kokoroZendo

Surreal tunes …..

Ever since I have moved into a Kanakapura road apartment complex named as Tranquil, an early morning walk thru Lalbagh and breakfast in one of the café’s around Jayanagar ( Maiyas is my favorite, even though we choose it quite democratically!) On Saturday mornings with 3 of my friends had become one of the refreshing habit. Usually we stick to this positive routine, unless otherwise someone in the in the pack find something more amusing or important to do on Saturdays. This Saturday it got cancelled. Sheik Iyer, the defacto and de jure leader of the pack was catching an early morning train to Chennai. “Sheik” , by his sheer personality ( more than 6 ft tall, athletic and lean @ 40, clean shaven Zen monk like appearance ), honest and sincere approach and unparalleled commitment to the purpose , is our leader @ Tranquil community too. Someone who could make the transition from being a CFO and Board member of a Middle eastern conglomerate, fat pay cheque, mansion and a fancy SUV to the scooter riding, Fab India clad Social worker with effortless Buddhist equanimity , he is already quite a legend. Or at least one in the making.

I forced my offer of an really early morning to drive to the station over his protests, so that I could find some time alone @ Lalbagh on my way back. Thought, a couple of hours of solitude might be of help in getting over the bruises of a recent small event in my life. It wasn’t really much to talk about. But the sheer hypocrisy & unfairness, convoluting insensitivity and lack of concern shown by others who matter, did sadden me a bit.. May be just a bit, that many didn’t even recognize it beneath my toothy forced smile. Except my little Budha @ A 707, Manu. The most compassionate one on Earth after the ” original one” had left this place some 2000 years back, announced in his concerned tone “Papa you look sad” while offering a piece of Cadburys bar. He is someone who usually takes at most care in not sharing chocolates and sweets lest it might hurt other’s dental health. (

It was quite pitch dark @ Lalbagh @ 5: 30 am. Even the street lights were not on. Not really wanting to take a chance with my delicate ankles , I chose to sit near the lake and meditate. An hour would have passed like a trifle. But the experience might have been quite deep. The tides in my mind’s muddied lake had settled down. I came out of my meditation listening to a Keerthana played on violin. Opening my ears to that soothing balm with settled and clear mind & eyes to the twilight’s rays, with cool but dry breeze in the air was one of those magical moment. A moment with ethereal quality. Indeed it is those moments in which we die to this world, really enable us to live in it, with a fair amount of balance and equanimity. Most probably the homosapien would have invented the art, music and meditation just for this and not for salvation to reach a-place-called – heaven. (Anyway many want to be there without really dying and a few really blow themselves up!)

Guruprasad Rao, a classy connoisseur of Karnatic Music and a good pal , had told me, many times , that there used to be many good concerts @ Lalbagh during early morning hours. Leaving my usual walk trail, I trudged towards the Band Stand through the south side of Rose Garden to be part of my first concert @ Lalbagh. The young girl had already moved on to “Valiya Nayagane”. There were just a handful of people around the bandstand. Their body language and the way they appreciated did reveal their good knowledge about music. It really seemed the number of audience did not really matter to her. She might have been playing for roses, birds , the giant cotton tree and the almighty spirit which connects all of them. In that state of mind and at that moment, I thought she was no less a violinist than L. Subramaniam, Kunnakudi and Lalbagh Bandstand is any day better than Prince Albert hall or Shanmukahanda hall.

May be it is another of those interesting coincidence or play of providence later in the day that I happen to get a story which I read first time from the book Alpha Leadership: Tools for Business Leaders Who Want More from Life, by Ann Deering & Robert Dilts many years ago. I had used this story umpteen times in my toastmaster speeches. Still I found it relevant and refreshing and worth quoting verbatim.

“On November 1995, the violinist Itzhak Perlman performed at the Lincoln Center in New York City. He had polio as a child and walks with crutches. The audience waited patiently as he made his way slowly across the stage to his chair, sat down, put his crutches on the floor, removed the braces from his legs, settled himself in his characteristic pose, one foot tucked back, the other pushed forwards, bent down to pick up his violin, gripped it with his chin, and nodded to the conductor to indicate he was ready.

“It was a familiar ritual for Perlman fans: the crippled genius making light of his disability before his sublime music transcended everything. But this time was different.

“‘Just as he finished the first few bars,’ the Houston Chronicle music critic recalls, ‘one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap – it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.’ It was obvious – he had to put down his violin, replace his braces, pick up the crutches, heave himself to his feet, make his laborious way offstage and either get another violin or restring his crippled instrument.

“He didn’t. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The audience was spell-bound.

Everyone knows it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. He played with such passion and such power and such purity…You could see him modulating, changing, and recomposing the piece in his head…At one point it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get…sounds from them they had never made before.

“When he finished there was an awed silence, and then the audience rose, as one.”

We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering – doing everything that we could to show him how much we appreciated what he’d done. He smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone, ‘You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music he can still make with what he has left.’

I had to take my own broken stringed violin ( which I would have touched just for a few hours in last 10 odd years!) to 8th Cross, 8th Main shop in Jayanagar 2nd Block. In the usual corporate style sales talk to build rapport, I asked him the price of new violin. In his inimitable way, the owner of the shop replied that even though he do have violins which cost up to Rs. 25k, my present one is really a good one.

He just took Rs. 50 and 5 minutes to fix my violin.
I might take a little while longer. A symphony is overdue with or without broken strings.