My Tune

I AM AMERICAN. Sitting in my bright red mini skirt, I thrum my fingers to “Sweet Thing” by Chaka Khan. I toss ice into my water glass. I am also Indian American, which I say with pride, as I tell you how India built my ears, my tune.

One of my earliest ritual memories from childhood was the music my grandma would play for me in the evenings. This act was always staged in my dad’s office, which doubled as my grandparents’ bedroom. The setup of the room was modest. Enter, and straight off to the left against the wall was a futon, and beside it, a night table. Across from the futon sat a small desk that sagged under the weight of an enormous Windows 1999 monitor. Every couple of nights, I would have trouble falling asleep and my grandma would cradle me close to her chest while my dad booted up the computer. Turning to the newest technological evolution, YouTube, he would type the name “M. S. Subbulakshmi,” and hit “search.” There was no shortage of results.

The most minimal of sounds would open each song—the soft drone of the metronome, the high buzz of the sitar, the warm pit pat of a tabla simmering low and slow. Subbulakshmi’s eyes would remain closed, her fingers twitching, her palm shivering as it found the beat. She would begin by humming, her throat reaching around, grabbing tight to the instrumentals, inhabiting them. She would test herself, repeating broken fragments of a raga “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa,” until they sounded right. I would try to mimic the ease of tone, flitting between the “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do” that Julie Andrews had taught me, and these rounder, more earthen syllables, making “Sa Mi Do Ni Sa,” scrambling it all into alphabet soup. And then, she would begin, and to a fresh ear it would seem there was no breath between each moment, the singer becoming slave to the constant sound, the unending thrum and beat. One voice would create the longest words on the planet, swaying and sinking into a circular, never-ending song. One voice would build universes.

As I fell into a restful slumber, my grandma would pat out the beat along with Subbulakshmi, cocooning my hand in hers as we matched her time. She would do this with everything. As my dad coached me through each ABBA lyric, as my sister and I rehearsed dances to Bollywood songs, my grandma would sit, patting along to the tune, never skipping a beat.

So, as I sit, allowing the words, “You are my heat, you are my fire,” to roll like marbles circling a drain into my ear lobes, I steady my hand against my knee, and begin. I pat back and forth, I tap the beat with the tips of my fingers, I pluck the round base notes from the air, I break it all down, and build it back up again, and suddenly every song is entirely my own.

NANDITA KUMAR ’27 is an accounting major at UP.