This article is an obituary. To a long-time friend and associate. The many hours I have spent in this association of over six decades, is, alas, at an end. I will miss the times spent – times that have been nothing short of sheer bliss – relaxing in the confident knowledge that I was in secure, reliable company. Those happy days have evaporated. The sense of void that I am experiencing is excruciating. But I guess that is the way it has got to be. Any organism, living or inanimate, has to decay and die sometime or the other. Rich people die as surely as the poor.
Huge cities, mountains and rivers decay and vanish, and so do big organisations and sabhas. One day I will also go. And when that happens, there will be a different kind of bliss – for I am a strong believer in Sanatana Dharma. This bliss, is just an admixing with the Brahman. This is my belief, my faith.
But this is not about me.
This is about my dear, late companion, the Madras Music Academy.
I always thought my companion would stay on for ever. That my grandchildren, and their grandchildren, would enjoy its warm bosom, and derive the kind of contentment I have done these many years. Staying in faraway Delhi, and later, working in the Army, coming to Chennai always brought with it the promise of a tryst with divinity, an auditory admittance to the hall of the Muse. Where one could wash away all one’s pains, and rejoice in the glorious company of the Nadabrahmam. And saying a temporary goodbye, leave the premises with the certain knowledge that I could come back for more of the nectar anytime I chose. As I stepped out into the world, the perception of the divine would continue in the form of recollected phrases of beautiful music from within the hallowed auditorium of the Academy.
But no more. The Music Academy is dead.
The unthinkable has happened. I recently read a Nobel Laureate’s book comparing our body to a city. He points out that as we walk through a great city like Chennai or Delhi or London, it is impossible for us to imagine that the bustling, thriving city could one day cease to exist. Yet, like our body, sprawling, majestic cities have regularly disappeared from the face of our planet. If such decay and destruction is possible to such large organisms – for cities are merely the sumtotal of the actions of a large number of living organisms – how can a relatively small organism like the Music Academy hope to remain immortal? The shell – fossil – may remain for some time after it physiologically ceases to exist.
The Music Academy is dead. Only the brick and mortar remain.
And I feel somewhat guilty, as a doctor and as a long time rasika. The symptoms were there – worsening over the last few years, but I – and my fellow rasikas – did not see it. Or saw it and did not care. A serious build-up of arrogance, the first sign of a demented organisation. Then, the slide to loss of touch with reality. In other words, the arrival of delusion. Then the wilful blanking of memory of all the things that the original forefathers had conceived and passed on, resulting in loss of discriminatory capacity. All finally culminating in the death, decay and destruction of the organisation. Krishna had warned us of all this in the Bhagavad Gita verse 2:63, but even when we saw it all coming, we did nothing. How were we to know that the poison would bear His name? And the instrument of destruction would be disguised as His flute? The arrogance was in the form of refusal to accept any suggestions from the outside – while the entire world moved on to online bookings, the Music Academy stuck resolutely to archaic “token” system, the bumptious committee declaring that if one wanted admittance, one better follow whatever route one is offered, else get lost, there were others waiting to tow the line; notice of cancellations or change of programmes thrown to the salivating rasikas at the very last minute; vainly assuming that empty front rows actually conveyed the number of donors and patrons – and who cares if such mighty denizens had no interest in the art forms? Then came the delusion that political clout was enough to get away with any wrong doing, to hell with the hoary traditions of the past! And that indiscriminate policies could be enforced as there was no need to be answerable to anyone (except the ones holding the leash tight)? Sadly, in all this, the possibility of self-destruction was never given a second thought. Immortality was taken for granted!
Now death is knocking at the doors. And there is no remedy in sight.
If only the wise among us had taken serious note of these symptoms and insisted on a regime change! We did not, and so we are now attending the last rites of the organisation that had transmuted itself from a gentle giant to an ugly monster, drunk in its own conceit!
The music academy is dead.
But in life, we need to pass through the various stages of grief, and move on. To the next sabha that will replace the dead Academy. Time to wake up and be vigilant, lest we allow the next one also to commit the same mistakes and die in our collective hands.
(Disclaimer: The views expressed of the author are personal)
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