Anish Nadh’s Blog

Anand was two or three years older than me and he went to Clarence High school. Along with his school bag, he often had a guitar and a big fiction book that he would be reading.  The girls loved him, I never saw him play with the UTC boys, but he did play tennis from time to time! He had an acoustic guitar! I heard him play very few times, but just him lugging the guitar around raised his status in the bus! He spoke about the Beatles, how he would grow out his hair and marry a foreigner, which he did!  Years later he formed Zebediah Plush, at Christ College, this was around the time Thermal and a Quarter was just picking up! Anand was an amazing guitarist and a singer/ front man of his band. I finally watched him play live with the band, (years later) at Bishop Cotton Women’s Christian College. His band Z Plush, also had a female bass guitar player. We all gathered to see that cute unicorn finger that bass! 

As I said earlier I loved playing this new cool instrument. It was different, the rebel in me detested the Indian classical music and the order of western classical music. Guitar was fun! No rules, you judge the sound you mature on your own!  The vibrations I felt in my body, the pretty girls who loved to sing English songs! I was in Heaven! There were two other senior musicians in UTC. One, a student there he had a funny name, Anand Peacock! I think everyone looked over his name because he could pluck the strings on his guitar! The other one was Rev Oommen’s Son, Anand Varghese! I’ve only heard Peacock play gospel songs, but Anand played Beatles and Clapton. He sure left an impression on me! Maybe that’s for another post.  I was nowhere near their playing ability. That played barre chords and plucked on the guitar. I could barely play the F chord! But I knew the girls loved them! So the 8th standard hormone rich me, embraced the giant guitar wholly! 

Since I was learning, piano, violin, tabla and singing, my dad got my sister a guitar. It was a jumbo Gibtone. The guitar was so huge that the little me was barely visible  behind it. Her guitar teacher was Asongla, a student at UTC from the North East. The students from North East sang their language songs and English songs in harmony, often accompanied with a guitar. Also all the cool kids, especially Ananth Varghese, used to flaunt his red guitar picks.  Asongla taught my sister the guitar at home, but she agreed to teach me as well. She taught me some open chords and I was quick to noticed the D chord was similar to Bryan Adams’ “Summer Of Sixty Nine” I found playing F and C quite difficult.  I loved playing the guitar! I sat by the verandah, pressing my ears against the guitar to feel its vibrations! I got goosebumps playing it. I did not feel the piano or any other instrument vibrate my body as the guitar did! I gravitated more to it.  I ended up practising the guitar more than m

The UTC main campus had a lawn with a fountain in the middle. One day as we were playing in the lawn, I found a cassette. The cassette cover had a photograph of a tyre with “Bryan Adams, So Far So Good” written on it. I picked it up and took it home. I listened to that tape! I was hooked! I must’ve played that tape a million times! I didn’t understand the lyrics, but the music was out of this world! Nothing like I’ve heard before. My favorite song at that time on this cassette was ‘Run To You’! This was the only form of entertainment for me, listening to Bryan Adams.  One more thing, after I found the casette, the next day, I saw a few kids looking for a casette. They were asking about it to everyone. I knew they were looking for Bryan Adams, yet, I looked away and did not tell them I have it. I actually stole the tape. I felt guilty stealing it and thought about it and decided to return it. But, it was too late. The kids looking for it left the campus and relocated to another country.

Dev sir, was in his late 40s when he started tabla lessons for me. He would be on time! What good a tabla player are you if you didn’t keep time!  My dad wanted me to learn mridangam, but we bought a tabla! I found the one and half hour lesson boring and didn’t enjoy it. But years later, it came to use when I was trying to figure out rhythmic playing for challenging riffs with Slain and Allegro fudge. I learnt a bit about subdivisions of a beat and phrasing. I learnt tabla for a year. Then, there was no teacher. But the lessons that I got from Mr Dev was priceless. 

 I continued learning Carnatic music with Rev. Santosh who taught me to play the Indian violin. Rev Santosh also recommended to my dad that I learn tabla. So now I was learning piano, tabla and violin.  I vividly recall how we went to shiva musicals where we went to pick up the instruments. My tabla teacher Dev, signed the tablas that I was supposed to pick. Rev. Santosh also helped select a violin and a guitar! The guitar was meant for my sister.  I learnt the instruments and practiced diligently (except the piano) I got really good at it. I won competitions there at UTC and also got a chance to sing on the UTC Bhajans Volume 2. It was kind of like an experiment that Rev. Santosh did, making a Christian Bhajan volume. I sang a Telugu song, it was a very nice experience recording. This was where I met Juda’s dad Simon Augustine Sandhy. Maybe I’ll write about this recording experience in another blog.  Soon Rev Santosh moved abroad and no one over saw the classes and all classes came to

 UTC had many pianos, so they decided to hire a piano teacher, Kaundinya. She was quite old, drove an old Maruti 800. The piano room was located in a dungeon type of a room. You had to go through a flight of stairs to the underground. The only ventilation was a window towards the roof.  Kaundinya was not a great teacher, she gave me the books, that was photocopied and stapled together and said play! I didn’t know what to do. I just read the notes and the numbers from the book, it got way too easier and I practiced it on my trusty Casio SK -1.  I caught Kaundinya catching a wink through my class and didn’t quite learn anything much other than my finger exercises, which was done wrong. I’m still correcting bad piano hands thanks to my new teacher Elizabeth.  But I think I made the best use of my time there and trained on piano for 3 years with hardly any progress.