Tabalchi

Tabalchi, Yours Truly

Throwback to the last time I had the great honour to meet Anindo Chatterjee in-person, touch his feet, with my guru Masterji (Amitabha Buddha), a disciple of Anindo Chatterjee. Through learning tabla and doing my best to return to it no matter how many hours, days, weeks, and even years I may have strayed away from it for, returning to tabla is always a mental-physical psychosomatic health check-up for me, and a spiritual saviour. 

I savour each moment in audience of such Masters of music, men and women who understand the whole life as music, who dedicate their whole life to music- and teach countless students. 

Ever since I went to an Indian reservation near the 4 corners of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona and took home a drum, singing and beating along to "Humma humma humma (ek a ho Gaye ham ur tum), I have been a percussionist (unless you count piano, also a percussion instrument, which came first). 

I wish all the love in the world to all my teachers, be they my friends, my acquaintances, strangers, frenemies--enemies (the one's I learn from how not to be)- I hope you know who ya'll are to me. I never forget a friend and I never forget a lesson, even if time elapses in the interim of my exercising of these lesson. 

Music is universal, compositions plan the way and distill the past into crystallised packages, much like the packages of data sent through the internet protocols. 

How you play music is what matters, with what in your mind, what love in your heart, what feelings in your skin, what beliefs about where to begin? "With what does the Science of Logic [philosophy] begin?" (George Wilhelm Frederique Hegel)

I pose that question to ya'll. Where have you been, tell me, where do you want to go, how can I help you get there, and which pathways will be for the betterment of all? "Via the spectrum road"? - (Tony Williams Lifetime)

signing off...your tabalchi

Sanam Manas