THE MUSIC "SEASON "

November and December months in Chennai are somewhat optimistically known among the native music lovers as "The Season", reminiscent of the summer "seasons" in Hill Stations of the colonial era. Like the those events, the Chennai season is also based on exclusion and exclusivity. The defining requirement is a fair knowledge of Carnatic music or at least a credible pretence of it.

Like the hill stations, the music season too does not take well to democratisation. The influx of hoi polloi and lumpen proletariat have rendered  the queens of the hills overcrowded, dirty, deforested and generally denuded of their original charm. The Chennai season attempts to avoid such democratic disaster by requiring a basic minimum knowledge of Carnatic musical idiom or, as I said earlier, at least a good pretence of it. This arrangement works well.

Those without even a passing familiarity with this form of music prefer decadent film music with its borrowed themes, prettified voices, electronic gimmickry and crude double entendres. They stage their own musical festival, also around the same time. Suffice it to say serious musicians do not perform at those and the audience tend to be of a certain jingoistic socio-political persuasion. These events are known as Tamizh Isai Vizha (Tamil Music Festival) which for the cognoscenti is an oxymoron.

Given that November and December in the South Indian calendar are inauspicious for weddings, many halls are available to host musical concerts.The evenings are pleasant and conducive to dressing up in heavy silk saris. This conjunction of possibilities is the origin of the Madras Music Season. Then Madras became Chennai and I.T. became all the rage making Chennai more prosperous. Suddenly everyone wanted to be part of the cultural scene and rediscover their cultural heritage. The Chennai Music Season was born.

Concerts are sponsored by "sabhas" which literally are gathering of people. There is a clear pecking order amongst the sabhas with the higher echelons patronised, sponsored and bank-rolled by old money. Sabhas run on subscriptions (mostly from pensioners) are "virtual", to use a modern phrase,  hire venues for their concerts and do not give away free passes. They generally claim to be more serious about the music. At the bottom of the musical pyramid, Builders and Developers sponsor many concerts and distribute free VIP Passes to their prospective customers. Much to their chagrin, the recipients discover that every one is a VIP. Such concerts are more about marketing new homes than about music. Still people come attracted by an evening out and snacks and coffee.

Comments like  "nalla irundhadhu" (it was good) are as much about  the music as about the quality of snacks served. The crowd numbers must not be confused with those who actually  listen to the music - many turn up for the food. It is possible to have all three main meals of the day at the sabhas and at a reasonable price too. It is therefore not surprising that Sabhas are also ranked by the quality of food they serve. Caterers use the music season to hone their skills in preparation for the imminent wedding season. For many music lovers the quality of catering is an important determinant in choosing a concert to attend.  Chennai's army of music lovers marches on its palate.

The City sees much influx of people from afar during this season:  people avoiding the northern winter, NRIs making the obligatory visit "back home", Mumbai residents who cant decide between Chennai and Mumbai and Bangaloreans who have no culture to speak of. A recent phenomenon is NRI kids, mostly from America, coming to perform at the Chennai festival. Participation allegedly enhances their chances of an Ivy League admission. A host of Serviced Apartments have sprung up to cater to this trend. Sabah-crawling is known and people are known to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at different sabahs, and teatime snacks at yet another one.

In Madras of yore, the artistes were mostly indigent and the audience were economically better off and it showed in the way they dressed. Today the artistes are much better off and dress accordingly, whereas the audience looks like it has just rolled off  a bed. Most female artists coordinate their outfits with those of their accompanists. Lots of gold ornaments and flowers -also colour coordinated- are in evidence. The dancers, though, for the most part look as if someone painted them instead of the picket fence.

Some of the Madras audience was musically knowledgeable  and the rest polite. Chennai audience comes prepared; seriously prepared. They come armed with little booklets of lyrics and raaga notes. No sooner a new piece is begun, they all assiduously search their little books and lean back with satisfaction when they have identified the song and its technical details. The aficionados hum along at the beginning of each piece and then proceed to shake their heads vigorously in appreciation. Audience appreciation is expressed whenever it is deemed due, even in the middle of a piece; but the artistes do not seem to mind.  The techies and NRIs in the audience can be spotted videographing the concert, despite its express prohibition,  for the benefit of a wider audience on YouTube.

In Madras the concerts served a useful purpose as a marital clearing house where information about "suitable" young men and women was exchanged with a view to striking an "alliance". The parents of the boy and girl were introduced to each other by well-meaning friends or relatives and if they hit it off, the boy got to meet the girl around the sacred fire on the wedding day. In Chennai I have not personally encountered a single such instance despite being the parent of a "most eligible" young man.

People, I guess, are too busy checking out the food to check out boys or girls.

LIVING IN THE PAST

Many years ago Chennai was still Madras and Perambur used to reverberate to the music of Cliff  Richard and the Beatles.  As yet unknown in Madras save for a few die-hard aficionados,   Jethro Tull sang of England

Happy and I'm smiling,

Walk a mile to drink your water.

Walk a mile to drink its water? That is decidedly inadvisable in Chennai, walk or no walk. Some smart people have founded lucrative businesses providing allegedly "clean and safe" water. There is much that can be said against alcohol but it must be admitted that it is a very good disinfectant. It is not surprising that half of Chennai is pickled in the stuff most of the time. For the convenience of commuters making their weary way back home from work, alcohol is even dispensed in 100 ml sachets. No wonder that Water and Alcohol constitute the two most lucrative businesses in Chennai. Chennai also does roaring business in gold but one can not eat or drink it. The yellow metal also appears to be more abundant that aqua in this city.

In Madras we drew water for our daily needs from wells which every house had, or collected it from our taps which not all houses had. We did not pass it through fancy filters, ultraviolet devices or reverse osmosis plants but drank it straight up - I would have said "on the rocks" but for the fact that cooling water with ice was thought to cause cold, sore-throat, fever, and everything this side of AIDS. Nor did we need to disinfect it with  liberal quantities of alcohol. Today we are sold water allegedly sourced from lofty mountains and holy rivers  and reportedly passed through magical machines and purifying processes. None have been near either source except perhaps inside a plastic bottle. Alternatively, they will sell you purifying equipment so fetchingly promoted by yesteryears Bollywood leading ladies and their daughters.

When I was a student in Madras we used to protest against many things, but water was not one of them. Later, when water scarcity became acute, it was even jokingly said that Madras did not have  a water problem for there was no water; there was just The Problem. There was a war in Viet Nam, which was a very popular subject for protests. It was easier to get young people to rally around this issue than even  increases in college fees. Anything and everything was a just cause for a walk down the streets of Madras raising good natured slogans with a lot of gusto, little conviction and  absolutely no rancour at all. They were all jolly picnics albeit a bit hot and sweaty. They provided the much-needed opportunity to spend time in close proximity to girls without the parents suspecting monkey business. An occasional bus or two was burnt, when stones for pelting were hard to come by. The Madras girls did not burn their bras though. 

Once I used to join in 

every boy and girl was my friend. 

Then an ageing actor with a bad lisp who called himself the "Revolutionary Actor"  took an interest in politics. He had neither  revolutionary nor acting credentials, but somehow had a huge fan following, much like a latter-day super-star whose entire stardom was based on an ability to flip a cigarette from its pack with one hand and catch it with his teeth. His on-screen acts consisted mainly of cavorting with young lasses half his age, singing songs with social messages, lisping his way through unmemorable lines and some linguistic jingoism, not to mention beating up forty baddies in one go without breaking into a sweat. His revolution was to stand the then political wisdom on its head and establish movies as the gateway to political power - a case of Life imitating Art. Now we have sixty revolutions per minute, and in the words of Mr. Anderson of the Tull, 

Now there's revolution, but they don't know 

what they're fighting

Despite all of this, I catch myself wanting to sing

You know I'd love to love you,

And above you there's no other.

But with each passing day it gets that much harder. The Tull, however, provide a way out:

Oh no, we won't give in,

Let's go living in the past.

It seems to me to be the only sensible way to live in Chennai.

STREETS OF CHENNAI

In Madras the streets were named after their designated uses, as in Godown Street which was full of "godowns" or warehouses.  Its proximity to the Madras port encourages the conjecture that the cargoes unloaded  from merchant ships were stored in these godowns before being "shipped" off to "mofussil" towns. There was an entire street named for Coral Merchants and another was simply known as flower bazaar.

Some were named for the communities which populated them, as in Armenian street or Beri Chetty street which were homes to merchants hailing from Armenia or the Beri Chetty community. And then there was the time honoured tradition of naming streets after prominent citizens. Theagaraya and Nair roads were named after two stalwarts of the Justice Party (a pro-colonial and anti-Brahmin movement) which went on to morph into the Dravidian social movement  and thence into Dravidian political parties.

Pantheon of Hindu or Christian deities and saints also lent their names to streets, avenues and boulevards. They even named a street after the first person to build a house on it (Chinnaiah street). Then there are the mandatory "mada" streets which are streets forming  rectangles around  temples and /or the temple tanks. I would be remiss if I omitted to mention that streets were also named for popular celluloid heroes of questionable looks and even less talent, names resplendent with the obligatory honorary doctorate and French honours which no one seems to think much of.

Certain Telugu-speaking community of traders was very prominent in the 19th and early 20th century Madras society. They were also very public-spirited and shared their good fortune with the less fortunate of the city. They established and supported charitable hospitals, schools, colleges, and soup kitchens, not to mention temples. Some of their descendants, whose own contributions to the city or its citizenry could be counted on the fingers of a limbless person, claimed the city - unsuccessfully, I might add -  for their fledgling state on the basis of this munificence of their forefathers.

These gentlemen - the temple-builders and soup kitchen supporters,  not their descendants - also gave their names to the city streets. Their names were sometimes used with  the honorific suffix "lu" (pronounced "loo") appended to them; like Govinda Rajulu, Sri Ramulu, and so on. Why some one would  think it an honour to attach a "loo" to their name beats me, but vanity has that effect on people.

Some went so far as to prefix their names with a title suggesting great wealth. For example, one street name read Gopathy Narayanaswamy Chetty Road which was quite a mouthful even for us, who are used to bombast and to long names. By the time a person from the North could finish saying the name we could traverse its entire length by foot. The name signifies that the said gentleman was the owner of many cows which in 19th and early 20th century India counted for much. Some mischievously suggest that the prefix portrayed his wife as a cow (go = cow; pathy = husband), but there is no firm basis to this bovine theory which is asinine at best.

Then Madras became Chennai in an act of political hoodwinking  - the fact that Chennai is an abbreviation for "Chenna Pattanam" meaning "the good city" and is of Telugu origin, is lost on the great unwashed who constitute the principal vote bank of the Tamil chauvinists. The government also abolished castes. The abolishment consisted of  banning the use of prefixes, suffixes and honorifics that hinted at caste affiliations. Chettys were dropped from names as were Reddys, Ayyars and Ayyengars. Rangachary Road is now emasculated to Ranga Road as is Pulla Reddy Avenue to Pulla Avenue. But erstwhile Nair Road remained Nair Road presumably as a homage to the origins of the Dravidian movement.

The self-proclaimed atheist government went so far as as to remove the "swamy" from the aforementioned Gopathy Narayanaswamy Chetty Road which now simply reads Gopathy Narayana Road. It is further shortened to GNC Road by the technology-obsessed younger lot. It does not have the same ring to it any more. Roads with female names remain unmolested (something I cannot say for the city's females, though). However there were not many to begin with: in time honoured Tamil tradition, men are deemed more worthy of honour than women.

In an act of political correctness the suffixed "loo" was also dropped from street names. But loos live on in the streets of Chennai.

In fact the streets are the loos.