If this is a melee, it’s a slow and civilised one, everyone filing into the hall in a laidback, southy sort of way, no shoving or pushing, no one screaming, ‘Oye, Bunty, iddhar ajja, seat-tan aithhey haiggi!’
The stage’s decor is a contrast to the crowd’s behaviour, a veritable brawl of sponsor logos and shiny hangings. Above the open curtains stretches the hall’s name in large black letters, and there are photos of holy men and gurus hanging high. Right in the middle of all this is a large black box with the date and time showing in electric green, blue and red numerals. Every second of the recital will take place under this lurid metronome.
The logos – lots of banks love Carnatic music, it seems – cascade down on two wings, flanking the proscenium. The lights are bright on stage and over the seating, with none of your ‘darkened theatre-with-spotlight’ kind of nonsense.
The musicians come to you out of this visual barrage – the violinist’s plain grey kurta, the mridangam player’s crisp white shirt, and the two vocalist sisters’ saris, somehow both melding with, and clashing against, the background traffic of bright colours. Even as the twin-voiced singing envelops you, you notice several people around you moving their hands and arms in that peculiar private semaphore used by people who understand taal/taalam and use these beat gestures to immerse themselves in their enjoyment. You see this beat-keeping in north Indian classical concerts as well, but not as much as here.
The other difference is there are no suppressed cries of ‘vaah-vaah’ as in a khayal or dhrupad concert. Instead, you will get small showers of applause whenever a singer or accompanist completes a beautiful section of rendering, much like a jazz audience clapping after each solo. Of course, not everyone in the audience is using their hands to keep beat or clap. Many are working on their smartphones. I can see a doctor prescribing medicines, a man flirtexting, two people manfully trying to record the music, and one other person surfing the news. As you listen and watch, you are aware that across Chennai, there are several venues where the same thing is unfolding – from morning to evening, one concert following the other, the full range of classical Carnatic musicians are laying their art before a knowledgeable and passionate public. The next day, I’m taken to a super-saapad orgy, a.k.a. a full lunch at one of the venues. As much a part of the Kutcheri season as listening to the music, most venues have their catering. Here, for Rs 550, you can gorge on a 25-item meal of some of top-class vegetarian food. As you leave the meal, you peek into the ongoing concert in the adjacent hall. The decor here is different from last night’s – muted and minimalist, with the lighting illuminating the lady recitalist just so.
All that is put right that evening when you go back to the first venue to hear one of the biggest male stars on the Carnatic firmament. The singer starts without ado, no quiet alap-type stuff, sailing full steam into the audience with his booming voice. Smiling infectiously, like a Tamilian Dalai Lama-meets-Luciano Pavarotti, he seems to find a joke across every taan with a great punchline at the end of it.
For almost three hours, he proffers his wares to an adoring audience. At the end, he is greeted by a standing ovation, apparently a recent phenomenon in these demonstrationally parsimonious parts where 30 seconds of seated clapping used to be seen as mad appreciation.
