Learning to play the drums … ei babua, pagla gaye ho kaa?

One of the dreams of my teenage years is coming true at this late middle-age of mine … as with many middle-class households of that time (1970s – 80s), the most that many youngsters could pursue as hobbies were stamp collecting, coin collecting, reading novels, comics, etc. … any other interests that meant attending classes and paying fees were considered as eroding the middle-class family’s tight monthly budget … of course, some families encouraged their children and some children turned rebels and left home to pursue their interests and all that … I too collected stamps, coins, read novels, and comics and life was generally moving along … I didn’t have the guts to rebel and go away and learn to play drums … I drummed on tables … and all those beats and rhythms would play in my head … diga-diga diga-diga diga-diga diga-diga dishhhhhhhhhhh … dhing-chaak diga-diga chaak … diga-diga diga-diga dishhhhhhh … and so on and so forth … he he …

It so happened that Mamoon expressed a desire to learn dance and we tried various options near our apartment, but none worked out … and then Shruti learnt about a kathak class at Tarnaka … then, both went there and discovered that the teacher was a senior kathak dancer and a Bengali to boot … and she had already started a batch of 5-6-7 year-olds and Mamoon was too happy to join … and all that chitty chitty bong bong feeling strengthened the bonds … two weeks into the learning and one evening Shruti came home with Mamoon after a class and asked me if I would like to learn to play drums … what is this out of the blue!! … it turned out that the kathak teacher’s son is a drummer and he has started classes for ‘aspiring’ drummers … and Shruti was fervent in her request … I was excited but I was in two minds ... no, more than two actually … all kinds of doubts – what will I do with learning drums at this age? Would I have the time to attend classes? Would I have the patience and concentration to learn something new now? I haven’t been a ‘formal’ learner for the last 25 years or so and I am extremely restless … all these doubts nagged me … 

But Shruti was almost adamant … just meet this chap … talk to him … join and see how it goes … and thus firmly cajoled, I went and met Abhinav, the drum guru, and we talked and talked of Indian percussionists and drummers of various Indian bands … and discovered that to some extent, our likings were similar … and he was just starting out as a drums teacher and if I joined I would be just his second student … and the timings of the two classes per week just suited me … and most of all, he asked me to feel free with the drums on the first day itself … and my dream came true … I told him that … I took the sticks and struck my first tentative beat on the drums … I tried to do a roll … what the hell, I was sitting on the ‘throne’ and banging away … aahhh … this was my teenage dream and all doubts receded (they still remain though) … I decided to enroll myself as a student … and my classes started … two days a week, one hour each day …

  

This is the drum kit I practise on ...

And this is Abhinav, my drums teacher ... 

The first classes were not that difficult … and after three 4-beat variations learnt separately, I was asked to do a combo and then a 3-beat roll … I managed to do the combo and did a 3-beat roll and Abhinav was surprised and shook my hand and said I did the 3-beat roll perfectly and said that not many are able to do a 3-beat roll so early while learning because they have a 4-beat roll in mind and get confused … this was indeed high praise for a ‘old’ novice like me … but, I liked it …

All this while, I had only a pair of drum sticks with me … which I had purchased on a whim a couple of years ago … how prescient, no?  ha ha ha … and Abhinav told me to practice at home using a table and another surface, as we were using only the snare drum and hi-hat for those early classes … After two weeks, Abhinav wanted me to buy a practice drum pad … after buying the practice drum pad, my desire to have the full drum kit intensified, but I didn’t have the pocket power to go the whole hog … I stayed with this practice drum pad for a couple of weeks …  

 … and then I thought I’d improvise …