I left my office early to finish the presentation at uncle’s house. We had come to
the end with only final formatting left. I passed a CD store in Mylapore. Some
music would be nice while I completed the presentation, I thought, I went in.
‘What you want, sir?’ the shopkeeper said.
I scanned the shelves filled with Tamil CDs in psychedelic covers resembling
crime novels. ‘What non-Tamil CDs do you have?’ I asked.
He shook his head in disappointment. ‘Non-Tamil you go to Nungambakkam,
sir.’ But the shop attendant looked through his collection to find something.
‘OK here,’ he said as he took out three CDs.
The first CD was non-stop Hindi remixed hits. It had girls with cleavage on the
cover. I had to reject it. The second was a romantic love-songs collection that had
a heart-shaped cover. The third CD was nursery rhymes in English.
‘Give me the love songs,’ I said.
The shopkeeper made the bill as I scanned a section on Carnatic music.
‘Any good Carnatic music CDs?’ I said.
‘Good meaning what, sir?’ he said as he wrapped my red-coloured CD.
I looked at the Carnatic covers. Most of them had middle-aged Tamilian men
and women on them. ‘Do you have any greatest hits collection in Carnatic?’ I
said.
The shopkeeper looked puzzled. I threw up my hands in despair. ‘I have no
clue. I want to get started,’ I said.
‘North Indian?’ he said.
I nodded.
‘Then why you want to learn Carnatic music?’
I didn’t answer.
The shopkeeper gave me two CDs. One had a woman holding a tambura on the
cover. The other had the picture of an old man. The entire text was in Tamil. I
flipped it around.
‘T.R. Subramanium nice,’ said an elderly lady who had just walked into the
shop and noticed my CDs.
nora
(Nora)
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