 "What about their ignorance of lakshaNa," I asked. They were known to commit mistakes in the rAga. I have heard some of the pundits at the Academy say that the nagaswara vidwans set a lot of bad trends. They brought Suddha madhyamam into Shanmukhapriya and so on.
"LakshaNa!! Huh! If you can sing with the kind of lakshya they had, who cares for lakshaNa," he shouted.
I could not help agreeing with him. I started thinking aloud. Are we getting too caught up with the concept of lakshaNa? LakshaNa or grammar was essential to Carnatic music. We are proud of it in the context of world music. We pride ourselves in the fact that this music adheres more to grammar than any other system in the world. But where has this put us musicians? We are singing like robots, the same phrases, the same boundaries, the same music. Everyone sounds the same. All tODis sound the same. The timbre and texture of voices make them sound different. This is only at a very peripheral level.
I started singing bEgaDa. He just stopped me and sang a snatch. Wow! What music! He had sung a phrase that I would never have dared attempted. A flat madhyama on the way down. It was odd. But it was beautiful. Would I ever have the guts to sing like this? Could I stretch the laskhaNa of a rAga? Would this help in evolving the rAga? After all, did not bEgaDa evolve over time? Is bEgaDa today sung the same way as it has been illustrated in books that are a 100 years old? How do rAgAs evolve? Do they evolve at all? Do they change at all?
 "Have you heard this phrase before? It was a patent of the Keeranur Brothers."
I suddenly woke up with a start. The Palm III XE was lying on my stomach. I was actually sweating.
"Aarthi! Can you come here a minute?" I called my wife. I sang her that phrase I had just heard. She looked at me and said, "Very nice. Where did you hear it?"
I told her about my dream. The phone rang. It was violinist
R K Shriramkumar. Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer had passed away 30 minutes ago.
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A short story - 3
