Performance Woes

I had resolved to turn in early today but sleep is elusive. In my mind I keep practicing a show tune that I am learning to play on the violin called - "Old Man River". I have been practicing it, listening to the CD and then trying it again but it is the most challenging thing I've come across in my two years as a beginner violinist. The song requires a frequent switching of the strings and nimble fingers. It also needs to be played at a very fast tempo; metronome setting for quarter notes at 158! I can barely manage 100.

But it is managing to keep me up at night, I am almost tempted to throw off the covers and saw away at the violin, so what if it is 2:00 AM. But sense prevailed and I am writing about it instead.

But before I started writing about it I was also thinking about the ragas that I've been learning and how my guru has asked me to perform the one raga that I found the most challenging, at an upcoming concert. I have been going over the composition, the alaap, vistaar and taans in my head as I try to summon sleep. Instead I find my mind wandering off to transcribing Raag Purvi on a staff....wondering if I could play it on the violin if I was able to write it down...how would it go...B C# E F# G G# B C...ascending and C B G# G F# E F E C# B...descending would that be right? Would I then be able to play it? Once again...the thought wants me jumping out of bed and giving it a shot...but here I am writing instead; not sleeping at all. Brain bugs!

Then I start thinking about the upcoming Purvi performance and my tendency to forget what comes next and the ensuing nervousness. Except, in this instance I probably won't forget the lyrics, the words are quite memorable, as you'll see in a minute. Especially memorable since I remember practicing in front of my parents once and recalling how they were barely able to suppress their chuckling whenever I poured my heart into it and sang it. They ruined it for me for good. Every time I come across a particular phrase in the song I find I can barely keep a straight face, and I am sure laughing during a performance, or trying to suppress laughter during a performance would not be conducive to a flawless performance. So here are the words, followed by how it translates for me:

Eri maika saba sukha dino
Doodh poot aur anna dhana lachchmi
Piya payo govind rang vino
Eri maika saba sukha dino

Adhama uddharana jas bistarana
Kripa Karan dukha haran sukha karan
Ajij ke sab layak kino
Eri maika saba sukha dino

So it translates as:

Oh my girlfriend, He gave me every happiness in the world
Milk, sons, grain, wealth and prosperity
I found a mate like Govind himself
Oh my girlfriend, he gave me everything

He lifts me up to righteousness and helps me spread grace (?)
He is merciful, takes away sorrows, brings happiness
He made me worthy of my loved ones
Oh my girlfriend, he gave me every happiness in the world

What's laughable here you ask? Well it is hard for me to picture a conversation of this nature with a girlfriend, telling her about all the milk and the sons he gave me! That is the chuckle inducing part...it starts deep belly laughs that are so very hard to curb. Wouldn't you agree?

I need to forget every bit of rustic Hindi I've retained in order to do justice to these elegant Prof. Bhatkhande compositions.

Another Raag I recently learnt was Raag Todi, it is beautiful I love humming it, singing it, except for the unfortunate lyrics again. They go like this:

Langar ka kariya jin maro langar
Ka kariya jin maro langar
Angwa lag jaye langar
ka kariya jin maro langar

Sun paye mori saas nanadiya
Daudi daudi ghar aaye langar
ka kariya jin maaro langar

Now, "langar" to me means lame, someone who limps...so this song, so full of pathos, translates as follows:

What is the lame one to do, the one that has been struck lame
She has no choice but to stumble into her lover's arms

But then she's fearful of her ma-in-law and sis-in-law
listening in
So she runs/limps back home

That is in essence the song. When I learn more then I guess I will be taught how to sing the lines "langar ka kariya" in the development of the sthai (first stanza) and the words "sun paye mori saas nanadiya" in the development of the antara (second stanza)...but how will I ever do justice to the songs when I can only picture shrewish mother-in-laws and sister-in-laws hiding behind bushes, spying on the poor lame one, ready to jump her! I think the song needs to be delivered with oodles of karuna rasa (pathos), it would not be right to treat it as a hasya rasa (laughter), but ...it's more like "Singer ka kariya..." (What's the singer to do)

Trying my best to forget the lyrics, but the visuals refuse to let go!

And now I need to try for that elusive sleep again.

Practice makes perfect ...does it?

I thought things are supposed to get easier with practice but I am not seeing much evidence of that lately.

I’ve been walking across (west to east) Manhattan everyday for the past year now. The walk lasts anywhere from 20-30 minutes based on the level of briskness. The brisker the better - say the health and fitness journals - so I walk, making up my own little games along the way, for instance the one where I take two steps per sidewalk square for as long as I can sustain it and the one where I resolve to cover each white strip of the cross walk in a single stride a la the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover. So shouldn’t this walk now be the easiest thing in the world for me? Painless?

I should be stronger, muscles trained, breathing steady, I should be in a good position to break into a run any day now; the crowds should be gawking as they see me pass by in a zippy flash, after all I have been trying to walk faster and faster!

But hey…what’s this? Sounds like the patellas registering a protest, threatening a strike! Instead of zipping across town I am now a hobbling geriatric. What happened? Instead of adapting and strengthening they chose to just get worn out, synovial fluid depleted, cartilage rubbing against bone.

Agnes Oaks, principal ballerina with the English National ballet, who has been dancing since the age of 10 said in an interview that injuries have often been the low point of her career, that they have stopped her many times. She has been dancing for twenty eight years, putting in several hours of practice everyday, why is it then that she is still prone to injuries? With so many years of practice and experience hasn’t it been possible to learn how to avoid injuries?

But that’s ballet. I am just talking about plain old walking! I have been walking for many years now. I can’t quite recall the precise moment of delirious joy when I had the epiphany that walking on the soles of my feet wasn’t just possible but much more convenient than crawling around on all fours. I rose and have never looked back. My heels got rougher…they figured they had to, in order to resist and retaliate against the pounding they took. They didn’t just shut down and quit on me. So why can’t the patellas join the party?

The more you do something, the better you are supposed to be at it. It is supposed to work with mathematics, music, dance, writing, airplane flying, sailing, spacewalking, surgery, toll collecting, paper pushing…you name it… hence the universal insistence on experience. If you’ve done it enough you should be doing it faster, better, smarter, or so the story goes. One can tack on another layer to this, the “self-fulfilling prophecy” layer.

So if you tell yourself that each repetition is making you better and stronger at any activity, if you believe in yourself and have a Paul Coelho like faith in the universe egging you on in your endeavors then you are doubly assured that things are going to fall in place, sans missteps, wrong turns, twisted ankles and smarting knees. The flipside is supposed to be true too, i.e., if you have low expectations your performance is dismally proportionate to them. Which is why the Little Engine That Could kept telling himself - "I think I can, I think I can".

And yet something always goes wrong – especially when you want it all to be as flawless as ever –like the presidential oath getting flubbed because the Chief Justice thinks he has it all memorized, leaving some talking heads wondering if we indeed had a president!

I keep digressing to presidents and ballerinas, maybe trying to see if I am in good company with my walking woes, my music playing woes, battles with rhythm and tempo, my work and home and time management woes and my occasional absent mindedness …wait…occasional??

That’s one thing where practice has actually made me perfect: from leaving water bottles hanging on trees, losing lunch boxes, pens, pencils, giving my Mom a blank look when asked where the spare change that a vendor returned disappeared and coming up with no better explanation than, “it flew away with the wind” to more recently, and on more than one occasion, wearing a different shoe on each foot – wondering why I developed a sudden limp - standing in an elevator wondering why it wasn’t moving while repeatedly hitting the button that corresponded to the floor I was on. Yes, when it comes absent mindedness – I am honing this particular science to perfection!

Snapshots

The week that went by was a good one. It was heartening to see a plane make an exceptionally skilled and flawlessly executed landing in the Hudson and all 155 passengers and crew rescued. Kudos to Captain Sullenberger, the crew of US Air Flight 1549 and all the rescuers who rushed to the rescue scene without a second thought.

The way things have been, the weather, the economy, the general greyness, one needed a bright spot like that. It was like the sun waiting to emerge from the greyness in the picture below:



The coming week will be short and sweet and eminently livable with the Obama inauguration to watch. He can't be the solution to all our woes but he has to be better than this:



The conference rooms at work will be set up with big screen TVs and refreshments so we can all see the inauguration ceremony. It will certainly be pleasurable to see the nation heaving a collective sigh of relief as he is sworn into office. The crowds are gathering at Washington D.C. and the city is stretched to capacity.

I saw someone being interviewed, someone who had traveled to D.C. from some other part of the country. He was asked what his expectations were from the new president and he said, "I want peace on Earth". Now that's normally a generic statement that anyone from vacuous celebs to vacuous beauty contestants usually mouth off without giving it any real thought, but this Joe Citizen said it in a voice wrought with emotion, his eyes brimming with tears as he said it once and then repeated it in a trembling voice. I found that scene very touching. There was such a hint of desperation in his voice as if he was personally struggling with the weight of the world and finding its various crises unbearable, untenable and was just seeking some kind of relief.

Hope is very much in the air; as always, the only thing remaining in the box Pandora opened. I was reading an interview of Bruce Springsteen in The Guardian and in it he said at some point during the interview that we could use the word "hopefully" again.

I am hopeful too even if I saw so many major retailers boarded up and sporting liquidation signs all along Route 10, a jamming retail stretch around East Hanover and Livingston, NJ. I couldn't bear to see some of the names of the stores going out of business...Circuit City, Comp USA, Linen's n' Things...all falling down one by one...reminding me of that nursery rhyme we all loved as kids...the one that really was all about the bubonic plague...we all fall down...

Ring-a-ring-a-roses,
A pocket full of posies;
ashes! ashes!
we all fall down.

This is the commercial equivalent of the bubonic plague, or certainly feels like it. But yes there's hope. We still have hope.

Life is all about learning new things, jumping for joy, setting up a microcosm of a charmed life for various dolls and hugs and kisses:







Hope personified!

Which brings me to another thing that held my attention, another excerpt from Mark Hagen's interview with Bruce Springsteen:

MH Do you still feel like that 12-year-old?

BS "Of course. There is no part of yourself that you leave behind; it can't be done. You can't remove any part of yourself, you can only manage the different parts of yourself. There's a car, it's filled with people. The 12-year-old kid's in the back. So's the 22-year-old. So is the 40-year-old. So is the 50-year-old guy that's done pretty well, so's the 40-year-old guy that likes to screw up. So's the 30-year-old guy that wants to get his hands on his wheel and put the pedal to the metal, and drive you into a tree.

"That's never going to change. Nobody's leaving. Nobody's getting thrown out by the roadside. The doors are shut, locked and sealed, until you go into your box. But who's driving makes a really big difference about where the car is going. And if the wrong guy's at the wheel, it's crash time. You want the latest model of yourself at the wheel, the part of you that's sussed some of this out and can drive you someplace where you want to go."

I know I carry around all my "selves" with me for sure...it's a rather packed car I drive. I shared the above quote with a friend who was prompt enough to offer the rejoinder that at times she felt that her latest model was less competent! Well yes...there's that...although I certainly feel that I have "sussed some of this out" even if I am not all the way there yet. So many fears and weaknesses have fallen by the wayside, so many strengths acquired along with new weaknesses, new fears and new hopes...so the Boss's point is well made...you do want the latest model of yourself at the wheel. You want your "years-in-the-making-Capt.-Sullenberger" at your wheel.

That was just some of the stuff I was thinking about, wandering through the walkways and alleys of my brain, absorbing and evaluating things I'd heard and read and seen in the past week and trying to make some sense of it all.

I'll end this note with a picture that makes no sense at all:



This is the view from my office window and every other day I see the billowing, white curtains! Billowing curtains in the dead of winter...what is up with that??

A Promise to Whine

Whiners are never welcome. Listeners often come across whiners, hypochondriacs and all forms of self-absorbed and self-obsessed folks regaling us with everything from their grandest achievements to their most painful bowel movements. Listeners listen politely, hemming and hawing at the right places through sheer practice but secretly wishing for a strong rope to hang themselves.

But sometimes listeners get the urge to whine. I want to whine and I have no ears to bend to this cause. I don't want to send people mentally scurrying away in search of a noose! But this bit of cyber real estate is all mine so let me lay it all down here.

There's a niggling twinge in my right shoulder; it goes away and then returns with a vengeance. It's rather persistent and it gets worse every time my shoulder has to bear the burden of my large tote bag in which I carry my dressy shoes and laptop. This wouldn't bother me one bit if I had door to door limousine service between my home and my place of work. But since this isn't the case I get to bear the wintry ordeal of a thirty minute walk every morning with an aching shoulder.

Normally I am not a dressy shoes carrying person. I buy comfortable shoes so that a sneaker to shoes exchange isn't necessary as soon as I get to my place of work. But winter is different and the streets and sidewalks are usually coated with slick black ice. I NEED to wear my heavy fleece lined snow boots with deep grooves in its sole for traction on ice. I can't possibly keep them on all day with my dresses and slacks! The reason for carrying the laptop around is the same: the nasty winter. Sometimes, on days like today, the roads are pure ice, the car tires act like sleds (that's when the car decides to move), schools are closed and I need to do my work from home using a remote connection.

This winter is one of extreme discontent for my poor clavicle.

But whining about pain is the worst sort of whining. What bothers me more is that both my purse and my large tote bag keep sliding off my damn shoulders every five minutes during the thirty minute walk. I keep adjusting the straps and edging them as close to the crook of my neck as possible so that the distance the straps have to travel before they slip off my broad shoulders is widened. But it doesn't help!! It never helps, they continue their downward slide with a steady frequency. Last night this drove me insane. The twinge and then the slide. I might have let out a couple of rather audible "Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghs" as I was walking. I was so wrapped up in my woes that I probably didn't notice people staring and thinking, "What the heck is wrong with her!"

Then there's the problem of the gloves. There are many tiny little bits of annoying logistics here. I probably can't provide an adequate description of all the hassles I encounter here. Every time I need to hike my bags back on my shoulder the strap lands on my begloved hand. I can't possibly leave my poor frozen fingers crushed under the straps so I make every effort to extricate them without sending the straps sliding again, but as I am doing this my glove sometimes stays stuck as my hand slips out of it...and then the whole glove-strap-shoulder dance starts again, accompanied by the emanation of more curious sound effects for my fellow pedestrians; all of whom seem so very comfortable in their skins.

The other problem with gloves is the tickle in the nose that's caused by the stray fibers from the scarf around my neck. My face is usually buried up to my nose in the folds of the scarf, causing various itchy and ticklish fibers to crawl right up my nasal passages. A tickle or an itch caused by fine woolen fibers cannot possibly be relieved by a gloved hand. So now I need to pull off a glove, again engaging the ball and socket shoulder joint supporting the bags!

In other words, there is absolutely no end to my misery here. It is an interminable state of hellishness.

Now let's compound all the elements of misery noted above with the necessity of carrying an umbrella. Now the left hand comes into play. It needs to hold up my golf course sized heavy umbrella.

If you're reading this, if you've rather sadistically found my misery engaging somehow, you're probably wondering why I need a golf course type umbrella. Ah! Well I'll tell you!

For some reason I have never been able to befriend an umbrella. It always leaves one side of me drenched. Yes, I do carry it straight above my head, I am always checking to ensure that I am not shielding one side of me more than the other, but why I still manage to get drenched on one side remains a rather curious mystery. I thought perhaps this had to do with the size of my umbrella. I used to carry smaller ones - shoulder...twinge...load aversion...recall? So I switched to a bigger one. I continue to get drenched on one side.

The umbrella problem is a bigger one, a rather multi-faceted, multi-dimensional problem. You see, there are collisions now with other umbrellas. Sometimes I feel I should be considerate and courteous to my fellow pedestrians and I slant it the other way while waiting for the person to pass but then I hit someone on the other side. At other times I note that no one else showed any signs of similar courtesy and maybe it is acceptable to keep walking ahead, umbrella aloft, not worrying about the others on the road. But this often leads to some minor umbrella collisions, altercations involving bleepable words or some other form of overt animus. And then there are the ever present scaffoldings and awnings on the sidewalks, they offer a bit of a reprieve from the rain but I wonder what the umbrella etiquette is in these situations, does one collapse it for the duration of the scaffolding or does one keep it open in order to avoid the extra work of collapsing and unfurling within just a few seconds? Do people think of you as a jerk if you have an umbrella open while walking under an awning?

And just how do all those people stay dry on all sides, how??

It's going to be a long winter and I am running out of ideas on how to go the distance growl and groan free. This seventh day of January is over but tomorrow morning I'll be driving on ice to get to my wonderful Park & Ride. The bus will be waiting there, two minutes to go, while I circle the parking lot trying to find a place to park. I won't find a place to park unless I ride up a minor snow hill and leave my car partly tilted and partly sticking out of the spot, in prime position to be ticketed or hit!

This parking lot is never really full and maybe the snow removal personnel were shrewd observers during the fall, perhaps they made a note of all the spots that were usually empty and now they dump huge mountains of snow on these spots...or at least that's what it looks like they did. There are small hills of snow and ice in randomply selected spots all around the parking lot!

I have many other things to whine about but now there's a part of me that's begging me to stop, it's threatening to go looking for that noose! So I better stop.

The Return

I do love my blog, just as one loves ones home. I feel bad about having neglected it for over a month. I have run my fingers along dusty surfaces and visited all the places I like to visit...the blogs I link to the sites I like. I found it weirdly comforting to see that I wasn't the only one who was showing signs of unshakable lethargy. Some others hadn't updated their blogs in weeks!

Perhaps we all got sucked into a vacuum; maybe we were all just floating around like space debris. For the last two months I had no insights and no blips of inspiration. I was lifting the state of feeling uninspired to high art.

I am still not inspired, still not able to come up with a coherent bit of writing that might engage my sparse audience for a few moments but I do sense some of the greyness lifting. It is a new year after all, time to shake off whatever it was that kept me running in slow motion and getting nowhere.

The missing time has been eventful. We suddenly decided that a trip to San Francisco was what we needed. The tickets were purchased the day after the impulse became reality and we flew west the next day.

Our very gracious host was a schoolmate who I met on Facebook after 26 years. He picked us up at the airport and we spent the next six days at his very impressive home and his wonderful wife, kids and dogs. This was the first time that a vacation felt like a real vacation; no worries plaguing us, good company, great food and lots of warmth and hospitality. We also met my friend's neighbors whose warmth and friendliness so pleasantly surprised our frozen east coast hearts. They all treated us as if they had known us for the longest time.

Here are some pictures:


We're waiting to get off the plane after a long flight, ready for sunny California after a cold and dreary New York winter.


Pensive as I wonder what makes a Hello Kitty camera work ...or not!


We tried to be hardy New Yorkers, unaffected by the San Francisco winter, fifty-two degrees, c'mon, that's like a sauna, no? But really it was quite cold, we should have layered up better on this trip to the famous Muir Woods.


Sometimes teenagers don't pick up their phones when their Mom and Dad (our worried hosts calling the teen who preferred staying home to a millionth trip to Muir Woods) but a stranger they've just met (me) has better luck!


This was a trip to the Robert Mondavi winery at Napa Valley. You see no pictures inside the winery because short, under 13 people aren't allowed inside! What if their parents made them taste the wine, God forbid! So no, we just walked around outside even though I have always been curious to see what happens to grapes en route to the fancy bottles.


See the grapevines in the back?


Apparently an itsy-bitsy spider went up Telegraph Hill!


The lovely Anoushka!


New Year's Eve was an exciting reunion of four FAPSians (people who went to the Frank Anthony Public School in New Delhi and graduated in an Orwellian year). The joy one gets from being reunited with people with a shared history and shared memories is immense, I feel. From the left we see Roshni and Sunit, Mohit and Priya (our wonderful hosts), Raj and Rita and Anil and me.


Here's Raj taking over Priya's kitchen and dazzling us with his incredible masala chai making skills.


Here are the two pink Anoushkas, the same age, the same favorite colors, both with parents who attended FAPS!


Anoushka with Mohit's labs - Sam and Frodo. She fell in love with them.


And here I am leaning and hanging at the mysteriously leaning shack at the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, CA

The Mystery Spot was our last stop of the California vacation. We plane hopped our way back to New York and New Jersey last night. The weather is supposed to be cold but sunny for the next three days and then they are calling for another cold front and another ice storm. Wish I was anywhere but here.

But I feel energized, some of the gloom has lifted. A big thanks to Mohit and Priya for making it possible.