Eight Minutes of Horror

“Are you sure?”, I asked under my breath.

“Dude, shut up…”, he retorted in a harsh whisper, “just follow me.  No one is gonna know!”

“I’m nervous…”

“Shut up!”

The two of us tiptoed up the last flight of stairs leading up to the roof of the school building.  Our eyes darted around anxiously as we climbed onto the roof.  We proceeded one step at time, making sure no one was watching us.  What made our covert operation seem all the more iniquitous was that it was being carried out in broad daylight.  Sweltering sunlight, to be exact.  But we had no option.  It had to be done.

It had all started the previous day.  With the school annual day function just a day away, one of our Std VII classmates had recklessly spilled two fat drops of water directly onto the school tabla dayan, the tonal head, thus bringing the pitch down unevenly.  The prudent thing to do at that juncture would have been to report the incident promptly to one of our teachers.  However, our tabla player, who was my partner and the fearless leader in the above covert operation, had made the executive decision to not report.  “काही तरी करू आपण (we’ll figure out a way)”, he had said.  The three of us had then put our heads together and tried to come up with some idea.  After a few minutes we had hit ourselves up against what we had thought was a brilliant scheme, viz. leaving the dayan under the afternoon sun because the water-spiller, who incidentally was also our harmonium player, had heard from somewhere that ‘उन्हात तबला चढतो (the tabla goes up in pitch under the sun)’.

“What kind of a traitor is he?”, I whispered loudly to my leader as I gingerly closed the stairway door on the roof, “this whole thing was his idea, and he chickens out now!”

“One more word out of you and I will tell Madam that it was your idea… now shut up!”, the fearless leader hissed back at me.

“Okay, okay…”

We found a sunny spot next to the water tank, placed the dayan there, and ran back down the stairs as quickly and quietly as we could.

Later that evening, when everyone was getting ready for the big event, the two of us, all dressed and neat combed etc., went up onto the roof secretly to retrieve the dayan, and lo, there it was!  Disaster staring at us right in our faces!  A gaping hole ran right through the middle of the dayan, bisecting the syahi (the black spot).  It turned out that our double-crossing water-spilling harmoniumist was absolutely right about the sun’s ability to tighten the head of the dayan, for it had tightened it enough to crack under the tension!

Once we returned, the fearless leader intercepted the water-spiller backstage and said certain things that I cannot type here (yes, Std VII kids are old enough!).  I stood about 10 feet away, my heart racing.  20 minutes later, the three of us were on stage.  We were all sweating.  The water-spiller leaned over and asked me the one question he shouldn’t have been asking on stage, especially after having practiced together that whole month: “Which Raag are you singing?”

I gave him a stern look and said in my mind all the things the fearless leader had said 20 minutes ago.

“अरे tension आलंय… समजून घे (Dude, I’m nervous… please understand)!”, he said.

All nerves, I started my alaap in Raag Bihag.  The water-spiller was so nervous that he couldn’t play anything constructive.  Instead he just held down Sa with a trembling finger.  Not the worst situation from a performance standpoint, I solacingly said to myself.  I managed to complete my alaap successfully.

Then, it began.

The moment I started the bandish Kaanhaa Jaa Re Jaa Re in Madhyalaya Teentaal, the fearless leader launched into a totally irrelevant Drut Ektaal on the cracked tabla.  I glared at him in horror.  Our Madam, who was standing in the wings slightly downstage from us started making hieroglyphic gestures toward us.  The severe look on her face sent a shiver down my spine.  There was no doubt that she had noticed the injury the dayan had endured.  The fearless leader, not so fearless anymore, panicked and suddenly changed the theka to an ultra slow Madhyalaya Teentaal.  As I was trying to decipher the weird sounding bols emanating from the cracked tabla to figure out which matra he was on and adjust the bandish line I was singing, I suddenly heard random notes coming from the direction of the water-spiller.  I quickly turned to him and found him frantically searching for the right key to play on the harmonium.  I had no idea what had happened.  Maybe his finger had slipped and he had forgotten where Sa was?   Madam had now gone beet red in her face and looked like she was about to explode.

The performance ended up being a painful 8 minutes of sur searching, bol searching, and soul searching.  The longest 8 minutes of my life without a doubt, not to mention the proper dressing down the three of us received post-performance!

For the next few days, I kept wondering why the water-spiller had played those ridiculously random notes during the performance.  It took me a good couple of weeks to finally learn that the water-spiller had extemporaneously come up with the brilliant idea of matching his Sa with the weird sound of the cracked dayan, and was trying to locate the note while the performance was going on!