(Click image to go to The Hindu)
Two days ago, I enjoyed a thoroughly classic Bhairavi swarajathi rendering. Yesterday, I heard a talk by Prof. Nagamani Srinath who demonstrated the slow, masterly rendering of padams as she had learnt from Brindamma. Yes, it is true (as our survey showed) that there are many takers even today for true classicism, with no 'T20 or TV Vizha' instant gratification demands.
I don't think I'm wrong to say that purveyors of Carnatic music are very much assailed by today's pressures to give instant gratification. Cricket, the other abiding passion among rasikas here, has the same challenges, of preserving classical weighty idioms like GR Vishwanath's square cuts and Gavaskar's classic drives and Prasanna's or Warnie's flights of spin.
Nirmal Shekar, my favourite sports writer, says it with great lucidity:
Can you imagine someone attempting to write Hamlet on Twitter? For all its zeitgeisty allure, T20 is a bit like this. It is seemingly timely and inventive, but ultimately it is a flawed attempt to compress something that does not lend itself to compression — the classical form of the game.
As conscious beings, as members of the most intelligent species on the planet — even if we say that ourselves — we need time to reflect, whether we are in a sports arena, a concert hall or in a movie theatre.
We value Test cricket because it gives us time to pause. And sport, as everything else in life, is ultimately down to values, down to what we attach value to and why we do so.
