My newest Hobby

Playing the Harmonium.

Those who know me well also know my passion for music, especially old hindi songs. For long, I have had only my voice (comes out like a chirp and quite nasal too) as companion, now I also have the Harmonium, which I shall for the remainder of this post call a Paytee (in Marathi).

The most important aspect for a student of music is to identify the right ‘Tune’ or ‘Sur’ for a particular song. A song has many parts, the verse, the chorus, the bridge, etc. … google it up and thou shall be enlightened. But however you start and however you end, you need to be in the right tune. Its like starting a trek from the main road, getting lost in the jungle, but finding your way back to the road.

While I can rave and rant about what I just mentioned above, it is something else to put to work. Which is where the Paytee is the perfect solution.

You never know whether you are good, bad or ugly unless you get feedback, and you never get feedback from bathroom tiles.

But it is unnerving to sing before any audience, even if it be your own family. If you get smiles and a few claps, you could think that you are in tune perhaps. But if you see puckered up faces (like they chewed on a sour lemon), you realize that you have either croaked like a frog in its first monsoon, or bellowed like a bull squatting in the middle of Ghatkopar traffic.

I remember competitions at college. Some blokes were incredibly melodious, some were tolerable and some were plain awful. Some guys had these strange accents which carve a different connotation for the actual verse, as does the notorious Himesh Reshamaiya.

When I was studying in the UK, in the early days I used to let go a few of our local tunes at full blast while at bath. I had no idea that the room walls in UK flats are so thin that my whining used to disturb all my other flatmates who were trans-Atlantic and hence had no clue what I was up to. Our local songs typically start with ‘aa aa aaah … “, and my flatmates opined I was going through some excruciating pain in my tummy. I reduced my decibel levels to ziltch for the remainder of my stay.


Back to the future, my in-laws gave me the Paytee a few months ago. Anjali used to play it a lot when she was a kid. Over time she lost touch, so we thought it was a good idea to rekindle the flame. Plus it would be ideal for us both.

I always wanted to learn to play an instrument. I started learning to play the Tabla when in school. But like most things that I start, I gave it up. So it was after more than a decade that I had another opportunity.

On weekends, I play with full gusto. I learnt to play the initial few notes from Anjali, and now I can play a song with some reasonable comfort thanks to her. I hope to develop fluency in about a year’s time.