“I’m not lying. I don’t know anything. I am going home, home, home to my mother…”

The doctor walked back in the chilly night. He carried his briefcase in one gloved hand. In the other – bare – he felt the warmth of a crumpled letter soaked in young blood.

But in the past two years, Chennai grew into much much more, and all seemingly at once, or at least in quick succession. It was college at ACJ, work at The Hindu and home at Ramaniyam Gallery. In an ironic reversal of roles, home at Pondy became the transit point as I returned there like a homing pigeon on practically every day off in the week, even if it was only to spend a few hours.
In two years, that must be give or take100 trips on the Pondy-Chennai ECR. Freaking 32,000 km. Name any hour of the day or night and chances are I’ve traveled at that time either one way or the other. At times it was six hours of traveling for fewer hours home.

Come to think of it, they could make a film, “Down on the Ground” about my journeys on the ECR. It’s a pity Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation and PRTC don’t have a miles program. If they did, by now I’d have given George Clooney a run for his money while holding a platinum privilege card guaranteeing lifelong free travel on the ECR.

Anyway, in the beginning it was always getting to Pondy that felt like homecoming, until slowly, that feeling extended to Thiruvanmiyur, Ramaniyam Gallery, and Apartment 5B. Whichever way the bus was headed on the ECR, it felt I was always going home, and that was comforting to say the least.

There’s something quite liberating about living alone, in a place that feels like and you’d love to call home. To be in charge, in control of things. To be the one making the rules of what’s allowed, what’s not, and to be responsible and sensible enough to know the difference. To be the host. To cook, to sweep, to do the dishes. To shop for vegetables and groceries. To dance like no one’s watching, to sing like no one’s hearing, to sleep when the hell it pleased you, and more so to wake up like the day was all yours.

But all that’s a closed chapter now. And for now at least, in a strange way, Chennai seems more home than Pondy. I know it’s only a passing feeling, because while I’ve learned to live away from Pondy like I never thought possible, it is still too much part of me to be replaced by any other city.

I guess it’s just one of those days when you feel warm inside about being nostalgic and sad in a happy sort of way. To look back on two years spent in a city that went about its way, and let you go about yours without making too much of a fuss. A city that grew on you and developed into words and sentences from the punctuation mark it once was.
Words and sentences that might perhaps fade inconspicuously into pages, without ever fully getting erased. Coming up every now and then, like bittersweet thoughts that resurface quite inexplicably when you are idling, thinking of nothing in particular, staring at the ceiling fan go round, or looking blankly at the fleeting scenery on a long road trip.

Be it the little girl who walked in the evening with her grandfather by the Thiruvanmiyur beach and waved with subdued excitement every time I crossed her as I trained for the marathon or the peanuts man who kept my cone of hot, boiled peanuts ready at 6 p.m. for me to munch on during the short walk to the MRTS station, or just sitting on the water tank of the tallest building in the area and watching the 21st century go busily about its business far below to the right, while to the left, the white surf lazily came and went on the black Bay.

Home is where the heart is all right, but right now that’s all over the place. I never thought I’d feel this way, but I’ll miss Chennai… I’ll miss Apartment 5B and all that it represented… And even though I’m homeward bound, I guess I’ll miss my home.

Necessity is the mother of invention they say and the trickle-down effect of the global financial crisis has forced people to come up with innovative ideas to make that extra buck.

Not to be left behind, The Tourism Ministry has launched a new flagship initiative – Election Tourism – to woo tourists from abroad. “Come witness the great Indian tamasha,” is the tagline of this new campaign that has received hot response so far.

There are several packages up for grabs. As part of a package, tourists can accompany politicians on their campaigns as they prepare for the Lok Sabha elections scheduled for April and May 2009.

“The most popular itinerary so far is ‘Modi Martini’,” said Ambika Soni, Union Minister for Culture and Tourism. “Feel like a martini, shaken and stirred,” is the catchline of this tour which many allege has been ripped off from a Facebook status update. The tour tracks Narendra Modi’s election campaign. The USP of this week-long tour is that you get to learn all about Hinduism in 6 days and 6 nights making it very popular among foreigners.  The last day has been kept for clarifications where Mr Modi will personally take questions as visitors are very likely to get confused.

For the affluent, the most expensive tour is ‘Sonia Sonata’ and ‘Rahul Regalia. ’ These tours are only conducted by helicopters. “No travel operators or travel agencies offer tours that can show you all of India in 8 days 9 nights; but ‘Sonia Sonata’ and ‘Rahul Regalia’ can,” said a visibly proud Ambika Soni. The rich, the educated and those interested in Indian history (read Nehru-Gandhi) especially choose this package. The tour is priced at $ 200,000 (Rs 1 crore).

When asked why the tour was so exorbitantly priced, Ms Soni clarified that proceeds from this tour would be used by the Government of India to bid for Gandhiji’s personal items that were being auctioned in New York.  

For the adventurous traveller, the Tourism Ministry has jointly launched with NDTV tour ‘Barkha Barista.’ In this tour you get to drink a lot of coffee to stay awake the whole night and appear groggy-eyed on television the next day. The tagline of the tour is “We the (media) people…” and it has caught the imagination of many foreign journalists.

The Tourism Ministry is developing more tours such as ‘Lalu Luxury’ in which you get to travel on the Garib Rath network of the Indian Railways with the Railway Minister. This tour promises to trump ‘Modi Martini’ once it is launched because of its sheer entertainment  quotient.

Speaking about the initiative, Ms. Ambika Soni, said, “A society that cannot laugh at itself is not a healthy society.” When it was pointed out to her that this campaign was not exactly about laughing at oneself but having others laugh at you, she was quick on her feet and spoke of world unity and how we were all essentially one. 

Martin Luther King III and Kamal Haasan

Poetry and music; India and America, Martin Luther King and Gandhiji, Western and Classical – The Living Dream concert organised by the US Consulate General – Chennai, wove all of these seemingly disconnected strands into a tapestry of hope and peace.

The event held last Wednesday night at the Venkata Subba Rao  Concert Hall, was arranged to honour Martin Luther King III – son of Martin Luther King, Jr – on his visit to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of his father’s prilgrimage to India in 1959. His father was here to meet the Gandhi family and learn about his methods of non-violence so that he could employ them in the Civil Rights movements back home.

The evening began with renowned Tamil poet Vairamuthu reciting his poem, The Black Mahatma, which had specially been written for the occasion. The creation was inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr, Gandhiji and Barack Obama. Alluding to Obama, he wrote:

“Thy lofty dream has come true Martin Luther!

A black dove built its nest in the White House!”

What followed was a musical tribute by the students and faculty of A.R Rahman’s K.M Music Conservatory as they presented two popular Rahman compositions. The first one was the theme from Bombay with its underlying message of non-violence.

The piece began with a mellifluous Indian flute accompanied by the low, muffled, subdued rumbling of two giant drums known as the Timpani. It was the kind of rolling thunder before the first monsoons – a premonition of the wet, grey days to follow. A synthesizer sustained a low bass note throughout, creating a sombre atmosphere, and the joyous tinkle of the triangle and the Glocken Spiel (a xylophone-like instrument) was deliberately lost in the foreshadowing gloom, to accentuate it by contrast.

This is a sad piece. And when the flute side-stepped to give way to a quartet of three violins and a cello, you couldn’t help but feel the knot in your throat. Oh how beautifully they played! Well, created. Because that was what it was, a most soulful creation, as if the four were weaving together an intricate mat of such harmonious sorrow that it paradoxically made you feel peacefully content. It was strange. And while the violins gently wept, the flute came back in, improvised consolingly and led the quartet out to a lingering end…

“Jai ho!” the sixteen-member student choir shouted with such vigour and obvious glee, pumping their fists in the air, that the gloom that had settled like a thick layer of dust was blown away in a single breath, leaving the audience gasping. The second song, performed to pre-recorded music, was Rahman’s Oscar-winning song Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire.

There was a drastic shift in moods as flashing, stroboscopic lights came on and the student-choir, clad in black straight-jackets swayed to the rhythm, smiled from ear to ear, snapped their fingers and pumped their fists high in the air every time they shouted “Jai ho”! There was celebration in the air as they sang to the Oscar-success of their idol, their teacher, their inspiration and founder of their school. The thunderous applause at the end was a fitting appreciation.

The next performance was a dramatic rendition of Martin Luther King, Jr’s “most famous and stirring speech”, I Have a Dream, by Kamal Haasan. He had memorised the speech and as he walked around the stage delivering it in his deeply rich baritone, there was a photographic projection on two screens in the backdrop. Photos of the most stunning quality – Gandhiji, Martin Luther King Jr giving his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on August 23, 1963, and of past and present Indian and American leaders –  recreated history.

Kamal Haasan delivering the "I have a dream" speech

As Kamal Haasan ended his dramatic performance, with the final words “…Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” the visual projection in the backdrop shifted to a black and white photo of Barack Obama in the Oval Office. And as the words still hung in the air and gently sunk into the loud applause below, the photo dissolved from greyscale to colour. It was a subtle yet poignant reminder that racial barriers were finally beginning to melt and that the world was moving away from the black and the white to a colourful future – well colourless if you will.

“Yes, my mouth is dry. The speech has the same effect on the speaker as the listener,” said Kamal Haasan at the end.

Then, introducing and inviting Martin Luther King III on the stage, Kamal Haasan said, “The son of a great man who is successfully following so far an act that is very hard to follow is here tonight and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s grandson welcomes him. Yes, I think of myself that way,” said Kamal Haasan as the audience laughed.

In his address, speaking about non-violence and the similarities between his father and Gandhiji, Mr King said, “But perhaps there is a challenge for all of us. And that challenge is how do we sustain and create a non-violent world. Well it really begins with each one of us…immersing ourselves in the philosophy of non-violence by not just talking but living it.”

He also spoke of peace and unity and how this can be achieved if we listened and acted like rational, logical human beings worthy of being called “god’s highest creation.” Instead, he said, we use force and act like animals and indulge in conflicts over class, religion and caste when we are all created equal.

He ended his address by saying, “this evening has been, I believe a great revelation…We’ll go back to  the United States with the message that non-violence is alive and well and that non-violence is the way.”

The evening ended by a rendering of “vaishnava jana to” and “we shall overcome” by the students of the KM Conservatory. The first is one of Gandhiji’s favourite bhajans and the second is the song that followers of Martin Luther King sang on that fateful day in August 1963. It went on to become the anthem of the Civil Rights movement.

“We shall overcome” began with one of the faculty members singing it solo while the students joined in later in a complex contre-chant. They sang in different scales, deliberately used the off-beat and sung in rounds, one following the other, in a cat-and-mouse chase that fitted so beautifully together. There were 50 or more singers and the way the voices blended together, was as much a marvel to the ear as it is for the eyes to watch a jigsaw puzzle magically fit together in a few seconds. Singing together, especially large groups, is a difficult proposition, but they pulled off a veritable tour de force!  The background music was simple with a saxophone, a cello, a keyboard. There was also a harp where buttery fingers glided over the strings as if stroking the long hair of a little girl and putting her to sleep.  It was mesmerising.

Students of the KM Music Conservatory

The choir then transitioned to the Hindi version of the song, the popular “hum honge kamyab.” Here, tabla, mridangam and the flute joined in to give the desi touch to a fusion of two styles. The Tamil version of the song was also sung. English, Hindi and Tamil, flowed one after the other. It was three languages, but the message was equal, the tune was equal and the magic it created was equal. It was truly An Equal Music in keeping with the message of the evening.

One of the best students at the KM Music Conservatory!

The Living Dream concert ended to a standing ovation as the crowd joined in the singing and clapped to the rhythm.

At the end, you couldn’t help but feel that you were walking out of a Living Dream. It almost felt like a rude awakening from a slumber that the evening’s performers had lulled one into. Sleeping during a concert would generally indicate a lacklustre performance. But this one time it was not. This time it wasn’t a sleep of boredom. This time it was a slumber of peace. A slumber where you were dreaming such a wonderful life or living such a beautiful dream that you wished to be asleep forever…

Timekeepers note down the results at Certitude

The banner along the route of the Auroville half marathon said I had seven more kilometres to go to the finish line.  The body cried, “stop,” the mind said “go” and I was proverbially caught between a rock and a hard place and felt what a rope probably feels during a tug-of-war. What confused me even more was the identity-crisis. Who was the real ‘me’, the body or the mind? I was tempted to think it was the body. 

As I learned at the end, the real “me” turned out to be … but wait, we’ll get to the end when we get there. Let’s start at the very beginning; it’s a very good place to start. 

This 21.1 kms half-marathon on Sunday, was the longest distance I would have run at a stretch and with only two weeks of training behind me, I was apprehensive about my chances at succeeding. 

The previous night I went over to Mark’s (a lawyer-friend’s) place and the conversation veered to the Auroville marathon. 

“Those who run the marathon are stupid,” he said.

“Well, I’m only doing the half marathon,” I said defensively, hoping for a few words of encouragement.

“Well that only makes you half as stupid, but you’re stupid nonetheless,” he stated matter-of-factly.  The gavel had fallen, the verdict passed. He sipped his herbal tea, blissfully unaware of the wreck he had left in his wake.

 Giving up with seven kilometres to go would have only reinforced Mark’s point and I was determined to go back, meet him, and flash my certificate of successful participation in his face. I passed by the banner and never looked back… The red-clay route stretched ahead. Unending. 

Auroville is a small township around 8 kms from Pondicherry. It has as its founding ideals, the dream of being a place on earth that no country could call its own – an international township where people from all over the world could live together in peace and harmony. The marathon was started last year to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of Auroville’s founding. This was only the second edition of the race but it had grown immensely in popularity mainly because the route winds through the pristine, untouched jungles of Auroville’s green belt – making this race a runner’s paradise.

 As Chandresh Patel, race director, puts it, “One of the things we have decided is to keep it in accordance with the principles of Auroville and not commercialize the event or market it. It’s about this beautiful place we have, and bringing that to you through running. Simple and sweet. We had 150 participants last year, but this year we have close to 485.” 

By 5:30 a.m we were all assembled at the starting line. There was an unusual nip in the air. A mist hung low, a silky veil hiding Nature’s pretty face under its monochrome greyness. In the next half hour, while the runners were busy warming up, an unseen hand gently – almost imperceptibly – lifted back this veil and little by little, the colours came back to life …

 There was a palpable excitement in the atmosphere as the 200 half-marathoners, in their fancy sneakers, dri-fit clothing, trendy butt-packs loaded with energy drinks and flashy ipods, jogged up and down warming themselves up. Some others chattered excitedly as they met old friends, made new ones and discussed their targets and strategies.

 “Why do you run?” a runner asked another.

Auroville: A potpourri of cultures

“I run because the beer after tastes better,” the other laughed.

“Well, I do it to shake the jelly off my belly.”

A third quipped, “I run because I’ve run out of ideas to look cool. Thought I’ll end up at the finish line!”

  Auroville being an international township, there were many foreigners: Germans, French, Americans, Italians and many more. Indians too had assembled from all over. There were Pondicherrians, Bangaloreans, Delhiites, Chennaiites and Hyderabadis. The result: a wonderful potpourri of cultures both Indian and Western in the melting pot that is Auroville. 

The race started at 6:10 a.m and the herd of runners surged ahead in a stampede like the wildebeest in the African savannahs. Some spectators hooted. Some whistled joyfully and somebody shouted out loud, “Enjoy Auroville!” My target was to complete the race in 1 hour 45 minutes – it was a tall ask given my inadequate training, and meant that I would have to run 1 kilometre in 5 minutes, maintaining it over 21 kilometres.

 The woods were lovely dark and deep, and I loved the rush of the cold, crisp air on my skin and through my ruffled hair. The better part of the race was on red-earth tracks, often under thick avenues with the overnight dew dripping from the leaves above. Drop after drop, cold and fresh. 

I could hear yon distant cry of a green barbet as it called out – hypnotising, regular, staccato. The cicadas, the crickets and the sparrows all sang a complex contre chant…Chirrrrp….chirrrp…chirrrrp. The wind swished and whistled – swishtled – through the treetops of the casuarinas and the eucalyptus.

 I ran through Nature’s symphony.

 I wondered whether the invisible hand that conducted the orchestra was the one that had earlier lifted the misty veil.

  This is what sets apart the Auroville marathon. No city marathon can provide such an atmosphere. Venkat, a software engineer from the Silicon Valley who was on his first trip to Auroville, said, “I have run several marathons and half-marathons but nothing quite matches this experience.”

 “In cities, you run on concrete roads. Here, running on the dirt tracks is awesome. It is immensely beneficial too as it puts much less strain on the joints. I swear, every serious runner should come and run here at least once. I know I’m coming back. ”    

At the six kilometre mark, Svaram, a group of professional percussionists from Auroville had set up their African drums by the side of the road and were beating up such a powerful, peppy rhythm that your feet couldn’t but move to their cadence. They shouted and cheered us on. Some runners even stopped by the side with them and performed a small jig before laughing and running off. 

We were more than thirty minutes into the race now as we ran into the sunrise. The light gradually became brighter and the sunlight spliced through the thick foliage and danced on the red earth below as the wind blew into the sun-kissed, sun-burnished treetops. The light strained down through a leafy sieve.

After the race: Time to put your feet up.

 There were water-posts at every four kilometres along the way and they provided all the refreshments that runners required. Bits of lemon or oranges to suck on, bananas for instant energy, lemonade, water or dry-fruit cookies – it was all there. I typically drank one glass of water and Splash! Another glass of water on the face and the head to refresh myself. 

The running and the breathing was getting tougher as every kilometre ticked along. By the twelfth, a righteous, burning pain seared through my calves and my hamstring. Every strand of leg-muscle was a mutineer against the mind, the de-facto captain of the ship that stumbled and ploughed its way across the pebbly gravel. I was close to hitting the wall – a phenomenon in long distance running where sudden fatigue sets in as a result of the depleting glycogen reserves in the liver and the muscles.   

 Under these circumstances, the grand edifice of Newton’s third law of classical mechanics which states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, crumbled. I pushed the ground hard but the ground didn’t propel me forward with an equal and opposite force. Newton had definitely not run a half marathon I thought. And to think that his 3^rd law was the rotten foundation on which a lot of our modern theories rested! 

I thought of walking for a while but theoretical physics had also taught me that the coefficient of static friction was much greater than the coefficient of kinetic friction. In other words, it requires a greater force to move an object from rest than it does to keep a moving object on the roll. I ran on. The reasoning was subconscious. Or perhaps what drove me on was the horror of seeing Mark’s face with a smirky, I-told-you-so expression. 

I trundled along, in a zombie-like trance. Scrunch… Scrunch Scrunch…. Phew Phew Phew…. The feet fell on the gravel, the lungs screamed for air. The mind and the body fought on. I was on autopilot.

 Three kilometres to the finish the banner by the roadside announced. I don’t know where the energy came from but I felt like a gazelle enjoying its freedom in the limitless grasslands of Africa. The feet hardly seemed to be touching the ground as I crested a knoll which seemed like the top of the world!

 I had hit the “runner’s high!” A phenomenon, that runners often experience, characterised by a feeling of invincibility, superior performance and euphoria. Thing is, I don’t drink and I don’t smoke and I can never quite understand my friends when they say that they do this because they love to be “on a high.” 

 Perhaps now I can. And I’ll make it a point to tell them that there are ways of getting high that are actually beneficial to their health. Just run.

 I crossed the finish line with a timing of 1 hour 49 minutes, ranked 20 out of some 200 runners. That was 4 minutes off target but that was all right. The joy of completing hard and strong compensated for that.

Golden splendour...

 The Auroville marathon on its jungle trails is a runner’s holy grail. Running past the Matrimandir as it balloons up in all its golden splendour like a giant golf ball ready to be teed off into uncharted eternity by those same invisible hands, is as much a spiritual experience as it is physical and mental.

 But coming back to the question, who was the real “me”? Was it the mind or was it the body?

Hmmmm….

I think it was my runner’s soul.

The next Auroville marathon will be held on February 14, 2010. See you at the starting line!)

Gingee, December 8, 2008: 16:54.13. That is what the digital display of the watch said and no, it didn’t mean 4:54 P.M. This was the duration – approximately 17 hours – for the annual 73 km walk from Pondicherry to Gingee Fort undertaken by students, ex-students, and faculty and sports instructors of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education at Pondicherry. We began at 1:30 P.M on ‘just another lazy Sunday afternoon’, and reached Gingee Fort on Monday morning at around 6:30, having walked through the night!

Early on, it seems like a cake-walk

This Gingee walk is neither a pilgrimage nor is it a walk or a campaign for an espoused cause, it is a walk to test one’s mental and physical endurance by doing something challenging. Those who think that the whole concept is freaking crazy, are right too because when it comes to this walk the hendiatris is ‘Challenging, Freaking, Crazy’ much like ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ is for the Olympics. I asked my cousin to join me in this endeavour and he said, “2000 years of evolution of the wheel, the motor and mechanised transport have not taken place for me to take part in this prehistoric walk! If I want to get from Pondy to Gingee I’ll take the bus.”

The beginning was great fun and seemed all cakes and ale (well brandy actually). The twelve walkers in the batch – which included five girls – went together and the going was easy as we walked at a brisk six kilometres/hour. The sun was mild, the snail on the thorn, the lark on the wing and God was in his Heaven and all seemed right with the world. As we walked on, we split into small batches depending on the pace of the walk. The more experienced ones told us their stories of past walks, some of them quite incredible! But that’s the thing about the Gingee walk, it’s an all-round development of personality – it makes you a better liar too. (As for me, I am a wannabe journalist so that part of the personality was already developed, in fact I’m paying to develop it, so I didn’t profit much.)  We regrouped after four hours and had a short five-minute rest and some snacks before resuming.

The afternoon slowly morphed into twilight and then evening. A bright moonlight inundated the landscape and the silhouetted flora and the reflections in the ponds and the lakes soothed the mind and the heart drawing us away from the first signs of pain. Long-distance walking is slow. It allows you not only to see the changing vistas but also to experience them. The squeals of village children, the smell of burning wood or dried dung, women sprinkling water on the dusty entrance to their huts, drunk men arguing or playing cards on the charpoy, dogs whining….When you drive past in a car, you don’t hear, you don’t smell, you don’t feel the simplicity, you only glimpse a blurriness. 

As we crossed Mailam town, we passed by a marriage procession where the bride and the groom were seated on a raised platform in an open air car with multicoloured lighting in the background. A girl walking ahead quipped to a brother-in-arms, “come let’s get married, that way at least we’ll get to sit down!” And honestly after eight hours of painful trundling it didn’t seem such a bad idea! The being-able-to-sit-down would suffice as dowry!

We stopped for dinner a little after Mailam, having done close to 40 kms. And oh, sitting down on a bench and putting up your feet never felt like such a luxury before! We resolved that when we’d get back home, we’d google the inventor of the bench and the chair and pay our respects to him. We also resolved to find out who first started this Gingee walk, to…well I’ll let your imagination complete the thought.

Before...

After...

As we sipped hot tea and coffee, we gently rubbed the aching feet. And looking at them closely after eight hours of walking revealed the source of all the pain – chafed skin and ugly blisters. Aware of this, the aches seemed to somehow grow and so did our self-pity. It would have been better if we remained in the dark – ignorance was truly bliss(ter)!

The next part of the walk was through a narrow road that was dark and deserted and practically devoid of human habitation save the few villages that had recently come up. This has got to be the best part of the walk. Walking in the silver moonlight, singing to the accompaniment of chirping crickets and croaking frogs adds to the pleasure and the pain is forgotten.

The rest and the meal did a lot of good and we made quick progress. We stopped for a minute or two if we were tired and jogged for short periods intermittently just to use different muscles. At the end of this stretch is a small tea stall where we stopped again to regroup before beginning the final assault.

The oasis at the end of the 'Desert Road'

We were 13 hours into the walk, had covered around 50 kms, and Pain, Complain and Hope were the 13^th 14^th and 15^th members of the batch. And the worst was still to come.

After this stop, the walk becomes a death march. The ebullient singing gives way to long silences and complaints and questions of how much further there is to go. You can’t help cursing yourself for having begun this mindless (mis)adventure. The feet shuffle and drag, the knees feel like jelly and the ankles are stiff with pain. Some are more tired than the others and you help them along, lending a shoulder or a hand and pulling them on until you don’t realise whether you are the helper or the one being helped. We trudged along, hand in hand, the very picture of hopelessness until…

“Gingee 10” said the signboard and our hearts leapt up like that of the bloke who beheld a rainbow in the sky. We walked with renewed vigour – if such a thing is possible at that stage – for fifteen minutes before coming across another signboard that said, “Gingee 9.” The hearts that had not so long ago leapt up in a synchronous manner came down crashing together and lay in a pitiable heap. The Chinese divers would have gladly given us their gold medals for our flawless execution.

After you have walked for close to 15 hours, it is a scientifically established fact that you begin to experience time dilation and space expansion. So when I said that we walked for fifteen minutes, well, it seemed like it was three quarters of an hour and the one kilometre that we covered seemed like it must have been four. So when the sign reminded us of grim reality, we felt like vandalising that board.

One of my colleagues, tried to encourage us all and said “come on guys only two more hours to go.” Moments like these prove how this Gingee walk is also a test of craziness. When the word ‘only’ is used at this stage in such a construction, it can be safely inferred that the person is losing his senses!

After what seemed like aeons, we finally reached Gingee town, and after that a few more kilometres to Gingee fort. This last 1.5 km was truly the toughest. Each step led to the discovery of a new bone, tendon or muscle in the human foot as an angry fire burned (righteously) in each one. God’s design of the foot had some serious flaws and I made a mental note of them for future communication.

We finally reached the end at varying times between 6 and 6:45 A.M in small batches.

La Penseuse.... In vacant or in pensive mood...

 Some plopped off to sleep, others massaged their feet with mustard oil and others still just sat, looked vacantly into the sunrise and recited poetry:

“Fear, sir, grieves ye have suffered,

To these two God will give ending,

And all this perchance in the future

Will gladden the heart on remembering.”

 Amen to that.

CHENNAI, Dec 2: Chennai was treated to some uplifting music when Shankar Mahadevan, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Sivamani, Selva Ganesh, and U.Srinivas performed at the University of Madras auditorium as part of the Heart Beat Concert organised by the Times of India. 

Before the programme the audience stood up and observed a minute’s silence in memory of those who suffered the terrorist strikes in Mumbai last week. The concert was also dedicated by the musicians to a common friend and colleague, sound engineer H. Sridhar, who passed away in the city on Monday.

From left to right: Sivamani, Selva Ganesh, U. Srinivas, Shankar Mahadevan and Ustad Zakir Hussain

 The concert opened with a Ganesh stuti by Shankar Mahadevan (vocal)  accompanied by U.Srinivas (mandolin). The piece began with a short alaap before its tempo rose steadily as Mahadevan and Srinivas performed an intricate jugalbandi. As they neared the climax, they were joined by Ustad Zakir Hussain (tabla), Sivamani (drums, percussion), and Selva Ganesh (kanjira). It was as if two underground streams were rushing side by side, flirting with one another, joining here, splitting there until they finally merged and erupted forth from the ground in a fountain of crescendo that ended abruptly leaving nothing but echoes – and a spellbound audience drenched to the bone with music.   

 This was followed by another two pieces by the quintet, the first of which was based on the raga Hamsadhwani. Shankar Mahadevan led here and experimented in varying octaves and volumes. He displayed a remarkable control as he rendered the gamakas with incredible ease using both staccatos and long single notes leaving the audience “breathless”.

 The stage was then left to Sivamani and Srinivas as they performed together before Sivamani moved on to his solo performance that had the entire audience tapping their feet and clapping along in rhythm. Surrounded by his gleaming ensemble of drums, conga and cymbals the man was like in a jungle of steel where a herd of wildebeest thundered in stampede. And the rhythms that he produced, turning around, banging here, hands juggling the drum sticks was an aural spectacle or a visual hearing – whichever you please!

Sivamani, the lion in his jungle of steel.

 He made innovative use of a suitcase, an empty 25-litre plastic can, pens and spoons to create rhythms that elicited whoops of joy and whistles from the spectators.

 Sivamani then left the stage to the other four as they performed semi-classical pieces. In one of them Selva Ganesh performed solo for a while on his kanjira – a single hand-held tambourine-like instrument. It was beyond belief that all the sounds produced were the work of a single hand.

 After this, it was finally Ustad Zakir Hussain’s turn to go solo. Before beginning he quipped, “It is very difficult to follow and bring up the rear when drummers like Sivamani and Selva Ganesh have performed.” Pointing at his tabla he said, “I have only two drums, Sivamani has 200 and Selva Ganesh has only one, but it sounded like two million!”

 Then, in an oblique reference to the cat-whistlers in the crowd he said, “This is a temple not a place of cheap thrills. This is where Saraswati resides. Not a street corner where you whistle as a beautiful lady passes. Please pay our rich culture the respect it deserves.”

Ustad Zakir Hussain making his point.

 The virtuoso performance that followed was out of this world and the unconventional ways in which he hit the tabla producing harsh metallic sounds was a revelation to many. His dexterous moves and his experimentation with varying pressure on the bayaan, producing different notes of the sargam had even the other musicians on stage put their hands together. The speed with which his hand moved, blurring all his fingers into one amorphous mass was hypnotising.

 The concert ended with a rendition of “raghupati raghava raja Ram” by the quintet. Significantly, Shankar Mahadevan started the bhajan with, “Ishwar, Allah tero naam…” reminding all once again the need to stay united in these troubled times. Ustad Zakir Hussain then ended the evening saying, “have a good night and pass on the good rhythms of your hearts to all the others.”

 When you listen to five musical geniuses in concert on the same stage, your heart cannot but beat in unison and contribute its own little rhythm to the experience. For a city that lives and breathes music, the evening proved to be a collective beating of hearts that bound all together in a mark of respect and solidarity towards those brave, unfortunate friends, relatives and strangers.

 As it turned out, Jerry was referring to the different classrooms in the conservatory that have been named after renowned music composers! So apart from the ones above, there’s Beethoven, Stravinsky, Debussy, Bartok, Verdi, Mahler and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (the room for Hindustani music classes).

Jerry playing Bach in Mozart!

 The KM Music Conservatory was launched in June and currently the first batch of 43 students is doing their Foundation course. This will be followed by a three-year Bachelor’s degree in Music for those who wish to continue. “It’s standard practice in conservatories abroad to have a year-long foundation course before beginning the bachelor’s programme,” says Ms. Jyoti Baliappa Nair, Course Coordinator at the KM Conservatory. The aim of this one year is to bring all students to a more or less similar standard. “This year however, we are finding it difficult to achieve this because we were not strict in the auditions for selecting the students. The result is that there’s a huge disparity in skill levels,” she says.  

 The KM conservatory teaches Western and Hindustani music – instrumental and vocal – as well as western music technology. The latter deals with learning to compose, edit and enhance music using advances in computer technology and music-related software. As part of this, students have to do an Apple-certified course in using LogicPro – the preferred music software for most professional music composers and editors. This in a sense is the USP of the KM Conservatory where the traditional and the modern are both given importance.

 “Rahmanji’s long-term vision in setting up this conservatory is to create an Indian Symphony Orchestra, where all musicians will be Indians,” says Ms. Nair. In fact he has started working towards this by providing free violin classes to 8^th standard students of the MGR school nearby. By the time they reach the 12^th standard, these students can decide if they want to pursue music seriously and join the conservatory.

 Once here, A.R Rahman, the principal of the conservatory, selects outstanding students for specialised training while others can audition to join the symphony orchestra at the end of their course. He does not take classes as he is too busy in his studio, which in fact is on the second floor of the conservatory building. Jerry modestly reveals that he was selected for his skills on the Piano and LogicPro.

 We visit Mozart, a room that houses a Kawai, half-grand piano of Korean make. Under the name of the great composer, there’s a roster that indicates which student has reserved Mozart at a given time. In a strangely romantic way it seems like students have fixed up dates with the virtuoso composer and are scheduled for a tête-a-tête to learn things first hand! Jerry treats me by playing the 1^st movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata, Op. 13 and Bach’s Inventio-8. His fingers move effortlessly, and by the look of it, there could well have been no bones there. In the smallness of the room, the sound seemed richly magnified and melodious. “The room has mirror-walls, so that you can watch yourself play, and improve your style,” Jerry explains.

 In Schubert, I meet Robert, the piano teacher at the conservatory. He is a young man from Holland and on Jerry’s request, he plays us the harpsichord. His thin long fingers, seem to perform a complicated ballet on the keyboard, jumping here, crossing there, leaping and splitting wide and gliding across the octaves. It is an aural treat to listen to the notes that are reminiscent of church music. “The harpsichord is basically a harp that has been kept horizontal,” says Robert. “When you hit a key, the levers actually pluck a string unlike the piano where on hitting a key, a mallet strikes the tuned strings.”

Robert on the harpsichord at the KM Music Conservatory.

 As we visit Haydn and Chopin Jerry explains that music theory, world music appreciation (western/Indian classical, folk music, African, tribal, spiritual) and choir singing training are compulsory subjects. Apart from this, sight singing (looking at a music score and singing it) and dictation (listening to the teacher play a piece and writing it in musical notations) are other compulsory subjects that are difficult and require a well-trained ear. Imagine that! We mkae errosr taiking dwon a ditcation in Englihs!

 We go around the conservatory and watch students practicing on their violins, cellos and pianos. The place is alive with the sound of music! They all greet Jerry and having experienced his genuine sweet nature, I am not at all surprised. One girl – Varshini as I learn later – beckons him to help her and join her in Beethoven for the cello class. I thank Jerry for the guided tour complete with a demonstration telling him that he seems to be a popular boy around here. He blushes and says, “Right now, I am working hard and don’t want any distractions. Music is my first and only love!”

The five ageing leaves of Indian cricket: Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman and Kumble. Five leaves in autumn, braving the winds of change that are blowing.  Look! Two of them are falling. Oh how graciously they fall. In this journey, so short, from the branch to the ground, how they wear a final beauty. And despite the terror of mixing with the earth, want that this last fall has all the grace of a flight! 

Kumble’s 18-year-old journey came to an end at the Feroze Shah Kotla and Ganguly is bidding adieu at Nagpur as he follows suit, floating down gently, savouring every memory of a long life on a branch of Indian cricket. They have weathered storms of all kinds and have emerged scathed, tired, tested but ultimately, I’d like to believe, satisfied. It will take long to fill the gaps they have left and the branches look that much emptier and poorer by their absence.

In a few years, the remaining three will also be blown away and the branch will be bare. Today they are fighting hard, clinging on, and disproving their critics but some day they too will be done. Did you say then why fight at all? That it’s useless, futile? I know. But then, they don’t fight in the hope of success! No, no! It’s much more beautiful when it’s useless, when it’s futile like in the final scenes of “The Last Samurai”. Oh what a beauty there is in fighting a lost battle. There’s an inexplicable romance to sword-wielding, horse-riding samurais charging in an open field at a mechanised artillery regiment of the Imperial army. 

It’s the same with the five veterans. They fought and they continue to do so because like the Japanese Samurai, they don’t know any other way. 

I could put down the statistics of this fabulous quintet and extol their achievements. But what’s the use of numbers, and at this stage, does it even matter? Do we need numbers to know their worth? The only numbers that everybody mentions now are 38, 36, 35, 35 and 34. Numbers are like the milestones on their journeys. Mere indicators. It is the journey and the sights they have left us to behold that are worth looking at again and again. Journeys that we’ll never be tired of retracing and sights that have been imprinted in our minds to be projected over and over again – a desert-storm at Sharjah, a defiance at Lords, a flourish at the Eden Gardens, a determination at Antigua, a virtuoso display at Adelaide… 

Three leaves in autumn. And a wind…

Retirement is a tough call to make and there is no such thing as the right time to retire. It is a personal and an emotional decision. Should Federer retire if he wins another Grand Slam and breaks Sampras’ record for most GS titles? He would have discovered his form all right but after the recent slump shouldn’t he understand that his days are numbered? But what if he has several more titles still left? Did Henin make the right choice? Shouldn’t Warne make a comeback? Except the men and women concerned, nobody can know, sometimes not even them. The fickle media definitely not.  

Soon they will all leave. Dravid will go, followed by Laxman. And some fall day, Sachin too will take his bow and ageing, sepia-toned, will begin his journey. But somehow I can’t imagine his journey being a short graceful one from the branch to the earth below. I’d rather dream of him being a leaf carried away on some wind, twisting and twirling and flying in a graceful manner like a ballerina that leaps into the air seemingly defying gravity. 

He would arguably be the last leaf.  And unlike O.Henry’s short story, this would be one Last Leaf that will be hard to imitate, replicate, duplicate. No masterpiece, no chef-d’oeuvre can come close to this original.  The final journey of this Leaf would leave in its wake many a dead fan of Indian cricket.

And the day that happens, the Indian cricket team would be a pale spectre of its formal self. Much like the Australian team is today without Waugh, Mc. Grath, Warne and Gilchrist. 

The passing of these leaves, would herald a winter in Indian cricket. A winter that would disprove the implied answer to Shelley’s line in Ode to a West Wind “If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” Oh yes, this one Spring will be far, far behind…