Nothing to learn

I have found myself audience or eavesdropper to the embarrassment-filled query of some very real people - "I want to learn how to appreciate Hindustani classical music. How does one do it? How do I learn to do that?" There is a genuine sense of curiosity sprinkled with signs of defeated attempts in the eyes of the asker. The sincerity is conspicuous because the appreciation of arts is something that can be so easily faked, particularly in a cowardly society like ours, that one doesn't require any cunning or even minuscule intelligence to pull off the disguise of a connoisseur. So, only an honest fool would put themselves through the embarrassment of asking.

Before I go ahead, I must disclose my ignorance. I don't know the answer to that question - how do you learn to appreciate the eternal, the deep, the beautiful, the 'pious' classical music? However, I don't think there's anything to learn. You listen, you feel, and you listen more. As a kid, I always thought that those who had the perfect pitch, those who could identify the 'taal' at the first beat of the tabla, or those who could identify the 'swaras' were the ones who could truly appreciate classical music. All these are inescapable if you are learning to sing or play an instrument, i.e., if you are putting yourself through the tumultuous journey of self-expression and momentary performance. But they are ornamental if you are in the audience. There is nothing more miserable than knowing all these and still not being able to perform. It's a handicap. It's like knowing the road but not being able to drive. However, some people will sit in the audience of a concert as instructors to their peers and critics of the performer. To such people, I wish the continuation of their pretentious, miserable, impotent, and hypocritical lives. Since only the hypocrites (or self-unaware morons) would flash their handicaps.

There is nothing to learn because classical music is ridiculously human, perfectly natural. Stripping down the clutter of instruments in an orchestra, the scales in the symphony, and even the meaningfulness of lyrics, this music introduces you to the naked sound. It's demanding not your attention but your emotions. It begs you to smile, cry, and feel everything that you have ever avoided in life. Listening to classical music is like confessing to silence. If you can be human, there is nothing to learn. If you can feel, you don't have to learn to appreciate - you are appreciating. If it helps you fall asleep after a day that has been unfaithful to you, or accompanies you on a restive night, or makes you smile in a way that lets you dismiss all reality, or makes the irresistible and involuntary tears drop from the eyes too shy and ashamed to open - you don't need to learn anything. An audience doesn't need to know the swaras, taals, or anything else if it can come a little closer to the feelings of the artist. Nothing to learn if you can share the joy, the grief, and the indifference.

We need to "learn to appreciate music" because we have invested in dehumanization. We are too clever with words and dumbfounded by sounds. We value a pretentious pundit over an honest fool. Hindustani classical music tries to humanize you and it's going to be uncomfortable if you haven't been human for a long long time while unliving and holding your breath in a society that's entrenched in the politics of living and whose only real contact with laughter is through the sitcoms filled with cues for laughing. We have made classical music into this enterprise of the elite completely defeating its very purpose which is to be an experience for all.

On that note, if this makes you nostalgic about a past rain, hopeful about the future rain, or go out under the raining sky right now, there's nothing for you to learn.