To distract myself some more, and to satisfy some meaty cravings, I had a lovely lunch in the winter sunshine, after which I played with a soft pug with a muzzle of wet charcoal called Freddie.

I haven’t been to Paris since I was a student and never with A. It’s the bother of getting a schengen visa. Though we have been eligible for British citizenship for some time we have not applied for it. Having a British passport would make taking the train across the channel so much easier. Another reason for not going there for so long, for me at least, has been the fear of racism.

I don’t encounter racism everyday in England, it is every now and then, but when one goes on holiday, one wants to be 100% sure that such things will not happen. Paris has always welcomed me with open arms and I’ve loved my times there. But it has not been so kind to others and A, having had a bad experience in France as a boy with his family, didn’t really look forward to returning for a holiday, though he visited R1 there while she was a student. So on our holidays so far we have tended to go outside of Europe, save for a very short trip to Spain, quite a few years ago.

I’m really looking forward to this trip. When I was alone in Paris all those years ago I thought that I had to come back with A some day since it was such a romantic city-every cliche about it is true. I sent him a series of postcards from the Rodin museum, each one showing sculptures of lovers entwined…!

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But I never consciously annointed myself with sandalwood. In Bombay, being the child of non-religious, non South-Indian parents meant the forehead was not smeared with vibhuti or chandan (though the head was oiled religiously with a variety of evil smelling concoctions, a tradition I retain). I didn’t particularly like the stale talcum powder smell of sandalwood on other people either, except on Aai.

Aai was my Maharashtrian aunt’s mother, a devoted bhakta, singing the songs of India’s many poet saints, and devoted to loving people, a wellspring of endless gentle compassion. I would play with the flaps of old skin hanging from her arms, and she would laugh, kissing the top of my head. I would bury my head in the softness of her lap and smell the most delicious sandalwood smell in the folds of her sari.

In my teenage years I smelled of Trésor and Jil Sander Sun and once, memorably, like an old ambassador car-according to A, who was nuzzling my neck. If he had said that today, I would have swatted him and not cared, but in those early days of courtship that statement caused mortal offence. In my defence, I had just finished gardening duty or evening PE or some such thing. But overall, we were a combination of Trésor or Sun and Denim Musk; that is what we first smelled on each other. Sandalwood would not have appealed then.

We knew someone who so strongly smelled of sandalwood, I wondered if Veerapppan personally delivered the logs to his house.

In my first days in England as a student, arriving in the greyness of autumn, I was so homesick I threw up. I never realised it would be like that-after all I had been to England before and loved it. In my cousin’s house, there was a bottle of sandalwood essential oil. Put a few drops in your bath she said. You will feel better. And I did.

Since then, I have used sandalwood oil on and off in my bath and in my moisturiser, particularly when in need of comfort. At first A would complain, saying he felt like he was holding the someone mentioned above, but now he seems to like it. When he says I smell like a temple in Kerala he means it as a compliment!

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9kwpxlZorI&hl=en&fs=1]

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Recently there was a concert at a temple hall, of an artist who was visiting from India and I had to take a train and then a bus to reach the temple. I waited and waited at the bus stop, but characteristic of Sunday behaviour, the bus didn’t arrive. There was this nice Tamil speaking couple at the stop and they told me they’d been waiting for the bus for at least half an hour before I arrived. As it turned out they wanted to go to the same temple and knew of an alternate route. So with their help I took another bus and we walked the rest of the way. Since it was dark and lonely, I was grateful they were around. They kept talking to each other in Tamil and when talking to me switched to English. Finally they asked me if I spoke Tamil. I said no, otherwise I would have spoken to them in Tamil! I was surprised that they would think I would carry on in English, if I knew Tamil.

At the temple, I managed to figure out where the concert was, but there was not a soul in sight. I went to the main temple and sat there, as there were many more people there, said my prayers and then asked at the reception about the concert. An elderly gentleman and lady were there and they appeared rather annoyed. I said, I’m sorry I don’t speak Tamil, I can’t read any of the signs, and they visibly thawed and told me when the concert was expected to start, smiled and were helpful.

Concert begins. Opening speech in Tamil, singer speaks and introduces the music in Tamil and the concluding speech is in Tamil, in which the two words I kept hearing were sampradaya (which I understood) and avargal.

****

I often read or hear Carnatic musicians saying that Hindustani music is better appreciated in the West. What I have observed in London (the scene may be different in places like Amsterdam) is that big name Hindustani instrumentalists like Ravi Shankar and Amjad Ali Khan draw crowds that include non-Indians, and they perform in the bigger more well known theatres. Vocalists are less well appreciated. And Dhrupad is popular amongst a niche, non-Indian audience. Otherwise one has to go to the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan or the Nehru Centre.

Often, at concerts, Carnatic vocalists speak in Tamil, or largely in Tamil. Now I understand that Tamilians want to speak in Tamil. It is a beautiful language, one should be proud of it and one should speak it. But when one is addressing an audience of music lovers/students/listeners one has to assume there will be Indians and non-Indians there who will not understand Tamil but are trying to find out more about the music. There are people here who are trying to relate to both Hindustani and Carnatic vocal music. We already have to contend with the fact that concerts are badly advertised, that people who are not familiar with Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan etc will never know when there is a concert on, that they are often few and far between or sometimes in far flung places. These concerts have to be made more accessible, in more ways than one.

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