Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan
As veteran singer S. Sowmya breaks into Nannu Vidachi—Tyagaraja’s Reethi Gowla classic—I scan across the hall, compelled to indulge in number-crunching for want of better engagement. There are seventy-three in the hall, including the balcony. Give or take five, plus ten coming and going. Today is Sunday, mind you, and other sabhas are yet to go live. Where are the rasikas? What inspiration can a performer possibly draw when singing to chairs?
Instead of seeking to review the katcheri—which I may be incompetent to, yet have always dared to—the alternative is to review the cuisine in the canteen, Subbudu-style. Why not, I wondered, as she briskly launched into Bantureethi Kolu in Hamsanadam (my raga detection is Jack-and-Jill memory based, I concede), to keep myself engaged, as I am always prone to in such katcheris. And when there are sites willing to carry such “inane” pieces, indulgence comes easy, you see.
And yet, to speak of Margazhi Mahotsav today feels strangely anachronistic. A Sunday afternoon, no traffic snarls, no competing marquee concerts, and still the hall yawns. The season that once overflowed into pavements now echoes in auditoria. Perhaps the rasika has not disappeared; he has merely retreated. He sits at home, veshti loosened, coffee within arm’s reach, remote control in hand, sampling live streams the way one once sampled kutcheris by hopping sabhas. Comfort has triumphed over commitment.
So I wandered into the canteen, that eternal second venue of Carnatic life, where attendance never quite dips. A poor man’s Kasi halwa, rava dosa, and filter coffee combo stared back at me—modest, dependable, and reassuringly present. If the hall had empty seats, the canteen had occupied stools. The rasika, it seemed, had voted with his feet, if not with his ears.
I entered with the same trepidation with which one approaches a much-advertised prodigy. The menu promised abundance, but one has learnt to distrust promise in Margazhi. The dosa arrived crisp and punctual—unlike audiences. The halwa tried to be grander than it needed to be, much like sabha brochures. The sambar was over-eager, pressing itself upon the senses when restraint would have served better. One wondered whether balance, that elusive grail in music and cooking alike, had quietly exited the building.
Filter coffee, at least, did not disappoint. Strong, unsentimental, and utterly indifferent to turnout figures, it did its job. As I stood there, glass in hand, it struck me that the canteen had grasped a truth the sabhas seem to have missed: you must go where the rasika is. If he prefers his Margazhi at home—streamed, paused, replayed—perhaps that is where the season now truly lives. The music still flows, the kalyanis still bloom; only the address has changed.
