Myriad Musings

Every Saraswathi Puja, we place books at the Goddess feet and pray her grace allows us to learn, understand, appreciate better.  It is usually anything and everything - Ash elementary Hindi letters, Gau phy/chem/math, Tao and the art of watercolour and finally "A Southern Music" by TMK.  I opened the TMK book randomly and came upon a page where he talks about how to define classical music, how delineating folk and classical music is a form of oligarchy (Some Harvard prof said that. That brings me to a news article I read yesterday, more on that later).  It felt drier than my thesis and I closed the book. Today morning the Friday supplement headlines read "An Equal Music", a conversation with L Subramanian and Kavitha Krishnamurthy about an upcoming concert in Music Academy.  The title niggled and it dawned on me that it was the title of a Vikram Seth novel, a love affair between a pianist and a violinist.  I ruminated over my memory of the story for a while, ...

My thesis, validation and kids on vacation makes for a terrible combination.  My younger one is used to a modicum of attention from me, some art, a story here and there,  lots of conversations and trips to the store/beach/coffee place; My older one is used to having me whip up treats, some savoury, some sweet, some savoured, some not so much.  Now, I am continually shushing them while I try to write, to think out they next line/paragraph/chapter mentally.  I also have CMC asking to validate my two projects, WB government reading about our mannequin in TOI and asking to see a demo, TN government medical centre,  right around the corner from IITM, finding out about us from TOI and wanting demo and training... Nice problems to have, but very poor timing.  My deadline is Oct 28th and I have barely 2 of my 5 chapters written!  On the other hand chapters 3 and 4 are just papers and validation I have already done, so they may need no more than 3 days. ...