The Wizard of TVM

The species Homo Sapiens ie you and me, has for time immemorial been intrigued by anything that defies its intellect. Like someone once said, there lives a child in all of us who with his wide eyed stare, exhibits unabashed admiration stares gawkily when things go out of the routine; a post modern Mr. Hyde sort of phenomenon. (Mr Hyde being mostly a good thing). This curiosity and marvel at the extraordinary, something that sans age or gender, pops up throughout our life cycle and can most likely be traced to the times when we were on all fours living the fun life. However present times have turned the majority of us into a phony who revels in the common sham notion that he is Superman even when he cant even spell ‘Clark Kent’. And as we carry on this flavorless lifestyle ; reveling in a juxtaposition of passive insipidness and total, sweet denial that something happens or someone comes by who catches you by the neck and shakes you so hard that you are forced back into that wide starry eyed look. Yup. the child in us has woken up and is bawling his head off.(at least the child in me). Am I going off on another one of my pointless rants. Maybe. Maybe not. This is but a rant with a higher purpose. The lazy, procrastinating musician that is me has had that smug grin slapped right off his face. And he’s not pissed period. What it provoked out of him was a long due analysis of where he stood at the moment as opposed to where he would’ve wanted to stand…mmmmmm..just a few hundred miles apart.i think??

Independence Day puts a big grin on most Indian faces. Not because our hearts are swelling with patriotic fervor but because we get a day off; a true godsend. Plus it adds up with the weekend. Sweet!!. I guess you’ve made the most of it and slept a good three days off( we mostly don’t have a party culture here so..). For Catholics, Independence day coincides with the feast of Ascension which means that attending mass is mandatory. That being the highlight of the day which had some other random happenings which don’t make the cut to be mentioned. By the time I came to my senses on Saturday, everybody had left for work and other matters that concern them and to top it up it was raining like shit. At around 10 one of the guys from my locality rang up. He wanted to check out a guitar. I was listening to some Alice in Chains and was temporarily thinking grunge. Grunge is basically a middle finger at everything that is establishmentarian. Which kinda inspired me to put on my dirtiest tee and go out, brave the rains and craters on the god forsaken roads of Kerala and get a guitar ( a pretty neat piece I should say) and then somehow manage to get back home in one piece. And friggin’ soaking wet. Come Sunday it was one of my friends betrothal. I had written the script for the function and was a bit anxious as to how the emcees would pull it off. They were 2 cuties. One of them had obviously done this before while the other simply just went through the motions and pretty much ruined a decent script.
Evening came and along with it the highlight of the week, maybe even the month. There was a piano recital by child prodigy Julian Clef at C.A.C , an arts institution nearby. Now I’ve heard big things about this dude. I happened to hear a recording sometime back, when he was about 16 and my shattered ego had me seriously contemplating leaving the scene for good. Such was the staggering level of musical brilliance and mindblowing virtuosity that saying I felt ashamed of myself would be the mother of all understatements. I remember hearing his version of Chopin’s Fantasie Impromtu in C#minor and wondering how on mother earth could a person come up with such a piece with let alone play it. And it was composed at the spur of the moment. Why God whaayyy!!!! How could you do this to meeeee??????( Joey from F.R.I.E.N.D.S).Anyhoo Ad, Harry, Me, 810 and Dags managed to get to CAC in time to catch some nice seats. The maestro himself had arrived sometime back- An unassuming boy with a lopsided style of walking who looked like someone nobody would ever take a second look at. In the meantime I engaged myself in some random socializing with the music fraternity to partly kill time and partly to renew old contacts. In music it’s all about building and maintaining your contacts. Contacts matter and hence I’m suffering. After a while I got back to my seat and Anoop and his sister Anu showed up. Anoop and me go back to my schooldays and he’s a music lover and I told him he’d better not miss this.

At 6:30, after the mandatory speeches and felicitations, a staple of any function here, Julian went to the piano and sat down to do his thing. From the moment he laid his fingers on the keys the whole of CAC was teleported to an entirely different world-one alien to every single soul gathered there- our own little Narnias’. His touch echoed tremendous power yet restraint; a powerful style of expression which bordered on the better side of drama avoiding anything melodramatic. This coupled with a polished and professional attitude and a deep bond with the instrument which belied his age convinced me beyond any shadow of a doubt that I was in the presence of a genius. I especially loved the way he acknowledged the appreciation of the crowd with a little bow and smile after reach piece. Though every piece was brilliant I especially loved his intense rendering of the Appassionata from Sonata No 27 by Beethoven. This piece had the audience on their feet whooping and cheering as though they were at a Metallica concert. Obviously we had to be reminded of the fact that we were still in kerala by a powercut which disrupted the recital during the 2nd piece just when it was heading into its climax. Some jokers came expecting a circus or something and it was good they left quickly before they could spread their joy around the place. The recital went on for about an hour and a half –a hour and half undeniably spent well. Judging from the jaws touching the floor especially from a previously cocky girl sitting a few seats away from me I was sure that the rest of the folks there were having feelings along the same lines. We were all talking about it the whole of that day and the rest of the week and will probably talk about it many more times to come- the day when we more or less blundered our way into the lair of a wizard. and of all places, in Kerala that deserves less. The world is a lot less negative when people like Julian walk its face. He gives us that much needed reassurance that good things can actually happen here. An assurance we all desperately need. On a 24/7 basis.