Only the other day I went for a concert by renowned santoor player Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma. It was my first experience of a live santoor performance and I, weary from the long day’s activities, settled down for a delightful evening. Closing my eyes, I took in as much of the music as I could. Every note seemed to resonate in my heart. Delightful though the whole experience was, at the end of the performance I was left with a question that has been nagging me ever since.
I can’t vouch for the other members of the audience, but I enjoyed the performance from the very start, even the tuning of the instrument without being aware of. It was only after Panditji thanked us for applauding even for the tuning that we realised that every note the instrument exuded was worth relishing, be it just a few random taps at the strings. However, this little bit of information that Panditji let us in on also brought to my mind something that is ingrained in my human mind. When he was done with the first part of the show and about to proceed to the second part, he had to tune the instrument again, for it was a different raaga. Now that I knew that Panditji would repeat the process of tuning again, I didn’t pay as much attention to it as I had done before. I failed to observe the beauty in the notes because it was not the performance, in short not of utility. When I came out of the auditorium, I was ashamed of myself, for I have tried to assign value to only that was useful. My human instincts had kicked in and I was trying to find beauty only in things that have some value.
Can’t we human beings enjoy beauty without looking at the value aspect of it? Even the most useless of things has some beauty in it; only a perceiving mind is needed. And it seems I lack it.
