The Early Days
The scratchy
banshee wail of the violin in my untrained hands still echo in my ears,
dragging me back into that gloomy, carpeted back-room, back to good old Miss
Yeoh and her monosyllabic admonitions. And pain – oh the pain shooting down my
arms and tingling my fingers as I struggled with that unwieldy bow. My first
violin classes, all those years ago – exist in my memories with a vividness
that only traumatic events have. Today, I can look back at that time with a
nostalgic smile, but that wasn’t always the case.
It was in
Malaysia, where I spent a lot of my childhood; in the late nineties – a
decidedly different era. The world seemed simpler, and hardships in life
amounted to unfair quantities of homework, and having to wake up at six in the
morning for school. One day, my parents suggested that I learn to play an
instrument. I had no clue what learning an instrument would entail, but it was
an alluring idea, and I said yes.
I can’t
remember how I decided on the violin, but once the instrument was decided, all
I needed to do was buy the violin and sign up for lessons. My dad drove me to
an after-school activity centre near my home, which conducted drawing and music
classes on weekends.
During the
registration, I was introduced to my tutor, one Miss Yeoh, whose skin seemed to
be made of that hard white plastic that they make switchboards with. I can’t
remember her face, except the steely remoteness of her eyes There was something almost robotic about her, and it gave me a bad feeling. However, despite my misgivings, I decided to go
ahead with it. More than anything, it was the excitement I had felt when
holding the violin in my hands, that got me into it.
My first
violin was a thing of joy. I enjoyed rubbing the yellow stuff they called rosin
onto the horsehair of my bow – it was curious how a bit of dried pine tree sap
could suddenly coax such a strident sound out of the instrument - it seemed like
magic. But my enthusiasm was soon shattered. In my first few classes, Miss
Yeoh, taciturn, grumpy and decidedly unpleasant, would tolerate about ten
minutes of the banshee wailing, before going down for her first of several cups
of tea. She’d return about half an hour later, smelling of cigarettes, and say
“whai you no pway lah!!” and then stalk off again, leaving me alone in that
gloomy, high-ceilinged back-room. She always wore grey, and the lack of colour
added to the brooding melancholy of the place.
I don’t think
Miss Yeoh considered it important to explain to me what exactly I was supposed
to be aiming for while practicing, or why it was even important to practice. My
class usually went like this: She would give me a series of curt instructions
on preparing my violin (that's right, violins need to be prepared before they can be played). Then, after telling me to repeatedly play the A
note until it at least sounded like it came out an instrument, she would simply
walk out.
Now before I
go on, I must say that this isn’t an indictment against learning music as a
child at all. In fact, I really think it’s important for every kid to learn
music, at least a little bit. But I also believe that it is a teacher’s
responsibility to first introduce a young student to the joys of listening to
and creating music. This goes without saying, but it’s strange how rare it is
to find a truly inspiring music teacher – maybe I was just unfortunate in this
regard.
The rigours of
practice and all the aching limbs can seem pointless unless you have a clear
idea of what you can expect at the end of it. Maybe if Miss Yeoh spent the
first few classes playing records of famous classical violinists, or her
favourite pieces – just making me listen, I might have grown to appreciate the
numbing pain in my knuckles.
But I hardly
knew what was going on. Why did I have to deliberately inflict pain on myself,
endlessly dragging that godforsaken bow over those strings? How was this better
and more meaningful than playing with my digimon? Who was going to even
appreciate it if I did manage to get a sound out it? It didn’t make sense to my
eight year old, music-illiterate mind.
On odd days,
Miss Yeoh wouldn’t show up at all – and I would have to sit in a Chinese
drawing class where the teacher would teach us to draw ducks. There I learnt to
say “thank you teacher” in Cantonese, which is probably the most useful thing
I’ve learnt in that place. After a couple of months, in which time the only
discernible improvement in skills was that my A note now sounded like a frog croaking,
I decided that Miss Yeoh’s reign of terror would have to end.
The next
morning I had to remain innocuous, and tried my best to blend in with the
living room furniture. The plan was to escape the attention of my parents by
pretending to be a potted plant, hoping that maybe it might slip their mind that their son had a
violin class to be taken to. But my ruse did not last long. It soon became
apparent to discerning members of the household that a little squatting boy
wasn’t likely to be part of the living room furnishing. I was picked up bodily,
and violin case was thrust in my hands. As I was being ushered out of the room
to wear my shoes I started to increasingly panic. At the doorway I did the only
thing I could – I starting bawling at the top of my voice.
It had the
desired effect. Parents halted mid-push, and I remember I made a scene. Slowly I
related to them the tyranny of the insufferable Miss Yeoh, and between bawls
and whimpers, why I thought she was determined to mutilate me by forcing me to
play until my arm fell off.
I was
accordingly consoled, and promised that I would never again be dragged to that
godforsaken place. But the disappointment in my parents’ faces was evident. I’m
sure they had imagined a little Yehudi Menuhin in their midst one day, and now it didn't seem like that was going to happen.
It wasn’t the
last time that I tried to learn the violin though. Three years later, when I’d
moved back to India, I joined classes again, this time for the Carnatic violin.
I would like to say that I made a valiant effort, but it was evident from the
start that this was a disaster waiting to happen.
My new teacher taught at a nearby school. He was
a fossil of some kind, kept alive with frequent cups of coffee and copious
amounts of grey holy ash smeared on his forehead. I began to learn that grey was a
violin teacher’s favourite colour. We sat on the floor in a circle around him, as he rocked and creaked like a boat, exhorting us to play, play, play.
He played the
violin well, but while he could make his violin talk with lucidity, it seemed
that he himself had once stuffed a large sponge into his mouth, and forgotten
it there. Incoherent teachers are something that all kids eventually get used
to, but there was another problem. My grey old guru was a purist from the old
school, and had never taught someone left-handed before. He didn’t seem to
think that left-handedness was possible, and often looked at me as if I was an
abomination of nature. “There is only one way to hold a violin,” he would tell
me pointedly, “and you’re doing it the other way around. You won’t learn
anything this way.” That was a great source of encouragement.
If I remember
right, that class ended three months later, with the him angrily complaining
that ‘I had no hope with any instrument’, since I kept using the wrong hand. I
made no further attempts with the blasted piece of polished wood, and charitably
‘handed down’ my violin to my young cousin. It was the right decision – he has really learnt to play on that violin, and has become a bit of a virtuoso
now.
I never
touched the instrument again after that. Looking back, maybe I could have tried
a bit harder. There’s a twinge of regret now and then. But the thing is, my two
failed attempts at trying to learn the violin in some curious way sparked my
interest in music. Today, music is a big part of my life, and at the end of the
day, I’m thankful for that.
