Afflatus

Getting inspired is a trait, I am sure all of us have. How, when and where, we don’t know.. But the fact is we all get inspired one way or the other and almost all the times, it results in a positive action.

Let me narrate a short episode from my life now.

About 18 years ago, I had a serious problem with my health and had to be confined to bed for a week. What it was and how serious it was are all not relevant here and are beyond the scope of this post. All I can say is that the ‘confinement’ was literal in the sense that I was not allowed to get up except for my eating sessions and for other small sessions. For a person who hates lying down on the bed beyond 5 am, this was indeed a very severe punishment. Moreover, I had to keep both my legs up and place them on a stool while an equipment with a pulley would be pulling me back.

My professional commitments forced me to be in touch with the office constantly through the phone. Though this was a positive distraction in a way, it was against the Doctor’s instructions. So, I was ill at ease.

To top it all, the ‘walkman’ was not working and I did not have i -pod (I don’t remember if I had even heard of that name then!).Reading anything continuously was ruled out too for medical reasons. ‘A great punishment’, I was thinking to myself when something caught my eye. One small creature peeped through the window sill and after a glance and a ‘tweet’ (not the ‘micro blogging’ one .The danger in writing about the past is that some words totally carry a different meaning and connotation in this digital world), the creature left only to return with its ‘friend’.

 I had seen this tiny creature since my childhood but only now did I spot the difference. The other creature, though it was looking similar, surely looked different in terms of the features. The first one had a uniform brown shade on its body and had a shorter tail while the second one had a kind of grey crown and black spots, which almost seemed like a beard below its beak. ‘Oh..How much to learn’ I thought. By then, I could somehow discern that the former was the female species and the latter, a male.

It was obvious that they wanted to set up a family and therefore, were looking to build a comfortable home. Within few hours, the male appeared with the grass on its beak. The female which was making more noise went around flapping its wings until it identified the best place to construct the house. Once this was spotted, it went on instructing the male partner which obliged religiously. In between, both the creatures spotted me too .They must have thought to themselves, ‘What an awkward position this man is in. Anyway, it is good for us since this bloke is unlikely to get up now and disturb our work!’

At the most, I could have shooed them away or at least asked one of my family members to perform that act on my behalf. But, I did not want to. There was a selfish interest of course, but the reason for my decision had more to do with my love for birds and most importantly my propensity to observe and learn things.

The next 6 days were spent just by watching the birds go about their tasks caring for nothing else. It was a great sight to see them plan their construction like trained architects and engineers ‘Would they by any chance have read Bhagawat Gita?’, wondered I.. Who taught them to be ‘Karma Yogis?’

After a week, as I rejoined my duty, I was lost in my own world of sales figures and budgets, but still I remembered the creatures. One evening, when I went to that room to check the status of their Home, I found to my dismay that it was deserted. Though I could not make out what went wrong, I felt sad and left it at that.

And I got fit within a couple of months with my physical pain gone with the wind. But the pain of seeing the ‘deserted place’ remains with me.

I am sure most of you would have made out that the creature referred to in the post is the Sparrow.

Today (March 20^th) is World Sparrow Day. 

The sparrow, that beautiful creature is now almost extinct and is likely to be declared as an endangered species soon. The same Digital World where Apples and Berries are no longer associated only with fruits, is the culprit. It is of course very easy to argue that if not for technology, we would not be sharing thoughts like this, just at the click of a button. Agreed, to a certain extent, but let us also lean back and think if we have ever felt that this world just does not belong to only us(meaning human beings) but also to millions of other living creatures. Let us start questioning ourselves as to what can be done to make the world a better world to live for all creatures.

Let me now take up a song-which in my opinion, is a marvel - and dedicate it to the Sparrow.

The beauty of ‘Chittukkuruvi Vetkkapadudhu’ lies in its rhythmic pattern. No, not just the pattern of the percussion, for which he is known for, but also in the way the lines in the Pallavi and CharaNams are designed and structured, albeit spontaneously.

The composition is in the normal Aadi taaLam in Tisra gati(aadi taaLam is the most commonly used cycle and has 8 beats and ‘tisram’ is 3 beats. So, typically a composition set in this TaaLam and Nadai should have 24 beats. Each beat will be further sub-divided into micro-beats.  I do not want to get too technical here as that is reserved for my other blog Rajamanjari. However, to highlight the hidden beauties, certain details and explanation are required.

First, look at the last line of the Pallavi which goes like ‘Muthirai Oththadam Ittadhum Nidirai Varume’. Here, each phrase follows 1 2 3 4(ta ka dhi mi) in the faster mode and there are 5 phrases. It is therefore 20 micro-beats. The remaining 4 are left blank, 2 before the first phrase and after the last phrase.

The CharaNams go a step further and the last line - Pattu chiRagu PaRavai Paruva Sumaiyai Perume- goes as 1 2 3 4/ 1 2 3 4 /1 2 3 4/ 1 2 3 4 /1 2 3 4/1 2 3 4.

Let me try and make it more simpler (if at all, that is possible!). One Tisram= 3 beats. So, the two lines quoted above should have 12 beats each. But the Laya Raaja doubles the speed and makes the vocals render in that speed. Generally, this is done (and mostly by him) for percussion alone even as the vocals render in normal speed. But the Laya Raaja that he is, he shows he can do it for vocals as well!

Not surprisingly, once when Vairamuththu was asked as to which one was his most difficult and toughest song, he quoted this song instantly.

Credit also goes to SPB and Janaki as it needs a lot of breath control and also a firm grip on the taaLam to render this.

In fact, this marvel occurs in the prelude itself though there are no words in that. Listen to the humming of Janaki and SPB. The first ‘Tara ra tara ra’ has ten  ‘1 2 3 4’ s rendered by Janaki(with SPB’s voice peeping up in lower octave now and then) and the two ‘1 2 3 4’s are rendered by SPB after that. The following humming sees twelve ‘1 2 3 4’s with Janaki in higher octave and SPB in lower octave.

Laya Harmony!

The percussion plays three  ‘1 2 3 4’ in faster mode, whenever it is present. Note that it is absent when those ‘special lines’ are rendered by the vocals.It is absent in the beginning too -when the sparrows kiss in Tisram with the flute casting a magical spell mesmerised by the spectacle.

The melodic instruments too play this ‘ 1 2 3 4’ in the prelude with the strings playing two and the flute responding in the third ‘1 2 3 4’.

Just because Laya dominates the scene, by no stretch of imagination should it be misconstrued that the melody takes a back seat. In fact, the song abounds with melody.

The sliding and gliding of strings in the first interlude, the singing of guitar and the cooing of flute and the ‘leitmotif ‘of the guitar in the same interlude, the majestic melody of the acoustic guitar to the backing of its ‘brothers’ and the call and response between the strings and the guitar in the second interlude are just some of the melodic aspects apart from the bass guitar, rhythm guitar and the flute melodies which back the vocals.

The composition also follows a very different scale. Though it is set in the minor scale, it eschews ‘dha’ while descending. As per the Raga texts, the raga which follows this structure is ‘Udayachandrika’, a raga not used by anybody before. But let me caution you that this composition cannot be said to be based on ‘Udayachandrika raga’. One can probably say that it follows the ‘Udayachandrika scale’.

And now for the inspiration. The first two phrases- ‘Chittukkuruvi Vetkappadudhu’- have been inspired from the Czech composer  Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony no.9, ‘From the new World’.. Mind you, it is just the third movement in the symphony, which has an entirely different tune in the other 2 movements. And surely, Dvorak wouldn’t have even imagined the ‘mel kaala tisram’ divided into 24 micro-beats, and rendered with gusto by two great legendary singers from India.

This is what a real inspiration can do.

A mortal, who loves nature, got inspired by two tiny birds and overcame his serious health issue, changing the way he looked at life, in the process.

An immortal(at least as far as his music is concerned) got inspired by just one line in the 3^rd movement of a 19^th century symphony to produce an outstanding composition which made that ‘mortal’, who got inspired by the sparrows , and who is always inspired by the immortal works of the genius, decipher the significant intricacies in that composition.

Long live Inspiration! Long live Music! Long live the Sparrows!

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