Holi at Stanford II - Mein Kampf

22nd Mar 1989, Borivali, Bombay: A little boy was filling his plastic water-pump from a bucket. Hardly a preschooler, his tiny arms were working hard to fill the pump up quickly. After all this was his new pump and he wanted to impress his friends. There were many coloured up boys and girls of various ages that day celebrating Holi in the terrace of his apartment building. His parents were looking elsewhere when it happened...

A really naughty older bully kid, coloured all over in dark violet and green, barged in to fill up his own pump from the same bucket. The little boy gracefully gave way, a little intimidated looking at the older one's face. Without warning, the bully lifted his violet coloured hand and brought it down in a hard painful slap onto the tiny one's back. The Whack was so hard, the bully's hand not only imprinted the little one's white shirt in violet but also his skin below in pink!

Wincing in pain, the little one screamed out, "Aww, Kyun Kiya aise?" (why did u do that?).
Grinning in pure evil, the bully replied, "Isse CHAPA kehte hain" (This is called an imprint!)
Knowing he'll get into a lot of trouble if he were to hit back, the little one just gave the bully a cold fuming stare.
Bully knew this and smiled again before walking away, "Darpok log CHAPA nahin de sakte" (cowards can't slap imprints)
The tiny boy vowed then that one day he'll prove the bully wrong........
(If this were a bollywood film, it would have starting raining in torrents immediately with background music)

20 years later....

27th Mar, 2010, Sandhill fields, Stanford: A young man in his mid-twenties stepped into the Holi grounds. Asha Holi at Stanford whose proceeds are to fund education in India, relentlessly attracts the young and old alike. Flanked at the entrance were two angels, randomly smearing faces of unsuspecting new entrants with pink and yellow powder. Expecting (or rather hoping :P) to get smeared, the young man slowed down in front of one of the angels and closed his eyes. An embarrassing odd pause followed, to be broken not with gentle coloured palms but by a rather harsh slap on his back. Eyes opened, instead of the delightful angel, he met two of his grisly old time acquaintances, "HAPPY HOLI man!"... Greetings followed but when his acquaintances left, the young man couldn't help realize that his first colour was a pink imprint of a hand on his shirt!! Memories raced back 20 years! The CHAPA! The bully... The vow! It was time to pacify some very old demons, he thought :-P ...

Change is the only constant of time. A lot of time had passed by... a lot of things had changed... there was no bully around ... there was no little boy either! Just a sea full of colourful people gleefully smearing and dousing each other with sweet smelling organic powders. No one to take revenge on! Arms that can pump over a hundred and fifty pounds - quite useless in this context. The young man could only see one way to pacify those old demons. Just prove that he was no DarPok! (coward). Loading up his palms with green powder, he began...

No force necessary and no slapping either. Courage is all that is really needed. Some would appear a little annoyed, but "Happy Holi" would cheer them up. Some would colour him back. Most others wouldn't even notice! This continued for a while until our guy met up with his friends. The latter did not quite understand why this otherwise gentle person was going around imprinting the shirts of totally random people with his colour laden palms!! But by then, the task was more than done! Any direction he would look he'd see a dozen shirts imprinted with the green hand! No more a Darpok, his CHAPA demons were finally laid to rest! It was time to go home and blog ;-)

"Happy Holi"

Me versus the kid

Getting to play violin in at the Livermore temple auditorium this Saturday for a Purandaradasa event was a big thing to me for multiple reasons. First it was on stage and before my violin teacher - I had never done that before. Next it was in a raga called Behag which I had never played before. Lastly, I had just a week to prepare!

Naturally nervous, I was rather restless as I awaited my turn to go on stage. A little American born Indian girl, barely ten years old, wearing a green checked frock (pavadai), thick spectacles looked side ways at me with folded arms and smiled. I think I tried to smile back. "First time on stage?", she asked. A little taken aback, I replied, "No, No, I have played before, just been a while... that's all". Then hoping that I won't seem like a complete newbie, I went on to show off, "Yea, I used to play violin in my college's musical society". The little girl was hardly impressed, "Whose student are you?". I told my teacher's name. "How long have you been learning?". Now I was taken completely aback! This little juvenile mistress was actually sizing me up!! But before I could ask her back these questions, our turn to play on stage came and I had to leave to meet my fellow violinists. But It was ON! Little sister! "Sizing me up eh? We'll see who gets the better applause", I told her with my looks.

The trouble with playing in events like these is that every Tom, Dick and Harry in the audience might be a Carnatic expert. We were playing to a thisra nadai talam which was hardly very common and to my shock, there were folks in the audience who would clap along the correct tala! Now my rendition of the song on the violin wasn't really to flawless perfection. I played the swaras mostly right, but hurried up on the tala in at least 2 places. But I didn't care, looking daggers at the little girl, I finished my rendition with a rather stylish, Pa Ma Ga Ma Gaaaaa.. as if I had been playing Behag since the day I was born.
Well, for what it was worth, the audience applause was reasonable, at best.

Now it was the little girl's turn. A vocalist, the way she went on stage and sat down, she could have given Sudha Raghunathan a run for her money. Not a remote shred of fear, she began her Purandaradasa keerthana in Mohana raga slowly, then sang in second speed, then third. At the end of the stanzas, the way she would roll her eyes in a slow blink, it would look like she's doing the song a favor by singing it!! Ok, so it was admittedly immaculate, flawless even. When she finished the astounding audience applause rang defeat in my ears. Hey Cmon! I played Behag (much harder than Mohanam that she sang) and that too I did it with bow and strings! But No! The audience clearly loved her rendition way more than mine. I conceded defeat with slow clapping of my own, the good sport that I am :-P

From next time on, I have decided to shave my face as thoroughly as possible and look as much as a kid as I can. For in art, the older you look, the higher seem to be the expectations!