If the feel singularly privileged in writing the foreword to The Song Lof the Clay Pot: My Journey With the Ghatam. It is a book that I have been waiting for years to read, a book that is one of a kind, very much like its author. It is strikingly honest, lyrical in its exposition and raises all those issues that we ponder about, when we consider women and percussion, the medium of music and its message and the metaphorical meanings that clay, pot and rhythm assume in our daily lives.
I have known Sumana both as a friend and as a co-traveller in pursuit of Indian music's elusive histories in the present for more than a decade now. Our interest in Carnatic music brought us into close conversations that in turn led to more animated ones about politics, memory and history, about why some instruments were forgotten, some were valorised and yet others that resonated with something deep in ourselves and did not wait for staged concerts and performances to make their unique mark. We spoke about women and marginalisation, about caste and hierarchy and how challenging it was to write about music in relation to these issues given the fractured nature of the archive that music has left behind, especially in India. I was fascinated by Sumana's deep commitment to probing deeper meanings as she laboured with what she calls the humble pot, the ghatam, to its unique and layered history, and to the joy she felt when she practiced on it, found her teacher and pursued the sound she was after. When she spoke to me about her decision to write her journey that was about discovery at many levels, I was enchanted and urged her to write. My own feelings about the project were in part informed by a researcher's curiosity to know about those dimensions that only a practitioner could access and in part by a curiosity about a friend whose imagination was both anchored within the clay pot, and inspired by it as well.
What has materialised in the course of Sumana's journey and artistic practice and her endeavours to write about it, is a memoir that she sees as a testimony to memory, histories-written and unwritten and to the body that rejoices, guides and embraces other bodies notably of the instrument and its maker. It is the celebration of the body that makes Sumana's work exceptional and unusual as she navigates eloquently and lyrically the history of the ghatam, its makers and players and also of the debates that the pot featured in. Extensively researched, she braids the personal and the academic with ease; without compromising rigour and scholarship she inserts her personal story with elegance as a result of which we can actually see the pot emerge in the hands of a young girl and then merge with her as it speaks in one voice.
A young s a ghatam player, I am a mere fifteen-year old; an impetuous young teenager. In the world of classical music, fifteen years would roughly be the period of rigorous training that a student must undergo before moving to perform on stage.
And, most memoirs are written after decades of work, as cumulative wisdom that has accrued over a lifetime of learnings. reflections and experiences.
Why then do I choose this moment to write the story of my journey with the ghatam?
There are two reasons that compel me to do so. One is because of who I am the body I inhabit, the experiences that this body has had and that are unique to this body alone. In that sense, this is a deeply personal story.
A woman's body absorbs its surroundings and responds to it in very specific ways. What is generally seen as commonplace, normal and commonsensical from a patriarchal worldview, is different from a woman's standpoint. In my view, women's experiences tend to be denser. It is like viewing a high-resolution image in which there is a greater concentration of pixels. In other words, there is a lot happening within a small space. Therefore, fifteen years as a woman ghatam player has generated a wealth of stories for me to share.
On another level, this is not a personal story alone. To talk about an ancient instrument with a fascinating history only through my experiences would be as preposterous or presumptuous as mistaking the tip of the tail of an elephant, for the elephant itself. A personal experience is hardly standalone. It has history. By that I mean that my own experiences and memories are shaped by an intricate interplay between extrinsic and intrinsic influences that immediately connect my journey, in simple and complex ways, to the journeys of those who have travelled this path before me and the ones who presently walk this path with me. Many pasts come to rest in my present. Many personal stories, mine and other people's, are stitched to form a personal-collective memoir. And, what emerges from these collective recollections, are glimpses into the journey of the instrument itself.
On Writing this Book
When I started writing this book, a friend asked me out of genuine curiosity, what is there to remember about an everyday pot, that perchance is also a musical instrument.
That is true. We feel the need to remember something only when it is past or is lost. The pot, however, even as a musical instrument, is so ubiquitous in India. There is hardly any region in India that does not have a tradition of musical pots. Why do we then have to remember it, is a valid question.
Well, it is not the remembering itself that is important here. The real question we must ask ourselves is why do we remember what we remember? How do we remember? Why do we forget? What do we forget? How do we choose to remember? What do we choose to forget?
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