Oh those glorious Margazhi days in Madras! The blustery winds and storms of Karthikai give way to misty cold mornings, and the narrow side streets in Mylapore are decorated with beautiful rangoli patterns. Lazy me, I never woke up early enough to enjoy the absolutely divine chakkarai pongal, puli saadham and thayir saadham that many temples served. My adorable paati brought back prasadham for me though.
One of the things I am truly grateful for in my life is the childhood I had growing up in Mylapore. Starting in the middle of december, and continuing upto the beginning of Thai, Madras hosts one of the greatest music festivals in the world. I lived a short walk away from some of the great music halls - The music academy, Mylapore fine arts, Naradha gana sabha, Bharathiya vidya bhavan, Rani seethai hall etc...
90% of the concerts during the december music season are traditional Carnatic vocal, but you also have a small but very significant number of hindustani, bharathanatyam, kathak, jugalbandhi and instrumental recitals. The performances are organized by the seniority and popularity of the artists. Free concerts held in the mornings have performances by budding artists, and these are often the best concerts to go to. I have had the pleasure of watching performances by Sudha Raghunathan, Unni Krishnan and many others, long before they became super stars.
Going to the katcheris is an experience by itself. The crowd is very heavily TamBram, mostly populated by the Mami Mafia dressed in their winter finery. The first two rows are typically filled with thathas and paatis, and a few Americans and Europeans dressed in tie and dye clothes with jasmine flowers in their hair. Every new entrant into the auditorium will be immediately stared at, and the Mamis also double up as fashion police. The curtain then lifts and the artists make a grand appearance. The male performers have it a little easy, but the female singers are compelled to dress like divas (they fear the mami mafia too you see). You can see the most spectacular kancheepuram sarees and accessories on Nithyashree, Sudha and Bombay Jayshree.
The music finally starts and all the mundane things are forgotten. There may be many critics for the Katcheri season (too many concerts in too little time, not enough Thamizh music etc). My question for them is this: Have you ever sat through an entire concert, a really good one at that?
Even the most sophisticated music systems cannot ever capture the spirit of a live Carnatic concert. I cannot find the right words to describe it- its a combination of Bhakthi, talent, and a unique relationship which the performers establish with the audience for the duration of the concert. Its three and a half hours of pure bliss...
When the concerts got over, we would then head to the cafetarias. These have gained a lot of popularity over the past few years. The original purpose was to offer refreshments to tired rasikas as they hop from one concert to the next, and unfortunately many people look forward only to the tiffin and not the concerts these days. For a similar reason, December was also the only time I got to meet a lot of my relatives. Because we lived so close to the sabhas, they would stop by our house. The official reason for their visit was apparently to say hello to my paati, but my mom and I knew better.
My parents and I would walk back home, doing an intensive review of the concert, with my mom humming different raagas to herself and I pretending to look bored (it wasnt cool at my time to be seen in Katcheris!).
Life has changed now, its years since I've spent a december in Madras. There are many people like me out there, and die-hard Carnatic music fans in the USA are attempting to recreate the Margazhi magic. Between may and june, a lot of major Carnatic singers make the Dallas-NJ-Phoenix-California-Chicago rounds. I was lucky enough to catch a brilliant T.M Krishna concert this summer with my parents. And to make the Katcheri experience complete, we managed to quickly review the sarees the ladies around us were wearing, I got stared at by every mami in the crowd and we even had good tiffin and kaapi before we went back home..
