The Kindness of Strangers: III

After a few months in Europe, we arrived in India in December, 1978. True to the form of travel in those days, we had a vague notion of what we were there for—me to study some music, my soon-to-be-wife Karen to look at the arts and crafts and both of us to simply soak in the new waters of a different culture. No reservations, no pre-arranged study, just the name of a village in Kerala, South India where artists were trained in the Kathakali Dance Drama unique to that state. I knew that where there was dance, there would be music, so when we arrived at the doorstep of the Kalamandalam School in Cherethuruthi, I announced my hope to study a drum. They asked which drum and I replied, “What do you have?” and they showed me two different drums, neither of which I had ever seen or heard—the chenda played with sticks and the maddalam played with the hands. “I’ll try that one,” I said pointing to the maddalam and it seemed we were ready to go.

 

However, when I returned in a few days for my first lesson, they informed me that I actually needed a student visa. Rather than go through that complex bureaucracy, they told me that one of their graduate drummers was interested in teaching me and I could arrange it privately with him. Since that teacher, Narayanan, spoke no English and I spoke no Malayalam, they had one of their English-speaking students accompany me to Narayanan’s house. We quickly settled on the schedule and price— a daily 2-hour lesson five times a week for $100 per month— and then Narayanan asked Karen and I where we would be staying. We replied we’d probably stay in Cherethuruthi, even though it was 45 minutes and two bus rides away. That’s when, after talking to us for some 20 minutes, he said, “Oh, why don’t you just live here with us?”

 

Now as noted in my first story, we were already astonished by the hospitality of Jim and Karen Bold in Nether Poppleton, England that they were willing to have two strangers stay with them for a few days. But this was whole new level, as a complete stranger offered for us to LIVE IN HIS HOUSE WITH HIS WIFE, 3-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER AND HIM FOR THE NEXT THREE MONTHS!!! This was so far beyond our cultural upbringing of being wary of strangers and protecting your privacy and personal space that we were simply astonished. 

 

So I replied, “Do you really have room here?” and he said, “No problem! Come!” He took us to a room and opened the door to a bedroom with clothes about that obviously was being used. When I asked him about it, he just shrugged it away and said, “Oh, that’s just my mother-in-law staying here. She can go somewhere else!”

 

Now the cynic in me was probably thinking, “Ah hah! The perfect plan to kick out his mother-in-law!” but I don’t believe that was the case. At any rate, after a brief consultation, Karen and I decided to protect our personal space and stick with a place in Cherethuruthi, despite my daily 90 minute round-trip commute. 

 

I studied with him for three months and believe I was the first Westerner to have studied that drum. I briefly toyed around with staying there and building my life around that identity. But the combination of the fact that though I did a decent job with the instrument, I was far from virtuoso material and the fact that while open to living out the ex-patriate life in some tropical paradise, I think Karen and I both knew that this journey was meant to inform our teaching back at The San Francisco School. Which proved to be entirely true. My study culminated with a ceremony where I got to publicly perform and then off we went again, to northern India, Nepal, Thailand, Singapore and then Java, where we settled for the next three months. During that time, we spent 10 days in Bali and that's where the next story happened. Stay tuned!

 

PS After this trip, Karen and I returned to San Francisco, got married, got pregnant and named our first daughter Kerala after this extraordinary state we got to live in briefly. We always intended to take her there and as a 30th birthday present, we did go back to that village and re-connected with Narayanan and his family. He had traveled quite a bit as a performing artist and had learned to speak English, so it was a double-pleasure to see him again. And though I hadn’t played it in 31 years, I remember much of the drum piece he had taught me!