Amber turns 30

Aai and Daddy (my grandfather) ran a studio together, which Aai runs by herself now, since he's no longer around. The studio turned 30 this year, so she organized a small Hindustani classical music recital for about a hundred people downstairs at Amber.

Her name was Manjusha Patil and she wore a white saree and smiled very graciously and familiarly at me and Aai. She looked much younger than I'd imagined. I looked at her till she disappeared upstairs to tune her taanpura.

They started a little later than these things usually start at Amber, and that was when the rustling of sarees and the adjusting of hearing aids and switching off of phones finally came to rest.

She started very, very deep at first. I loved her since then, for that, and for whatever followed.

Her voice stayed with her, never leaving her, and when she sang you could trace the pattern of the note in her frown, in her cheeks and in the tight, loose strings of her neck when she stretched it out.

You could almost touch it, what she was singing.

It lasted three hours, one Raaga after another; everything faintly reminiscent of something you've travelled before, some like the ones you've completely forgotten and some like people you knew before you thought you knew anyone.

She sang as if she had an audience, not as if she was alone in a room. The tabalji and the man on the harmonium were watching her closely, watching her sway and steady down, watching her voice as it climbed and fell, and reciprocating as if in waves. They looked like lovers on a string, each one responding with the slight lag the first one left behind. They were clicking on stage, jamming every once in a while and seeking a nod, a small tilt of the head, and otherwise operating on pure musical instinct. I felt no wonder that evening at how people fall in love with artist(e)s.

I need to listen to more classical music and on a general note, more live performances this year. It's a promise I've made to myself for feeling how I felt that evening.

Love to you both. This year is going to do cool things to us.