. The way he played it that evening struck me and hit me like a wave and I decided I wanted to learn flute. I told this to my guruji and we agreed to practice both Flute and Tabla. I got started with a steel flute, then a straight bamboo flute, and after 2-3 months of practicing I got a C# Sharp Flute (I was a happy little kid again). The most simple and beautiful flute I had. During those times, all of us were practicing for another program called “Pahat Gani”, which is an annual program that happens very widely on the first day of Diwali. It’s an early morning show of classical music, and the playing is supposed to happen from 4 AM to 8 AM ideally. The songs/melodies picked in this program are those that are to be specifically played in the early morning time (Raaga’s are also based on time). I was covering a singer for a very cute song “Koushalyecha Raam”. The Day I got my side-wise flute (the C# Sharp one) I played the song and my guruji was very happy with it. He started teaching and putting more effort into the flute I used to play. I felt happy that I was able to make him happy. I started prioritizing and enjoying flute more than tabla. I had also used my little and broken flute skills to impress someone :D (which did not work out).

It was more fun during summers, My guruji loved and wanted students to invest more time in honing their skills. I enjoyed playing a lot back then, so I used to go to music in the morning for 4-5 hours, and then in the evening for another 4-5 hours. Later when I grew up to a higher level, he started giving me keys to the class to come and also practice on off days, I started coming alone and sometimes with some peers. At that point, I wanted to pursue a career in Music and also Sound Engineering. It was just the perfect thing for me looking at the amount of Fun I was having overall. If you want to know what is enjoy while playing music, then I’d suggest you listen to this Medley. The happiness and smiles will tell you about it.

Then in 2019, something happened and I stopped playing Flute. Since then, one of my most beautiful flutes the G# scale one which we got from Dharwad is going darker day by day. I feel Instruments do have a life, it has been kept in its case for a long time now and it just doesn’t look happy or like something is wrong with it. Whenever I was refraining from practicing, elders in my class used to tell me that instruments curse you back when you don’t play them for a longer time. I don’t know how true it is, but they really look sad. I am looking to give my flute to someone who is learning.

During COVID-19, I participated in an online competition. It was my first one, and we decided to play “Teentaal” the most basic taal for the competition for about 5-6 minutes. Everyone from youngsters to maestros play a lot of “teentaal” in most of their performances. It’s a simple tale of 16 beats. But all the maestros before their performances go by saying “मैं तीन-ताल प्रस्तुत करने जा रहा हूं, कुछ गलती हो तो क्षमा करें”. And during that competition, I understood why they said it like that. It was hard. Being simple is hard and playing something simple is 2x hard. I was practicing a lot those days, so much that I used to go pale after playing 5-6 hours straight. 2 days before the competition I had wounded my fingers quite badly (but did it somehow).

One of the most important things I learned during this whole time was Patience. I used to watch interviews/playings from the maestro’s and once I found a video of Pt. Shubh Maharaj in the video said that “it takes 3 lives to play good tabla that you can showcase, 1st life to learn the basics from your guru, 2nd to practice and invest a lot of time practicing, and then the 3rd where you are capable of playing something good in front of some people”. I never hurried or pushed my guruji to teach me more things, I was happy learning the same things and practicing them more and more. I learned the simplest thing is the hardest to play. Converting those simple things and playing them in your own different style is the most difficult thing. Adding variations of your own style into one lesson and then making it our own is hard (perhaps, nothing is original. It’s just Inspirations).

I remember one instance when my guruji was talking about an instance with his Grandfather. One night his grandfather wanted to note down some variations in Raag Yaman. He did write for some time and slept, the next day when my guruji went to him and saw that he had written around 100-200 variations still his grandfather said that he had forgotten some.

My guruji used to tell me that Back in the early days (around 100 years ago) it was always hard to find a guru. These days you just have to go to an academy and pay for them. But in the early days, you had to find a guru, live with them, do all their house chores, and prove that you really wanted to learn under them. If you pass all the harder physical and mental tests only then you be accepted as the disciple and the guru will start transferring his knowledge. It doesn’t have to be easy after all someone is going to pass on all of their learnings from their whole life.

I always wanted to do the same, in his absence I used to practice with kids during examination times. Cleaning the class and keeping everything tidy gave me a lot of mental peace and made me feel like a disciple. I used to feel a lot of fun and happiness doing all of the work anyways there was nothing to feel shy about, I had converted from a half-chaddi to a full-pant in that same room anyway :p.

In recent years as I progressed, one most essential skills a tabla player needs always in life is “saath-sangat” which means playing together with a singer or another instrument and providing them the “taal” and temperament they need. One of the most fun times was when the singers and all of us used to sit together to practice “Bandish” and “Khayal” Gayaki, most exhilarating moments were when my guruji used to start sprinkling his own variations in one single line and sing the same line in different styles for the next 1 hour. All of that comes from practice and understanding the importance of one line.

All of this reminds me of a zen poem from catb. Org, and it goes like

To follow the path look to the master,
Follow the master, walk with the master,
see through the master,
become the master.

Source

I received around 7-10 Certificates in the last 7 years, but more than those papers, all the stories and memories are important to me.