Music under the moonlight ( Under the Raintree concert)

Once upon a time, the civic authorities paid bands to perform weekly at neighbourhood parks; the bandstands in Lalbagh and Cubbon Park had Police or Military bands playing on Sundays and holidays; talented young musicians gathered for informal jams in the parks too.

Just like that, they vanished. And were banished too from public memory. All we have is the stress of urban life; with public amenities over-stretched and under- powered, life for the average Bangalorean is a pain. We decided we needed assuage senses that have been assaulted and get a reprieve, brief as it may be, from the drudgery of existence.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man; and so did Vasanth Rao, the person who has achieved the near-miraculous by restoring to us the much-loved bougainvillea boulevard. This General Manager of Namma Metro has also worked hard to create a beautiful public space on MG Road, and a clean and safe environment for performances has become available.

Ram Nagaraj’s melodious voice extracts every ounce of meaning from the ghazals

We took the opportunity to host the latest Under the Raintree event there on May 14, boldly deciding to hold it at 9 pm mid-week. Our aim was to have the event open to anyone who liked music, and particularly ghazals. To our delight, not only did our personal invitations to music lovers of our acquaintance elicit a favourable response, several people who knew about the event from the posters in all the metro stations and the media turned up.

There were plenty of walk-ins: people out for their post-dinner stroll or driving back home; children out for late night ice cream skipped up too. There were heartening sights of waiters, drivers and so on, who were delighted to happen upon the music session after work and stopped to rest their weary selves. They were welcomed and seated on chairs alongside invitees.

Ram Nagaraj seemed set to sing until dawn.

The evening started with a surprise for the audience, with the lovely Madhu Vijay singing a bhava geethe, 'yaava mohana murali kariyithu’ (which can easily be called a Kannada ghazal).

After that Ram Nagaraj held the audience spellbound for hours with ghazals from musical greats like Ghulam Ali, Mehdi Hassan, Jagjit Singh, Pankaj Udhas, Talat Aziz, Anup Jalota and Roop Kumar Rathod. There were repeated requests for favourite numbers from the enthusiastic audience of 175. People were reluctant for the night to end, and we don’t blame them.

Audience soaking in the melodious music in the beautiful ambience.

Vasanth Rao has worked passionately to revive the MG Boulevard and make it an urban cultural centre.

Under the Raintree is a non-profit forum to promote the Arts. This concert is part of its continuing efforts to promote various forms of arts; it is also an initiative, in association with Namma Metro, to provide Bangaloreans an alternative nightlife in a clean and safe environment.”

Of Evening Ragas and Rasas

A brief spell of fierce rain on the first night of Diwali ushered in the latest Under the Raintree event, a baithak for Hindustani classical concert. Our earlier choice of venue panned out, so did the second. So it was at our residence that Arshad Ali, from Kolkata, came to sing, with the home star Trilochan Kampli, playing the tabla.

Arshad Ali, accomapnied by Trilchan Kampli & Satish Kolli, photo by Subhalakshmi Roy

There was a mélange of aromas in the air – of oil diyas, sandal incense, platters of food, strands of marigold, the perfumes of elegantly attired friends and connoisseurs. As the sky segued into twilight, Arshad, dressed in pristine white, drew us into musical journey. With the opening notes of a vilambit khyal in Marwah, an evening raga, his voice reached out to clutch the hearts of the audience; from there, the powerful yet pure power of his voice held on through a dhrut khyal.

Music runs in his veins; his grandfather was the legendary sarangi maestro, Ustad Shakoor Khan. Arshad has been training from the age of six when he joined the prestigious ITC Sangeet Research Academy, Kolkata as a scholar and received taleem from his maternal uncles, Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan and Ustad Mubarak Ali Khan.

a thrilling tabla solo by Trilochan Kampli, photo by Prateek Mukunda

We had heard of his reputation as a child prodigy, and seen his clips on youtube. While there were never any doubts about Arshad’s masterly technique, the mellifluous nature of his voice was as welcome as a spring of cool water. Strained nerves were magically soothed, the mind free to follow the curves of the music, and soar skyward.


A half hour later, he moved on to Bihaag, a delicately nuanced raga for the night, setting the mood for his final rendition in Bhairavi. “Kab aaoge”, he sang, the poignant longing sounding true and voicing the universal need for love. Eyes that had been closed to absorb the music deeper, opened to traces of tears that had welled up and flowed unbeknownst.

the textured scent of slowly heating oil in a clay diya

The audience was in a soporific stupor, and to gently coax them back to the gaiety of the festive night, Trilochan Kampli was urged to give us a solo performance. There were ten minutes of rousing drut teental, the unique Farukhabad gats in a sequence of increasing tempo and chakradars, to the outburst of applause that this artiste always elicits.


The bumps on the road before deciding to host the concert at home turned out to be a blessing in disguise; we had not had a house-warming after shifting into a new apartment a few weeks ago. The magic of music by the gifted young men suffused the place with peace, and the warmth of appreciative friends left us glowing.

To light the fire or kick the butt

The eve of World No Tobacco Day (Sunday, May 30) turned out to be a fun-filled laugh riot at Casa del Sol. Smoke Signals (frequently mistaken for a play when in fact, it is a heady mixture of quotes, short stories, speeches, limericks, jokes, songs and anecdotes that are destined to burn a hole in your stomach faster than any cigarette) was performed to an enthusiastic crowd by the Madras Players who walked in looking like Cherokee Indians from the plains of Native America.

The opening note from the bull horn played by Bangalore's Alan Rego set the tone for the rest of the evening which started with the song of Hiawatha. Without any vestiges of preaching, Smoke Signals takes the audience through a mad trip, replete with the conversation between Alice and the caterpillar that smokes a hookah (Alice in Wonderland) and a chewing gum that comes alive and chews a little boy (a short story by John Steinbeck). Mithran Devanesen, whom Bangaloreans will remember for his Mamma Mia! and Midnight Hotel, and his young protege, Sharanya Nair, brought alive the crazy wonderland of Lewis Carroll, while the stalwart, PC Ramakrishna, gripped everyone's attention with his baritone rendition of King James's speech and Steinbeck's story.

Alan Rego, sporting a mohawk and holding a peace pipe, sang Smoke gets in your eyes and Smoke that cigarette, both of which set the audience tapping their feet. His joie de vivre was instantly contagious and soon, Sharanya Nair stunned the crowd with her soulful rendition of It's a wonderful world, accompanied by Alan.

With another great event decorating our cap, thanks to Casa del Sol and the ACTS group, Under the Raintree is growing every day, with more artists showing interest in these creative ventures. We are only too thrilled to have had the opportunity of presenting such great talent to you all. Until next time, as the Siwash Indians used to say, peace be with you.

Under the Raintree - Nine faces of being

Under the raintree on Sunday, in the warm afterglow of summer, something beautiful happened. It wasn’t really a raintree – it was under a cherry tree that Allen Mendonca had planted a year ago to attract more birds to our courtyard.

It certainly did attract birds of the same feather which flocked to participate in the first of the artistic dialogues initiated by a not-for-profit forum, ‘Under the Raintree’.

Some of the most talented young actors in town, did a reading of a play-in-progress – Nine faces of being, Anita Nair’s own adaptation of her novel, Mistress.  A seasoned novelist, for her debut as a playwright, Anita wanted to hear the actors mouth her words and who better to take on the thespian responsibility than Arundhati Raja of ART?

In what had to be serendipity, this was just the time when we were conceptualizing the creative canopy Under the Raintree. And so, after half a dozen rehearsals with the playwright sitting in to get an insight into the direction, the evening of April 11 brought together a coalition of the creative.

The interested audience, many of them actors, directors and writers along with avid theatregoers, sat with rapt attention as the actors deconstructed human expressions, and in the interactive session that followed, analysed the presentation. which was welcome feedback for the playwright. 

Arundhati Raja and Anita Nair

Darius Sunawala and Sukita Aiyar

Sandhya Mendonca introduces Under the Raintree

 Sukita Aiyar, Abhijeet Shetty, Shiv Kumar, 
Meghna Mundkur, Harish Seshadri & Kartik Kumar

The rapt audience