A Release...

A proud mom,  I was sitting amongst a small but enthusiastic audience, my heart aflutter, as I listened rapt to my son Dhani's semi-nervous yet confident voice, cruising across the hall at Kalabhoomi, the Art Centre in Auroville. 

Outside the evening storm carried out its usual theatrics. "An early monsoon", some said and shrugged matter-of-factly, others, the climate change theorists were more cynical. But thankfully, it did not stop the die-hard friends, jazz enthusiasts and fans  to trudge through the red mud and streaming roads to haul themselves to the venue to attend the release of Dhani's debut jazz album, called 'Chimu Fiesta'. 

It was a long-awaited release. One and three quarters of a year, to be precise. Recorded in Bangalore in Dec. '19, it fell prey to the clutches of Covid lockdowns and unending restrictions...  Finally, when WHO generously upgraded the Covid status in India, from being a pandemic to an endemic, did a date to release the album was finalized. Inadvertenly, the date coincided with the day of the Goddess Saraswati, who reigns over the realms of Art. Automatically, everything about the delay felt auspicious. 

Roping in some of the finest jazz musicians in the country, the album was recorded in 16 hours. Even though its concenceptualisation had begun to wriggle its way into Dhani's musical subconscious way back in 2014, it took five years to materialize. It was no wonder therefore that each piece had a story to go with it, and revealed a moment lived, seized and  imbibed with its raw and undying intensity: 

"a moment sees, the aeons toil to express"...

While expounding upon sources of inspiration behind each track, Dhani spontaneously struck a rapport with all those present as he interspersed his narration with several humorous anecdotes related to translating the theory into action. Needless to say the hiccups were many  stemming from the fact that some of the musicians were meeting each other for the first time on the recording set. "But that is what made it both challenging and exciting", confided Dhani to a riveted audience. Each one a musician par excellence, the chemistry amongst them evolved naturally, paving way for a defiantly supreme end result: 'Chimu Fiesta'. In the artist's own words, "here is a small part of the bigger Whole; a cutting of life that I either magnified or minimized a hundred times -- so that perhaps, just may be, you can experience something close to the totality of what I did".

At the end of the event, one thing was clear: one can't just sit back and listen to 'Chimu Fiesta', for it grabs you by the soul and leads you to places you didn't know even existed. 

To download, click on the link below and go to bandcamp:

https://linktr.ee/suitetheexpatriate

An Autumn Tale

 Drenched in the sudden onrush of light, I became aware that the strange, mellowed keenness of the turning earth was upon me.  Something had changed: the blue of the sky was a shade darker, and the air tad bit more moist and fragrant with the sap of the maturing pines. While a dreamy languor set the pace for the new season, it didn't last long. For the cold north wind descended one night, with the fury of a hungry child, gnawing  at the gnarled branches of the old maple tree, which supported me, and a thousand others of my frightened kith and kin...we rustled and murmured protesting in our meek way, afraid of the fall that awaited us. The wind, a clear signal of the oncoming winter, alerted  the old maple tree, who in turn reacted with the wont clockwork precision, setting the alarm bells ringing across its width and breadth. And the next thing we knew every little artery system responsible towards carting  victuals to us from the main pantry was rendered inaccessible. Cut off brutally from the central food supply, we realised we were left to fend for ourselves, even as the little food we always kept stored away for a rainy day was swiped off by the head office just before the sudden lockdown, for its own preservation through the harsh winter months. By and by, the chlorophyll started breaking down, draining off the green pigment which had once streamed through our veins and kept us healthy and shimmering...the sunlight happily licked away the remaining sugar trapped inside us... leaving us, you may think, destitute and impoverished...Nye! Once the welfare system was lifted off our shoulders,  our hidden selves took over: flamboyant and gorgeous, studded with gold, burgundy, yellow and flaming orange...and a thousand shades in between. We danced joyously with the cold, inhospitable, insane north winds, oblivious of being hungry, thirsty, deprived...

What a wake up all it turned out to be, for me and for my entire clan: Never be afraid of change. A wake up call just before the deep slumber rising from the Styx gathered us in its folds.