Why I Did Not Care for Chetan Bhagat's "2 States"

Why I Did Not Care for Chetan Bhagat’s “2 States”

Written by Dr. Seshadri Kumar, 18 April, 2014

Copyright © Dr. Seshadri Kumar.  All Rights Reserved.

For other articles by Dr. Seshadri Kumar, please visit http://www.leftbrainwave.com

Disclaimer: All the opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of Dr. Seshadri Kumar alone and should not be construed to mean the opinions of any other person or organization, unless explicitly stated otherwise in the article.

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Today, the movie adaptation of Bhagat’s book, “2 States,” is hitting the theatres.  Completely coincidentally, I just finished reading the book a week ago. I had actually bought the book a while ago – in fact, I had bought it at the time of the big controversy over the “3 Idiots” movie, which was based on Bhagat’s “Five Point Someone,” but only found time to read the book last week, probably prompted by curiosity, since I had learned the book had been made into a movie.  These are my observations on the book.

First of all, I want to say that I liked “Five Point Someone,” Bhagat’s earlier novel. I actually thought the book was better than its movie adaptation, “3 Idiots,” although I am not a big fan of Bhagat’s writing style, which frankly is quite boring and completely unremarkable. But his strength lay, I thought, in the story itself, which in “Five Point Someone” seemed to me very interesting and original.  It also seemed very honest, and I thought it was a story I could relate to. 

And this is where “2 States” fails.  There are two main aspects in which this novel fails to grab the attention of the reader: 1. Unrealistic characters and situations, and 2. The author’s laziness in not getting simple details correct, which insults the reader’s intelligence.

Why “Five Point Someone” and “3 Idiots” Worked

To motivate the discussion on “2 States,” let me first explain some of the reasons why I preferred “Five Point Someone” to “3 Idiots.”  Having studied at IIT myself, I can fully relate to the characters in the book.  We all knew at least one person who was like the Ryan Oberoi character in the book – someone who was the bottom of the class in grades, but was actually somebody used their brain in a creative way.  We thought those people were quite cool, really.  

Where the movie ruined it was when they made Rancho (the Ryan Oberoi character in the book), played by Aamir Khan, not only the creative and out-of-the-box thinker, but also the topper in the class.  This went completely against the point of the book itself, which wanted to talk about how “5-pointers,” i.e., people who essentially “failed” in IIT, weren’t actually failures in life.  It missed the point of the book that bookish knowledge and grades are not everything.  I still remember my disappointment when, in the movie, the students all look at their grades on the bulletin board, and Rancho is the topper, ahead of Chatur.  That took away a lot of the charm of the movie.

Also, the book is a narration by Hari, the character played by Madhavan in the movie, Farhan Qureshi.  According to the book, it is Hari who gets the girl, the Professor’s daughter Neha.  But it appears Aamir Khan’s image is so important that you cannot make a movie with him in the lead without him getting the girl as well.  So now you have it – Rancho is the creative genius, the out-of-box thinker, who also is the class topper, as well as the guy who gets the beautiful girl.  I could puke.  Such a person does not exist, and I preferred Bhagat’s book because his characters were more real and I could relate to them.

I still liked “3 Idiots,” because they managed to convey what I thought was Bhagat’s most important idea of the book – that we need to think beyond grades and bookish knowledge.  Also, the tagline, “Don’t think about success, think about excellence, and success will follow on its own” – was a message the movie conveyed effectively, and it was a message that Bhagat had elaborated well in the book – which is why I liked the book for its ideas, if not its prose.  If even one-tenth of the people who watched “3 Idiots” actually internalized the message of valuing excellence over success, India would be a much better place.

“Five Point Someone” worked because you could relate to the characters. The most important count on which “2 States” failed was its unrealistic characters.

Unrealistic and Unrelatable Characters

The story is of Krish Malhotra, a Punjabi, and Ananya Swaminathan, a Tamizh girl, who meet at the IIM campus in Bangalore and fall in love, and of their struggles in getting their families to agree to their marriage.  Now, Bhagat says this is inspired by his own life, and I wouldn’t want to question the truth of that assertion.  But if it really corresponds to his life, then I am afraid I cannot relate to it.  This is something like watching an episode of “Dynasty,” which talks about the life of the super-rich in America that most people in America or elsewhere can never fully understand in a personal way.  Let me elaborate and explain myself.

The Smooth Hero

Consider the protagonist, Krish Malhotra.  He is supposed to have graduated from IIT, and moved on to IIM.  According to the story, he had a girlfriend, a professor’s daughter, in IIT – a relationship that did not work out – and he is amazingly smooth around the heroine of the story, Ananya.

Now, I’ll tell you as a past IIT-ian, we were never smooth around women.  That’s because we had very few women to practice moves on.  I was in a class in IIT Bombay with one girl among 60 boys. IIT guys are, as a result, quite awkward around women.  But our hero is not only comfortable and confident, he is so smooth, knows what to say in front of a girl and what not.  Now maybe this IS Bhagat’s story, and maybe he was this kind of person, but I cannot relate to him.

FAIL!

The Beautiful Heroine

People do fall in love in India in college, more so today than when I was a student.  But why is it necessary that Ananya had to be “Ananya Swaminathan – best girl in the fresher batch”?  Won’t the story work if an ordinary guy meets and falls in love with an ordinary girl?

Again, I cannot relate to it.  And I don’t think it is necessary to have “the best girl” to have a great love story.  So many of us fall in love with regular people and are in love our entire lives.

FAIL!

The Filmi Story

From the start, this book seems like it was written for Bollywood.   Consider: Punjabi boy, Tamizh girl. Boy meets girl in college. They fall in love. Parents don’t approve.  Parents try to marry their kids to other people, doesn’t work.  Lots of drama.  Boy persuades girl’s parents by doing something special for them; girl persuades boy’s parents by doing something special for them.  Finally everyone is happy.

Again, maybe that’s his life, but I cannot relate to it.

But of course, ALL Bollywood films are like this, so maybe the movie will work.  But Bollywood has no connection with real life.

FAIL!

The “Estranged” Father

One of the characters in the book that simply never worked for me was Krish’s dad.  Bhagat has said that this character is based on his real-life father, and I respect that. Unfortunately, we are never told why there is this chasm between Krish and his father, and why, suddenly, there is a change of heart and all is well.  In a movie, there may not be time to explain, but surely a book has enough space – a paragraph or two - to explain why?  There is some mention of domestic violence but it is never fully explored.  If the gulf is truly because of that, then where is this realistically addressed? 

FAIL!

Those are just some of the broad outlines on which the characters did not work for me.  I am not saying this is not Bhagat’s story.  It might well be.  But as a writer, he did not make a strong-enough effort to help me understand his story and empathize.

Equally annoying was the mischaracterization of Tamizh folks in the story.  I am not taking this personally as a Tamizhan, just saying that these descriptions simply don’t match what 99.99% of Tamizh families in Chennai are like.  And again, the net result is that I cannot relate to this.  Either Mr. Bhagat’s wife’s family is truly an outlier, or Mr. Bhagat simply was lazy and did not take the trouble to check anything he wrote, relying instead simply on things he pulled out of his imagination and put them on paper.  I do not know which. Let’s see a few examples.

Unrealistic Tamizh Characters

The Meat-loving, Beer-drinking, Cigarette-smoking Tamizh Brahmin Girl

The heroine, Ananya, is supposed to come from a traditional, Tamizh Brahmin family from Chennai.  Yes, I agree the world has moved on, but as a Tamizh Brahmin, I still go to Chennai once in a while , although I live in Mumbai and grew up in Mumbai.  We still watch Sun TV at home and speak in Tamizh at home, so I have an idea what happens in Chennai and what the people are like.  I also know what it was like 20-30 years ago, when the book is set.

Sure, girls are more modern today, but Chennai has ALWAYS been the most conservative of the four metros in India, and Bhagat is explaining events of 20 years ago, when they were EVEN MORE conservative.  A Brahmin girl even today in Chennai probably will be offended by meat (on average); a girl twenty years ago would probably run away.  But take this exchange from the book:

‘I thought Ahmedabad was vegetarian,’ I said.

‘Please, I’d die here then.’ She turned to the waiter and ordered half a tandoori chicken with roomali rotis.

‘Do you have beer?’ she asked the waiter.

The waiter shook his head in horror and left.

‘We are in Gujarat, there is prohibition here,’ I said.

Or take this scene from a little later in the book, when Krish has come to Chennai to work in the Citibank office there so he can see Ananya more often.  She comes to visit his apartment (which he shares with other professionals) and this is what happens:

When she finally entered my bedroom, I grabbed her from behind.

‘Can we eat first? I haven’t had chicken for a month.’

‘I haven’t had sex for four months,’ I said, but she went out and opened the fridge.

‘You have beer too. Superb!’ she praised and she pulled out a bottle.  She offered it to my flatmates; they declined.  We moved the food and beer to my bedroom.  I didn’t want my friends outside to witness sin as we finished a full chicken and two beers.

So, a chicken- and beer-loving Tamizh Brahmin girl.  She even loves eating chicken direct from the bone.  Wow.  I cannot think of anything more unusual, even today.  Not saying there aren’t some.  I haven’t seen one, and the point is it is not something you can relate to.  Maybe that is Bhagat’s personal experience, but I have a hard time believing this to be real.

The unusualness of the heroine doesn’t stop with this.  She also loves to wear shorts and smoke cigarettes.  And she grew up in Chennai in a middle-class Brahmin family.

‘Your shorts are too short,’ I said.

...

‘Let’s go to Rambhai,’ she said.

‘You are not coming to Rambhai like this,’ I said.

‘Like what?’

‘Like in these shorts,’ I said.

...

I opened the marketing case that we had to prepare for the next day.

‘Nirdosh – nicotine-free cigarettes,’ I read out the title.

‘Who the fuck wants that? I feel like a real smoke,’ she said.  I gave her a dirty look.

‘What? Am I not allowed to use F words? Or is it that I expressed a desire to smoke?’

‘What are you trying to prove?’

‘Nothing. I want you to consider the possibility that women are intelligent human beings. And intelligent people don’t like to be told what to wear or do, especially when they are adults. Does that make sense to you?’

‘Don’t be over-smart,’ I said.

‘Don’t patronise me,’ she said.

Maybe Bhagat wants to project his views that women should be allowed to do whatever men do, and not be judged for that, and I am with him there.  But to pick a girl from a traditional Tamizh middle-class family in the early 1990s and endow her with these attributes seems completely unrealistic to me.  I cannot connect.  Bhagat does not even try to suggest that his TamBram character was a rebel or an outlier, someone being openly defiant of her traditions in doing so.  No, he shows her as deferring to her family’s wishes.  So there is a disconnect here.

Understand something.  I am not passing judgment here.  Nothing wrong if a TamBram girl wants to eat meat or drink beer or smoke cigarettes (though cigarette smoking can kill, so there’s something wrong there).  Just that I’ve never seen it and it certainly isn’t typical, so I find it hard to relate to.  It is like if you wrote a story involving a Hindu boy loving beef.  Nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but it is hard to relate to.  The stories that touch us, that move us, are the ones we can relate to – the ones where you say, “yeah, I could have been that guy,” or, “oh, that reminds me of the time...”  Bhagat’s characters don’t remind me of anyone.

FAIL!

The Extremely Permissive, Liberal but Traditional TamBram Family

Ananya’s family is so unbelievably permissive, it would not be acceptable in a traditional Tamizh Brahmin family even today.  For example, Krish comes to Ananya’s home for the first time since they have shocked their families during their convocation at IIM by announcing that they want to marry each other.  Both families have disapproved, and Krish has come to Chennai to win Ananya’s family over.

When he arrives, she’s not at home, and he can sense her family isn’t exactly thrilled to have him over.  When she finally comes back home (after her evening prayers at the temple – so at home she is traditional, right?), he says,

‘Hi Ananya, good to see you,’ I said, greeting her like a colleague at work.  I kept my hands close to my body.

‘What? Give me a hug,’ she said, and uncle finally lost interest in the Hindu.

‘Sit here, Ananya,’ he said and carefully folded the newspaper.

I was stunned and in disbelief.  This book is set in the 1990s, and even today, in 2014, my wife is careful not to indulge in PDAs with me in front of her parents or mine – and her parents are not even very traditional.  And you expect me to believe that a Tamizh girl from a traditional family in Chennai (they go to the temple, sing Carnatic music at home, etc.) will tell a boy she is not married to, “What? Give me a hug!” in front of her parents?  I’m sorry, it simply doesn’t ring true.

And how about this situation?  Later in the book, Krish decides that he has suitably ingratiated himself into Ananya’s parents’ hearts to ask their permission for their daughter’s hand.  So he invites them for dinner to a restaurant in the Taj Connemara.

‘Sir, for cocktails, I’d recommend Kothamalli Mary,’ the waiter said.

‘Kotha-what?’ I asked.

‘It is like a Bloody Mary, sir, tomato juice and vodka, but with Chettinad spices.’

I looked at uncle. He looked reluctant to nod for alcohol in front of his wife.

‘I want one,’ Ananya said.

Ananya’s mother gave her a sharp look.

‘C’mon, just one cocktail,’ Ananya said.

Sorry, but if you really believe this conversation can happen with a traditional Tamizh Brahmin family, you know nothing about Tamizh Brahmin culture.  It is also puzzling that Bhagat suggests that the father may not want to openly admit his fondness for alcohol in front of his wife, but the daughter openly says she wants a drink.  Incredible.

And, in the same situation mentioned above, Bhagat makes another blooper, unrelated to any understanding of Tamizh culture, but which this IITian can never forgive him for - a science goof-up unworthy of someone who studied at IIT.

Manju picked up his box. ‘Nice, real gold?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘Argentum, atomic number seventy-nine,’ Manju said as he held the ring in his hand.

I cringed when I read this.  Argentum is the chemical name for silver; Aurum is the chemical name for gold.  Here, gold is meant and the character is using the chemical name for silver.  Is this guy an IITian?  How can you be so sloppy?  (The atomic number for gold is indeed correct: 79).

Oh, and one other peeve while I am on this extract.  I have NEVER heard of a Tamizh Brahmin boy from Chennai named Manjunath.  NEVER.  HOWEVER, Manjunath is the most common name you will hear in Bangalore, so my guess is that Bhagat picked it up from his days at IIM and figured "hey, Kannada, Tamil, Bangalore, Chennai, what's the difference? After all, they are all Madrasis!" and gave his Tamizh Brahmin character this name.

FAIL!

Bloopers About Tamizh Culture

There is a scene in the book when Krish visits the Swaminathan home the first time.  Bhagat is trying to set the scene, and tries to show they are traditional Tamizh folks.

‘Oh, Mom is singing,’ she said, upon hearing her mother shriek again.

‘Yes, finally,’ Ananya’s father said. ‘Can you tell the raga?’

...

‘It’s malhar, definitely malhar,” she said.

Uncle nodded his head in appreciation.

I am aghast.  Malhar is a north Indian (Hindustani) raga, and no Carnatic music lover would have the foggiest idea about it.  The least Mr. Bhagat could have done is ask around a little bit or do a google search to find out the names of at least a few Carnatic ragas before writing such nonsense.

Here is another one.  In his attempt to ingratiate himself with the family, Krish hits upon an idea to give Ananya’s mom a chance to perform in public at a function his company is organizing.  Keep in mind that this character is a traditional Tamizh housewife who has learned Carnatic music.  The author makes the correct point that for classical singers, singing light music is not hard – and this is true – but look at the choice of songs here.

‘Have you done any Kaho na pyaar hai songs?  Those are hot,’ I said.

‘Yes, I have. Film songs are easy.  It is...my confidence.’

...

‘Fine, and practice the Ek pal ka jeena song.  It is number one on the charts,’ I said.

Who is Mr. Bhagat writing his books for?  If he wants to include any Tamizh folks, he better shape up.  This is sheer laziness on the part of the author.  Anyone who has spent any time in Chennai will know that Tamizh folks are clueless about Hindi.  Ask the hordes of North Indians who move to Chennai because of their jobs; they complain endlessly about how the people there only speak in Tamizh; how they have no knowledge of Hindi.  And here, this guy is expecting us to accept that in a company function, where most of his co-employees are Tamizh, someone will perform a Hindi film song?  Also, suggesting that Ananya’s mother will just start singing songs from Kaho na pyaar hai?  This is beyond stupid.  Again, it is not too difficult to do a bit of research and find out what Tamizh songs were popular at the time and present Ananya’s mom as singing one of those – far more believable.  Maybe Bhagat is not writing for people who know something about Tamizh people.  The Punjabi or Hindi-speaker will likely not see anything amiss with any of these cultural faux pas, but maybe that’s the bottom line – that people who are actually Tamizh shouldn’t bother to read this book.

FAIL!

Concluding Thoughts

To sum up, “2 States” was a huge disappointment.  The characters and the story seemed very contrived and didn’t work for me, and Bhagat simply doesn’t seem to have cared to do his homework to understand Tamizh culture enough to write a book about it.  Maybe one reason for the poor quality of the book is that “Five Point Someone” was written in 2004, before the big “3 Idiots” controversy that catapulted Bhagat to the national stage; “2 States” was written in 2009, after Mr. Bhagat had become a big star in India.  Maybe this pathetic novel is a victim of complacence brought on by success.

The movie may well work, as Bollywood stories are usually completely divorced from reality and sense, and Indian movie audiences are not particularly demanding of their films in terms of quality.  But the book is a waste of money.

My Old Carnatic Concert Review - of Sanjay Subrahmanyam - from 2006

My Old Carnatic Concert Review – of Sanjay Subrahmanyam – from 2006

Written by Dr. Seshadri Kumar, 05 July 2012

Copyright © Dr. Seshadri Kumar.  All Rights Reserved.

Please see http://www.leftbrainwave.com for more articles by Dr. Seshadri Kumar

You can reach me on twitter @KumarSeshadri

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I was just surfing on Google, looking for people who may have referenced my articles, and I found an old concert review of mine from 2006, when I had gone to Chennai from Bangalore on a business visit during the Madras Music Season.  I thought it might be nice to share this review with the larger group that I am in touch with, on facebook and otherwise, so I am reposting that review. 

I have edited it very slightly and added a few headings for readability.  I haven’t corrected any of the information in it either – for instance, I now know that Thyaga Brahma Gana Sabha is what used to be Vani Mahal.  I enjoyed reading the review again – I hope you do too.

Kumar’s Review of Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s Concert in Chennai on Dec. 14, 2006

Greetings!

I had a chance to visit Chennai on business about two weeks ago, and it happened to be the start of the greatest annual music festival on the planet: The Madras Music Season. This is a music fest of the kind that I have not witnessed anywhere else: more than 1000 music concerts spread over the time of a month, with more than a dozen venues.

The last time I visited Chennai during the season was 1994, so it has been a really long time. But the level of frenetic activity has not changed. I would have liked to, as I did in '94, take 10 days of vacation and spend them full time concert-hopping, trying to catch a lec-dem in the morning and three concerts subsequently during the day, but, alas, I was out of vacation time for this year, and so had to manage my experiences on evenings after long days with clients.

It was still a fun two days, and I caught Sanjay Subrahmanyam at Brahma Gana Sabha one day and OS Thyagarajan at Krishna Gana Sabha the next. (really, the two artists whom I would have wanted to listen to above anyone else ... btw, on a tangent, can you really believe that OS Arun is OST's brother?, ... so anyway, I think that I got really lucky, both being really good and interesting concerts.)

Karpagam Mess in Mylapore

Add to this the joy of experiencing good Tamil food (Udipi food is NOT Tamil Nadu food, BTW ... they put sugar in the sambar, for instance ... how awful! And apart from the authentic sambar, another delight in Madras restaurants is that molaga podi, aka gunpowder, is a standard side in most restaurants ... and it is the real stuff, fiery, rather than the tame stuff you get in the Udipis in Bombay and Bangalore ... hmm ... in Bangalore you DON'T get gunpowder, even in Adyar Ananda Bhavan) in some real authentic restaurants, and you have two unforgettable days in Madras. 

Of course, I can do without the miserable weather in that city (you won't believe that I was getting cooked there in the middle of December ... even Bombay is pleasant at that time), so I will be glad if I got to spend one month of my working year (15 Dec - 15 Jan) in Madras, experience that city and the amazing music, and then go back home.

To briefly finish about the food, before actually heading into the music, there is a great place in Mylapore, I wouldn't think very well-known, where many of the sabhas are, that I would strongly recommend you go to before or after the concerts (if after, skip the tukdas after the main piece/RTP and head for this ... definitely more value for money than that "Chinnanchiru kiLiyE" that you will hear for the 10001st time) that I learnt about from some relatives there. This is an old joint that is at the back of the Mylapore tank, right opposite the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan building there. It is really a hole in the wall, and is called Karpagam Mess (not to be confused with the big Karpagam hotel just yards away).

This is a small family joint that, amazingly enough, has an a/c section, and serves the most amazing ghee dosas I have ever eaten. The surroundings are very humble (when I finished my meal and went to the wash basin, there was no water there, so the attendant stood by my side with a jug of water for me to use to clean my hands, etc. ... not that the place is unhygenic ... just that that day the faucet was not working, but still, a very basic atmosphere), but the food is simply unbeatable. 

They serve the dosas on a plantain leaf, and there is a guy standing close by with a bucket of fantastic sambar, and he keeps refilling your leaf with more sambar as soon as you have finished what is on it. I cannot remember how much sambar I ate that night, but it was a LOT for just one dosa. This place will definitely give Saravana Bhavan or Sangeeta a run for their money. I will unfailingly go back there the next time I am in Chennai.

Modern Sabhas in Chennai

Back to the music season. Much has changed in 12 years. For instance, the Krishna Gana Sabha, which I visited during this trip, is now air-conditioned, and looks a lot better than it did 12 years ago.  Apparently, they redid both the acoustics and the interiors. Very nice. The auditorium has wicker chairs, which, at first, I thought would be crude and uncomfortable, but they turned out to be the most comfortable seats I have ever had the pleasure of sitting in, better than all the second-rate cushioned chairs that we think of as comfortable normally but that we always feel like shifting in. But I digress.

The concert that I am going to talk about was at the Brahma Gana Sabha (it did not exist in '94; btw whatever happened to the Rasika Ranjani Sabha? I did not see any mention of it in the newspapers ... did it get scrapped?  That was another run-down sabha at the time, where, to add insult to injury, I heard a forgettable concert by Gayatri on veena, but that is another story). There are also a bunch of other sabhas that I had never heard of at the time, like the Thyaga Brahma Gana Sabha. Where are all these sabhas coming from? In '94, the Music Academy and Narada Gana Sabha were the only two that really looked polished; now all of them have been spruced up.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Now to Sanjay. I first heard Sanjay in 1994 at the Music Academy in an afternoon concert. I remember hearing a beautiful Janaranjani (nADAdinamATa) and a bEgaDA by him that day, and I was very impressed at the time. I said to my friend who was with me, an older gentleman and a veteran listener, at the time, that Sanjay had the makings of a great musician, and he echoed that opinion, both then and in every conversation we had since then.

Well, Sanjay has not disappointed in the years since in terms of his progress towards that summit, and this concert definitely underlined that point. Sanjay in 1994 was an upcoming young artist; he had been on the concert circuit for a few years, but then there were many who were at that level. Not everyone makes it to the next level, of being a major star. Sanjay has now definitely reached that level. There is an ease and a mastery of the medium and the art that is immediately obvious when you see and hear him now. He has become a seasoned veteran. 

In this evening's concert, Sanjay was accompanied on the violin by S. Varadarajan, the mridangam by B. Satishkumar, and the morsing by Bangalore Rajasekhar.

The Concert

The concert began promptly (as do all concerts in Madras during the season; they really run on a tight schedule and cannot afford to be tardy) at 6.30 pm, and Sanjay began, rather unusually, with "nAda tanumanisham" in cittaranjani. which he sang well for 20 minutes. This was followed by raghunAyaka in hamsadhwani, which was notable for unusual sangatis.

kannaDA

He followed this with an elaborate kannaDA ... now how many people will elaborate on this rAga?  After a nice AlApana, which he stopped at just the right time to avoid getting repetitive, but long enough to show his ability to improvise, he sang a dIkshitar kriti, "gIticakrarthasthithAyai." This raga, especially the AlApana, showed that this was a musician at the height of his creative powers. Highly enjoyable.

dharmavatI

The next piece was a composition in dharmavatI. A long AlApana, after which the violinist displayed admirable musicianship in his solo AlApana, was followed by the composition "aRuLvAi angayar kanniyE ... unmai uyar guNangaLellAm uLLam adhilE" (who's the composer?.... btw, the concert had a LOT of Tamil songs).

kAmbhOjI

This was then followed by an elaborate kAmbhOjI, the main rAga of the concert. Again, Sanjay tried to do a lot of things with the AlApana. Unfortunately, IMO, this fell flat. The thing about kAmbhOjI is that while it is a rAga with a lot of scope, when you have heard a lot of versions by a lot of great musicians, it is hard to come up with new and creative melodic patterns in it. To do something new in something that well-worn requires a lot of creativity. On another day, Sanjay might have been able to rise to the occasion, because he is capable of it, but on this day he simply wasn't up to it in this particular raga. It was clear that he was trying too hard.

But it still showed me what I have seen consistently in his music over the years ... he is not afraid to try new things, to truly create, something that most of his peers are afraid of, in case they fail. Sanjay can fail sometimes, but he is never afraid to try. As they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Sometimes it works brilliantly, sometimes it fails miserably. You can't have one without the other.

But he admirably made up for this in the composition, "Adum deivam nI aRuLvAi iRanDu pAdam tUkki nin tiru pAdam tanjum ena unai adandEn viri prapancam" (apologies for any mistakes).  Really, really good. A long, and very nice neraval (unfortunate most musicians today don't want to do this very pleasurable thing, the neraval, and jump straight to garden variety swaraprasthAra) that displayed some fine musicianship, followed by swaras of mixed quality.  (I think this was a Gopalakrishna Bharati composition. It lasted about an hour in total.)  Overall, a nice main piece.

hamsAnandi RTP

He was back to peak form in the next piece, an RTP (rAgam-tAnam-pallavI)  in hamsAnandi. He was in complete command here. The tAnam was phenomenal. I felt sorry for the violinist, who had a thankless job. He tried gamely, but could not come close. It really was not his fault; it is really hard to follow an act such as this. Sanjay seemed to realize how well he was doing here ... there was absolute confidence and a swagger about his performance that you can understand only when you hear him do the kinds of things he did that day ... the ideas simply seemed to come to him from nowhere.

The pallavI was "karuNincarA lOkAdhAra" ... but don't think of this as an authentic pallavI exposition. No anulOma or vilOma anulOma or trikAlam or anything like that here.  Maybe he got tired of all that, but the pallavI was simply a rAgamAlika of kalpanAswaras. 

He got the audience excited by singing the pallavI swarakalpanas in each rAga in the melodies of the most popular compositions in those rAgas: so, for Shuddha dhanyAsI, "enta nErcinA," kalAnidhi, "cinna nAtana", naLinakAntI, "manaviyAlakin," for bahudhArI, "brOvabArama," and so on. And I don't mean just the pallavis of the songs...for example, he would sing "karuNincara lOkAdhArA" for the "shRI vAsudEvA" anupallavi of "brOvabAramA" as well. The other rAgas were SahAnA and one more that I don't remember.

Tukkadas

Then the short pieces, which, surprisingly, were still enjoyable. A composition in a rAgamAlika, by Subramania Bharathi, followed by a viruttam in rAgas nAdanAmakriyA, sindubhairavI, and sAma, was followed by "nArAyaNA naLinAyata lOcana", a pApanAsam sivan offering in sAma, and then a tukDA of Gopalakrishna Bharathi, "ghaNTA maNi Adudhu," in kAnaDA. The last tukDA in the concert, before the mangaLam was, unfortunately, the infamous "English Note."

Must We Really Have This English Note???

I love Madurai Mani Iyer, and think of him as one of Carnatic music's greatest and most creative vocalists, but I cannot ever forgive him for introducing this abomination into Carnatic music (Yes, I know that it was one of the Dikshitars who started this nonsense a long long time ago, but really, that was his response to colonial rule and an early fascination with western band music ... this junk should really have no place in modern, polished, sophisticated Carnatic music, and MMI did Carnatic music a great disservice by reintroducing it.) It did make him popular, though!  Shows that even the great ones are not beneath pandering to the audience.

Some folks might say that, after all, it is just an entertaining and popularizing device, but it really is just light/pop music.  If this is acceptable, why not go all the way and sing "nI varEnA vA, varATTi pO, nI varalEnA un pEccu kA" in a concert? Why blame Unni for singing "ennavaLE" in a Carnatic concert then? Anyway, that's my pet peeve for you.)  After all this wonderful music, you end up in this morass? It's like having a fabulous dinner and then having plain oats for dessert.

An Evening to Remember

So, overall: a very satisfying, enjoyable evening in Chennai that was worth every paisa of the Rs. 300 (the cheapest class of ticket that was available at the last minute, after I returned from my meeting with the client ... but hey, I got a terrific view ... now this is a good and a bad thing ... the good is that you get to see the performers up close; the bad is ... that you get to see the performers ... well, Sanjay ... close. Not that he is bad-looking; but you don't really want to see him while he is singing ... his face goes into all these contortions that you think something is wrong with him ... now that is not really a pleasure) that I spent.

And that ghee dosai at Karpagam Mess was just the kind of ending to make this a perfect evening.

Cheers,

Kumar