Magical Fingers

15 February Saturday



Today I had to go to this concert of the two Indian classical musicians ustad Zakir Hussain and Pandit Niladri Kumar. I didn't want to go but I had to. I went with my family. The journey was very long . we had to go to some auditorium 1 hour away. The only thing that kept my sister and I from getting bored were the top 20 songs coming on the radio. When we reached there we had to stand in this queue for about 15 minutes as the doors had not yet opened. We were standing out in the open and it was freezing! After we went in we realized it was quite cold inside also and we hadn't brought any woolens.



At 9:00 pm the show finally started. Ustad Zakir Hussain the best tabla player in the whole world walked on stage. He sat down on the little platform that was on the stage and slowly started playing some tals. I already was starting to get bored and had no idea how I was going to survive for the whole concert when suddenly he started play really fast. It was really cool. He made many different noises with his tabla. He played for about 1 hour but in the middle I got so bored I went to sleep.




After that we had a 5 minute break and then Pandit Niladri Kumar came on stage with his sitar. First he started playing aalaap (the introduction to the notes he was going to play). It really was boring and half the time I was sleeping as it was very late at night. Finally I woke up and I heard Niladri Kumar playing a sweet melody on the sitar. That was his last melody and the whole auditorium got up and applauded. I too got up and started applauding. Finally Zakir Hussain came on stage and they both were given flowers.



We got up and walked out and only then did I realize that it was already MIDNIGHT! I slept the whole car journey and when we finally reached home I was too exhausted to do any thing. I went straight into my room and fell on my bed. that was one tiring experience!