I. No.<\/strong><\/p>\nNext to my father\u2019s desk sits a chestnut brown, out-of-tune mridangam. I can\u2019t remember exactly when it appeared in my house, only that it\u2019s here now and nobody plays it. It cannot be given away, obviously. So the drum sits there, and I sit by it and neither my father nor I acknowledge its presence in the room.<\/p>\n
All my life I\u2019ve been around music. My parents tell me they would notice me tap out Bollywood songs and \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d on the toy keyboards they would buy me. I was a musically-inclined kid, and for years, my parents moved me from class to class throughout the week: violin, piano and even a three-year-long stint with the trumpet. I enjoyed them well enough; I\u2019d find time to practice at home, even without my parents or music teachers telling me to, but all of these instruments were ultimately easy to leave behind. By the time I was in middle school, I didn\u2019t think of musical instruments as necessary, permanent fixtures in my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And then came the drums.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nI tried them out a few times, sitting behind the full set and tapping out little rhythms on the hi-hats and crashers, and fell in love. I was tapping my fingers all the time, everywhere, spinning an imaginary stick between my forefinger and thumb constantly. It was like every song was made up of drums first and vocals, strings, bass or whatever else came later. All I could hear anytime I heard music was the beat.<\/p>\n
I had casually brought up the idea of formally learning drums to my father one day while we were in the car. I was just proposing a switch from one interest to another, as I had done so many times before. He was quiet for a moment, long enough to be slightly uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know I like music,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. Well \u2026 they\u2019re drums.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was confused now. \u201cSo?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nHe cleared his throat. \u201cIt\u2019s a more masculine instrument, don\u2019t you think? It\u2019s very uncommon for girls or women to play the mridangam.\u201d<\/p>\n
My chest tightened, and I stared at him blankly for a moment. Then, I burst into tears.\u00a0<\/p>\n
II. I fall in love<\/strong><\/p>\nMy mom took me to a bharatanatyam recital one day with some family friend I hadn\u2019t seen in a while. I sat in the fold-open seat with the kind of poisonous attitude only middle schoolers have as we waited for the program to begin.<\/p>\n
The lights dim, curtains draw. A woman in a saree gave a small speech about the art of dance, or maybe it was something about God. I didn\u2019t listen, too distracted by the garish shade of electric green she had chosen to wear as she swished off stage. Distantly, I wondered where the speakers were in this place; I hadn\u2019t heard any music yet \u2014<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nTha-the-tha-ha. Dit-the-tha-ha.<\/p>\n
A drumbeat. No, not drums \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
Slowly, the lights got brighter, and I saw a new figure in the middle of the stage, facing away. There were flowers in her hair and bangles all around her arms. She was smaller than the speaker had been, but there was a presence about her that had me hooked immediately. She stomped her feet again rhythmically.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tha-the-tha-ha. Dit-the-tha-ha.<\/p>\n
I gripped the underside of my cloth seat. I could feel a vibration run across my shoulders, down my spine, through my heart \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nThe dancer lifted herself onto her toes. The drum goes the-hut-the-hee<\/em>. Back down, then a sharp kick in a clean arc.<\/p>\nI felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me back suddenly. \u201cSit down,\u201d my mother whispered, but she was smiling. \u201cYou\u2019re practically jumping.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the performance, my mother and I walked to the guru, circling her as she accepted congratulations and compliments. Step, step. Step, step. When we talked to her, the rhythm of the conversation was quite straightforward. She took one look at me and said (not very quietly) to my mother that I was a bit older than her beginner class. My mom turned to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s fine,\u201d I told my future guru. I had never been more sure of anything.<\/p>\n
III. Advanced preschool<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nShe was not kidding. My class was separated into rows, with the oldest kids in the back and the youngest ones in the front. I was the oldest by almost three years, which is a bigger deal in middle school than you might remember. I mean, the youngest girl in the class was literally 5 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But I got very good very quickly. I performed a third-year piece after less than 11 months in class. Dance was what my mind drifted to when I had nothing else to think of, which was most of the time. I was even teaching my own dance students at the end of high school. It\u2019s like everything I loved about drums and rhythms was transformed into a movement and story; every arch of my eyebrow or a sharp kick at a certain mridangam sequence meant something. I am still a performer. I\u2019ve fallen in love with bharatanatyam, and I can feel my heart race every time I\u2019m on stage. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.<\/p>\n
IV. But it could\u2019ve been yes<\/strong><\/p>\nI cry after performances only about half of the time. I hate performing poorly in front of my family; even if they can\u2019t immediately recognize a misstep while it\u2019s happening on stage, I know they can see it on my sinking expression as I stalk toward them post-performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But this was a good day when I was in my dad\u2019s office, chattering about dance. I loved it, and I made sure everyone knew. I hadn\u2019t lost touch, even in college, and I was proud. My dad\u2019s presence makes it easy to get prideful, I think; watching him nod in approval to my stream of consciousness encourages the boasting to come out. I told him something about beats and rhythms. I\u2019ve always been good at them, you remember, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nHe rubbed his face with his hand. \u201cYes. I am, too. You know I always wanted to play the drums.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an instant, my mood tipped in the other direction. \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on about how he\u2019s always felt particularly inclined to follow a beat. Tapping his fingers against the leather-bound steering wheel of our Honda on long drives, picking out the percussion in songs, things like that. I could feel my chest getting hollow with every sentence. I asked him if he remembered my request all those years ago, and he said he didn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I could feel something hard in the back of my throat. \u201cYou told me no. You don\u2019t remember? It\u2019s the whole reason I started bharatanatyam.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He scratched his chin awkwardly. \u201cYou know \u2026 I think, if you really wanted, you could have done it. Learn mridangam. I mean, look at it now \u2014 it just sits here!\u201d He even laughed at this. \u201cBut you\u2019re so good at dance now.\u201d<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t explain how upset this made me. I mean, what is heartbreak but the feeling you get when you want something you can\u2019t have? What\u2019s the word when you realize you could\u2019ve had it all along? Here is regret, stony and pale: a figure I\u2019m rather familiar with. Ugly, unwanted and angry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Could I really have done what I wanted? Am I dramatizing the initial rejection I had gotten? To me, this is not a story about holding on to regret. I can\u2019t imagine a life without bharatanatyam, and I\u2019m proud to talk about dance at family gatherings, even if my fingers still twitch every time I see a drum. I recognize, now, that there\u2019s no way I could\u2019ve known at the age of 12 that I could have disobeyed. I recognize that I\u2019m not a dog, perpetually waiting for commands, but a person with the ability to choose my next action. My next passion. What my heart can beat for.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, I have come to learn that I always have more agency in the moment than I think I do. Regret is a wet rag on your shelf that never quite seems to dry. You gotta throw it out at some point and start acting. I don\u2019t know if I really could\u2019ve fought casual misogyny at the age of 12 and pursued a life of music, but I know that I could do it now.<\/p>\n
Today I know that I don\u2019t take no for an answer. When your heart beats, listen: Thalam never lies.<\/p>\n
MiC Columnist Amrita Kondur can be reached at akondur@umich.edu.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\n
Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I. No. Next to my father\u2019s desk sits a chestnut brown, out-of-tune mridangam. I can\u2019t remember exactly when it appeared in my house, only that it\u2019s here now and nobody plays it. It cannot be given away, obviously. So the drum sits there, and I sit by it and neither my father nor I acknowledge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[4227,4225,4226],"class_list":{"0":"post-4474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-dance","9":"tag-maintaining","10":"tag-rhythm"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4476,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4474\/revisions\/4476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}