Learning to play the mridangam

Right In The Middle

Tiff between siblings is not uncommon. But the outcome sometimes can be painful for the winner— as was in my case, with a lesson to boot. My sister, who was learning Carnatic vocal music, had a Shruthi box to provide a drone during practice. I often fought for possession of what looked like a small transistor with knobs to fiddle with.

I started pestering my parents for one. That set the ball rolling. I was tactfully exposed to a wide array of percussion instruments that were not only bigger in size but also costlier than the Shruthi box. Given my tender age, frame of mind, unbridled energy level and total lack of discipline, the Tambura was considered too heavy to hold and the Morsing too fragile to handle. Of course, the violin too fell out of favour as its strings not being made of iron or steel would not last long in my hands. Needless to say, the ghatam— the clay pot— was never in the reckoning. All this left them with only one choice. One instrument I could go ‘bang, bang’ with. I walked into their trap to have a go at the mridangam.

My first lessons were under the tutelage of a mridangam maestro. As the instrument was a little heavy and bulky, considering my age, it was placed on a small rug before me, while I sat cross-legged on the floor beside it. It was all fun to tap the two sides of the instrument with my fingers and palm to produce different notes. At the end of the hour-long class each day, the Vidwan’s wife would offer me a generous helping of hot sweet pongal and crisp medhu vadas as prasad. But all the fun and excitement ended there.

Back home, I was ‘rewarded’ with an indigenous cost-effective mridangam— on the advice of my teacher— an empty ‘Dalda dabba’— the short cylindrical vanaspathi tin— for me to practice on and that too in the wee hours each day.

To add to my misery, tongue twisters had to be pronounced in increasing rapidity to sync with the sounds emanating from my fingers hitting the hides on both sides of the mridangam.

At the end of the day, I had learnt my lesson the hard way.