The Violinist - Part I

Early this morning (or was it last night?), my faithful dream machine beamed up a scene where I'm back in college and applying for a week's leave. What for? I don't know/remember. But what is clear is that I have a heavy sense of foreboding as I submit the letter with much apprehension and anxiety to the big boss of the institution himself. As if I were committing a sin. But I can easily rationalize the dream given the notoriety that my alma mater has earned for itself concerning issues of student discipline. Here is a related entry, if you really should know. Anyways, as I woke up, this blast from the past dream opened up the floodgates to memories from the four years that I spent pursuing a degree in engineering. And thus inspired me to weave a post from a college anecdote.

This was an incident that happened in my first year (freshman class). The college day function, an event that had as much potential for fun as a dentist appointment, was around and preparations were afoot in right earnest. A bit about the way this was held in our college wouldn't be out of place here. I'm sure you have, at some point in time, attended a birthday party of a one-year old. The one where all the arrangements are made by the parents: they decide the guests, the menu, the theme and they decide when the party begins and ends. All that the toddler is required to do, as he is carried in arms to the table, is to look pretty and try to blow out the solitary candle. Well, our college day festivities had the feel of one such party where we, the students, were the toddlers, while the staff and management played the role of strict parents. Any chance for the students to either exhibit or acquire organizational skills were clinically nipped in the bud and then stomped over for good measure. All that the student body had to do was show up, behave well and put on an impression of having been entertained and everybody went home happy. [Atfer 4 years of this routine, a lot of us were well prepared to take on real life where an impression of being happy was called upon more often than the annual affair at college.]

The festivities would have an unmistakable Talibanesque flavor with clearly demarcated events for the two genders. Each side of the male-female divide would come up with a perfunctory dance performance, a clumsy fashion show and the regulation skit peppered with insipid jokes. Not to mention the inevitable "Modern Ramayana" or "Modern Mahabharatha" set to the latest songs that got thrown into the mix. But the one event that stood out was the musical extravaganza where each batch contributed to the cacophony. [In keeping with the rules we were operating under, I can't remember of any duets being performed as that would require a male student to share the dais with a girl student.] This event also saw the odd member or two of the teaching staff put their vocal skills to use for something other than peddling engineering concepts. Usually with varying degrees of success. Participation from other colleges was deemed illegal and any notions vaguely resembling fun and frolic were deemed blasphemous. In short, we were the Afghanistan of engineering colleges.

Since we were in the first year, nobody quite knew what our individual musical abilities were, and the parents, err, the management were scouting for students gifted with the ability to play various instruments. We were informed that most performers had been identified and that the first year orchestra only required the services of a single violinist to be deemed complete. Which was why a lady from the office entered our class that fateful day, paper and pen in hand, looking to hunt down that elusive violinist among the studious pursuers of academic excellence.

This was a few months into the year and clear groups had already been formed based on mutual interests (cricket), abilities (cricket) and we were a bunch of guys that stuck around, collaborating over many assignments, class tests and other academic misadventures. Besides the many hours of playing cricket under the sun, that is. We were in our teens, brimming with creative energy to be squandered on anything that held the faintest promise of fun or adventure. So it came to pass that we proposed, rather loudly, the name of a friend from this group, R, for the vacancy of the violinist. For some reason, the rest of the class that had been silent till that moment, somehow sniffed out his hidden musical abilities and soon his name was being cried out by a vocal group. The guy looked up in genuine surprise and started to protest but the rest of us were loud enough to convince the office lady that she had discovered a second L Subramaniam in I year, section D.

It must be added, for the benefit of the innocent readers, that we were fully aware that he was as accomplished a violinist as Pratibha Patil is a president. For non-Indian readers (just play along, will you?), he was not a violinist even by the widest stretch of imagination. The guy was a fine chap alright: he was a good friend, one could count on him to knock up a few quick runs in a tight run chase, was always up for some fun, and didn't earn the displeasure of the rest of us with a startling display of academic brilliance. Ever. But truth be told, he couldn't play the violin to save his life. On a good day his musical knowledge would have perhaps allowed him, at the most, to identify the cello as a XXL violin. Not his fault entirely, mind you. Here is a thousand words on his abilities:

(The image is from here where there are a few more funny cartoons and a couple of violinist jokes to boot, if you are interested.)

I don't know what held R back from making it clear to the lady that he had no appreciable skills in the fine art of playing a violin. Or handle any object with the potential to put forth a musical note for that matter. Perhaps he had noticed that the otherwise indifferent girls in the room were now paying attention to the musician in the class. Or perhaps he was hesitant to rise and announce aloud that he was violin-challenged in a class with a significant number of members of the opposite sex. [He had perhaps worked out the "I-chose-not-to-play" defense in his mind already, if at all questioned by a girl later.] Or maybe he simply got carried away by the moment while his name was being cried out aloud. Whatever the reason, and if memory serves, he stopped his protests, flashed a bright smile, waved his hand at the office lady who was watching the proceedings with marked indifference, and sat down as she pencilled in his name with an air of finality. Whether he had intended to catch a hold of her later after class and clarify the whole thing is one for conjecture.

From years of watching Discovery Channel, you're familiar with the routine of capturing specimens of rare and endangered species for relocation to safe enclosures for study and protection, right? I'm talking about that kakhi clad white guy, chest deep in a murky river somwehere in Borneo trying to capture a python that looks like a freight train or the one sawing off the horn of a sedated, endangered rhino in Botswana to implant a transponder (and you are trying not to gag on the heavenly sambhar sadham that you are savoring). Well, since Albert Einstein, I suspect that violinists with more than a passing interest in science/engineering have found a spot on the endangered species list. So much so that, whenever one is spotted, immediate capture and scrutiny by the authorities follows. I can offer no other explanation for the office lady's reappearance in less than five minutes since the commotion from her first had died down, with a message that the director of the college wanted to meet R.

Soon with the rest...