wutheringheights

It was an October afternoon in 2001 I walked into the house of violin maestro Lalgudi G Jayaraman with a ‘sorry’. I was late by almost an hour for the interview that I had fixed with him over phone a week ago. But there was no problem. With his trademark humility, he invited me to his house. “Music is like a painting. The seven swaras denote seven colours...” He began the conversation with music. “A violinist should be a vocalist,” he explained, “Otherwise he can’t play the lyrics correctly.” Lalgudi Jayaraman was trained in Carnatic vocal, but he later chose violin because he was fond of the instrument. “Violin gives an extension of my imaginations. It’s a part of me. I can’t see it separately,” he said. When I asked him about the violin that renowned American violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin presented to him while attending the Edinburgh Music Festival in 1965, he smiled and started talking about Menuhin. “He loved our music, art and culture. He was a good friend.” Wh

Eight years ago, I had a tough time inside Landmark. I spent almost an hour inside the bookstall, holding “Things Fall Apart” on my right hand and “Anthills of Savannah” on my left. Both the books had the name of the author 'Chinua' on top of the covers and 'Achebe' at the bottom. Between Chinua and Achebe, there was a line of praise, which read: “The Classic Bestseller With More Than 2 Million Copies in Print.” But the interesting part was the one at the bottom, written by Nadine Gordimer, a South African writer. “Chinua Achebe is gloriously gifted with the magic of an ebullient, generous, great talent.” Even though I wanted to buy “Anthills of Savannah” (I liked the title due to some strange reason), it was “Things Fall Apart” that finally found a place in my bag. Unlike in the cases of Kafka and Pablo Neruda, no one really introduced me to the world of Achebe. I don’t know how Achebe entered my world though. Was it because of the African tag? Back home, I started