About Indian music

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I am far away from home. It is early in the morning.

I am far away from home. It is early in the morning. J. is already up. He has made his bed. I am sharing his room. Here is Js bed, here are his slippers, and here is his pyjama and the nightgown. Here is his violin cassette; here are his booklets with notes. I hear him move a chair in the kitchen. I hear water running out of the tap. I hear water filling a metallic pot. I hear again a chair moved on the stone covered floor. I hear the sound of pages being turned over. I hear J. humming. For seconds I hear agitated steam passing through a narrow passage followed by immediate whistling alarm. I hear chairs pushed hastily aside. And very soon I smell the strong aroma of coffee tempting me to get up and join J. However, for the time being I prefer to stay in my bed. I hear Js mother. She says she is ready now. I hear J. open the door of his room softly, picking up his violin and the metronome hastily. He has now left his room closing the door again behind him. I hear J. tuning his violin, his mother pressing the keys of the piano. Now I hear J. clearing his throat as if getting ready to sing. There is silence for a couple of seconds. Perfectly smooth the first touch of the bow on the strings. The piano partaking like answering and questioning and then, again, accompanying passionately the singing strings or is it responding to Js. inner singing? The air molecules all around me begin to translate swing and rotate in resonance with tunes so melancholic that I begin to long for a place on my father’s bed exactly between my mother and him. But how do these molecules now look like? Maybe they are sublimely round holding heavens of anxiety. Maybe I feel them to be round because they enter the microcosms I brought with me from home now so obviously and make me shivering while I lie in this soft and warm bed.

I hear J. stop playing now and then, the piano abruptly breaking into silence. I hear J. exchanging a few words with his mother and then they go on and on for hours. Since many days J. is practicing the Andante of the Sonata in F by Mozart. I listen to it day after day and numerous times each day. I already know all the notes of it by heart. But with every preceding day the aura of the melodies comes to me like known odours enriched slightly by some new mysterious component, the same notes making the air vibrate differently from day to day. But perhaps all this exists only in my imagination? After all, the notes are written there, key, time and tempi given. I believe J. and his mother study the notes first and as they read their brain processes those to acoustic signals releasing immediate streams of emotions making their heart beat accordingly. Every heartbeat is definite passing away for ever and thus the sound of one and of the same note consequently presents itself to me in changing colours. Every fermata and legato in accord with the respective breathing rhythm of the interpreters. Or perhaps it is me, the passive recipient, who learns to listen differently with every following day? But then what do I know about all these things?!

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