My Tryst with Strings

I was just ten and my dad was telling us(my brother and I) the story of how Ravana impressed Lord Shiva by transforming his nerves into the strings of a veena and played raaga after raaga thus enthralling the entire Deva community(caste system prevailed there too)!! Ravana was suddenly a big hero to me...phew ! No, I was not being an anti-Rama follower. I was just amazed at the physics of converting the nerves and the veins into strings?? I was now lost in my own myriad thoughts....how about human hair....could they bring out the same tone as that of a veena string.....cos the horse hair worked magic in the violin!! Strings from then on had that effect on me(sorry the affectation was such it spilled over into my relationships-Strings attached all of them...!!)

Well, as every family in Bangalore does, we had a half yearly pilgrimage to Mysore!! Mysore the royal city with its palaces...palaces...palaces...and palaces..besides the Brindavan gardens and the Chamundi hills of course!! Every time we went to Mysore we made it a point to visit the Mysore zoo, the only zoo close to Bangalore that had animals in cages(in Bangalore we only had the lion safari)!! but believe me the animals in their cages were not as much of enthusiastic interest as was the Kottangachi violin - the rustic form of Violin which had the coconut shell for the base and the the tail piece was a hollow bamboo twig ....and for a bow we had a bent bamboo twig with a twine for a bowstring.... Hmmm,I think that was a pretty ingenius violin we used to have !!! The man who sold it had such an expertise at playing even the most fine intricate melody.We were charmed by it that we all decided that we would buy one each and resolved that we would end up playing beautiful tunes on it and become accomplished Kottangachi Violinists!! So with such great expectations we used to lay it on our shoulders and begin to play like we saw the seller do...! Alas ,all we could get out of it was some sound akin to the death throes of a long suffering cat , which almost tore the tympanums of the others around!! But believe me we never gave up and after a great deal of agonising trials ended up playing somewhat closely sounding seven notes of SA RE GA MA PA DA NI !!! The moment this was achieved the Kottangachi violin would lay amongst the very many unused things on the attic of our house.....

Cut...since i finally found that my expertise lay in producing sound from my vibrating vocal chords...i gave up on trying to play the strings though I pulled quite a few strings to win many a competitions using my larynx to produce ear pleasing sounds called music!! My brother now evinced his interest in learning the violin, an interest that sounded melodious when played by the maestros and even his teacher....but, by him it was trauma to us....every evening we were made to go through the torturous regimen of his learning to play the violin until one fine day his teacher failed to appear for the class and when contacted replied that she could do nothing to bring the violinical sense in him!! And since then the violin lies unused in its beautiful classique case!!

This violin now lies with me hopeful of being played someday by someone who can produce more than the shrill screeching death throes of a cat long suffering!!!!