No show like the Chennai Season

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: Octogenarian violinist TN Krishnan is a picture of composure as he coaxes the most transcendental sounds out of his ancient violin. As the anchor says at the end of the concert, all the painstaking hard work to get the festival off to a start becomes a distant memory as the opening salvo of his Bhairavi stirs the soul as only a great raga at the hands of a great master can. But the concert is not all santa rasa, not all total surrender. It has joy and playfulness in considerable measure, too, when Krishnan, from worshipping at the altar of Tyagaraja or Dikshitar, moves on to marvel at the pranks of the little blue god as well. There is virtuosity too, a master class for aspiring musicians. You settle down to enter a state of deep emotion and contemplation.

But wait! Here’s an uncle in the second row, apparently lost to the soulfulness of the music just a moment ago, now engaged in loud conversation on his cellphone. You give him a dirty look and he simply closes his eyes and continues his conversation. He goes on for all of 15 minutes, unmindful of the havoc he is creating. Another cellphone rings two rows from you. Another uncle and aunt have an equally loud conversation to your right. They are actually discussing the concert, but it is no consolation to you that uncle is getting a free lesson in raga-identification when you can’t hear TN Krishnan’s violin, the purpose of your visit to the sabha.

People constantly walk in and walk out throughout the concert. The videographer decides he must have a better view and I, seated right behind him, lose mine altogether. Children wail. Mothers run out in panic. Krishnan carries on regardless, like a phlegmatic Sunil Gavaskar or Rahul Dravid focussed on his job while wickets tumble all around him. He even beams at his accompanists and the public, as though all was well with the world and he loved the restless wanderers determined to ruin his concentration.