Pune journal

Pune,7.1.07

i'm beginning to understand usmanji's method of guiding. He basically lives the poem about what love does to you written by khalil gibran in the prophet....during the morning practice with usmanji,his daughter and another student, i was suffering to play at the speed they were going..and usmanji just kept going on and on and on..but in between ..he would give me those smiles from the corner of his eyes which sort of said " so.. are u tired now ?"..which actually kept me going and the more he could see i was suffering ..he would smile more frequently and say "make sure u r not using any shortcuts"(there are shortcuts in tabla for stamina's sake). He would finally ..after like an hour come to the grand tihai..i would be so relieved and juz when i thought it was finally over, he would start all over again at a faster tempo (all i played was dha dhin dhin dha which is hard coz u only use ur index finger for all 4 syllables).Finally it comes to an end. The best part was that a few hours later, he asks me to play again and this time i got a shock when i heard the quality of the sound that i was producing...it sounded so much louder and clearer..i dare not use the word richer though('rich' is a big word and should only be used to describe the sound produced by musicians like prakash anne and usmanji)..haha..and most joyful of all, i got the opportunity to feed usmanji a few biscuits ... i felt so contented that day........ more comin up soon.. for now adios amigo.