In May 2003 I went to India for three months as part of a residency with Asialink. I was based in Chennai/Madras under the guidance of Guru Karaikudi R. Mani with Sruthi Laya Kendra. I was not sure what would be expected of me, but a few months before leaving for India I received a study program with the possibility of a performance at the end of my time there. I was to be studying Karnatic (South Indian Classical) music with Karaikudi R. Mani (Mridangam artist) including several lessons with flautist B. Balasai, A. Durga Prasad - Gottuvadyam (Slide Veena) artist, and also a little time with violinist V.S. Narasimhan.

K.R.M. (Guru Karaikudi R. Mani) gave me several of his recordings at our first meeting. I spent a lot of time listening to these and absorbing the ideas in this music. Our lessons, with me playing the recorder, concentrated on challenging rhythmic exercises, improvisation, composition and the concepts of Karnatic music including its history and some of its most well known composers. For the last 10 years I have been mainly playing music from aural traditions but somehow I had not realized that my aural rhythmic sense was not as developed as my reading rhythmic sense. So the exercises woke me up to that and helped me find a way to better develop this area of my musicianship. Karnatic music would be equal to any musical tradition for its amazing complexity of rhythm. We also worked on some compositions together, and it was helpful to see the way that K.R.M. developed his musical ideas. The lessons gave me a lot of new ideas for creating compositions, and I wrote several new pieces while in Chennai. My lessons with B. Balasai and Durga Prasad concentrated on the gammaka (ornamentation), ragas, Kriti (compositions), and some improvisation exercises. Both Durga Prasad and Bala Balasai feature on two of the CDs I was given with K.R.M., and I went to several concerts that they performed at. So I felt like I was beginning to understand their individual approaches and styles.

I attended many concerts in India. One concert was with K.R.M.'s students - the 'non-professionals' concert. The standard was very high, and his students are very devoted to him. An example of their devotion was the presentation of a brand new car to him on the subsequent anniversary of his 50 years dedication to music and the Mridangam. This was coupled with a photo Gallery booklet of K.R.M.'s life in music that celebrated 9 years of Layaman Layam (a bi-monthly magazine on music and dance with K.R.M. as chief editor) and a wonderful concert featuring the divine singing of Ranjani and Gayatri. These sisters were initially trained as violinists, and the fluidity and virtuosity of their singing styles reflects this.

I

In front of a stone temple at Mamallapruam with two of Karaikudi R. Mani's students: Sriram and Balou. This temple is carved from a single piece of stone.

was also invited to two Hindi weddings with wonderful musicians performing, and K.R.M. took me to visit Mamallapuram and Dakshina Chitra. Mamallapuram is India's stone carving capital about 30km down the coast from Chennai with ancient monuments including the Shore Temple and many other large temples hewn from single pieces of rock. Dakshina Chitra, midway between Chennai and Mamallapuram, is a fantastic Folk Museum that I would recommend anyone in the area to visit. On that day K.R.M. also showed me a property near the sea where he will be building a new home for his school that will include a small amphitheatre. I wish him the best for this and am sure that it will be a very beautiful place.

At the very end of my residency K.R.M. had a concert in Bangalore that he kindly organized me to attend. It was great to visit another city. Bangalore is greener and cleaner than Chennai, and the weather refreshingly cooler. It was wonderful to see the landscape pass by on the 6 to 7 hour train journey, with green villages, and some mountains that reminded me of the Glasshouse Mountains in Queensland. It was a great concert, lengthy and detailed. The singer held long notes exactly in tune that resonated in different parts of my body with the violinist answering in phrases that sometimes shocked me with their perfection. The extended Mridangam solo enriched with complex rhythms and beautiful melodic phrasing was answered and joined in perfectly by one of K.R.M's students on the Kanjira ( a small round frame drum covered with lizard skin and metal rings on the inside frame), all underpinned by the omnipresent mesmerising drone of the tambura.

Chennai is India's fourth largest city of around 6 million people. The pollution of the auto-rickshaws, endless motorbikes, cars, and buses of its congested and busy potholed roads makes the often already dusty, hot air difficult to breathe. The lack of suitable drainage and a sewerage system makes the water undrinkable, and the rivers have become a stinking, black, festering sludge as they wind through Chennai to the sea, home to billions of mosquitoes immune to insecticides and mutated into drug resistant malaria strains (many people live by these rivers, washing clothes, utensils and themselves in them). Often in the evening as I was walking I would come across a sudden large mist that was like a large cloud descended onto the road. This was insecticide sprayed from trucks in an incredibly short-sighted and stupid program to get rid of mosquitoes and thus malaria. Basically, a minor outcome of that is that domestic insecticides and plug in devices are not effective in the home. I became accustomed to many mosquitoes always surrounding me and biting at any time of the day or night. I slept with a mosquito net, however one or two would always manage to find a way in - but that was fine with me.

The streets are home to as many as seem to fit. I became familiar with many street families I passed everyday. One of which was a family with 3 young children, sleeping and living around two large filthy garbage bins which their oxen would eat from and be tethered to in the evenings. The sudden and continuing expansion of the city with little planning has resulted in less vegetation, and lots of dust and concrete, resulting in increasing temperatures every summer. There is, despite and possibly because of all of this, an incredible aliveness to Chennai: cows nonchalantly blocking major roads, packs of dogs howling in the night, squirrels that can scale vertical walls in a flash, the gecko that lived in one of my cupboards, loud birds that literally scream in the evening, and the two mice playing and scurrying across the floor of the restaurant I was the lone patron of one night.

The time that I arrived in Chennai is called Fire Star. It describes the heat from mid-May accurately: very hot, humid, no rain. The apartment that had been organized for me was very comfortable, and most importantly had a fan and air-conditioner. I thought that I could deal with the heat. However I became very sick 3 times. This interrupted the flow of my lessons, and unfortunately the possibility of a performance. There was an acute water shortage at the time I was in Chennai. This meant that I had water in the bathroom for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. This was not a problem at all, in fact I liked it to remind me to be really careful about water, and after questioning many people from all walks of life about their water supplies, I knew that I was really fortunate to have so much. I was living in a block of 300 or so flats who bought their water co-operatively, which makes things like water and electricity run smoother. They also had a generator that compenstated for most of the frequent power cuts I remember walking down a nearby street to my apartment and seeing an enormous water tank stopping. As it was still coming to a stop hundreds of people were rushing to it, jostling as close as they could get hoping to fill up their garishly colored plastic water jugs.

I spent a lot of time reading in India. Reading about the music, and the vast and ancient philosophies that underpin it, comparing it to Western ideas and how we have influenced each other over recorded history. I particularly liked the idea of Laya and Tala being the basic underlying unchanging beat. I also began reading the Indian Sufi mystic Ustad Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882 - 1927) including 'The Mysticism of Music Sound and Word'. I also learnt a lot of other great things by being there, like the traditional food, how to cook it, eating with my right hand, wearing salwar (long tops with baggy pants and matching scarves), and how to nonchalantly walk on crazy busy roads with my back to the discordant bustling cars, trucks, motorbikes, bikes and jutting horns of oxen.

Many of K.R.M.'s students seemed puzzled and very curious by my attendance at classes, and by what exactly I was learning and on what instrument. So they asked me a lot of questions. The most frequent being: 'Are you vegetarian or non-vegetarian?' and, 'What have you learnt on the Mridangam so far?' Understandably enough my other teachers initially also asked a lot of questions. Karaikudi .R. Mani seemed more relaxed about what I was doing. I think that is because of his exposure to a wide variety of people including Australians, music, and his general relaxed and wise attitude. Often the questioning would make me feel out of sorts and unsure myself, so it was a nice relief to be so warmly welcomed and accepted by K.R.M. Someone was asking what I was doing here in Chennai, and I overheard him saying something like: 'Racheal has been traveling around the world the last few years learning as much as she can about music from different masters.' It was a nice way to put it.

Durga Prasad asked a lot of questions. His questions were very helpful, and helped me to find some more clarity about my general musical direction, which in my case often feels like forging a way through uncharted territory with only the occasional much welcomed signpost! He introduced the Slide Veena (Gottuvadyam) to me beautifully, which prompted me in the next lesson to talk a little more about my Ganassi recorder, some of its capabilities and to demonstrate some of this. The Gottuvadyam is a beautiful looking instrument, it has a large hollow resonator carved out of a piece of wood which continues into a long neck with another resonator attached at the other end. The instrument rests on the two resonators with the musician playing seated in front of it. It is unfretted and is played with a cylindrical slide on the neck with one hand and 3 wire plectra in the other hand. It has five main playing strings, twelve sympathetic strings underneath, and three tala strings which are used to keep the rhythm and the drone. I have noticed that many Indian musicians will introduce their instrument in a uniquely dignified manner that I have learnt a lot from. Durga commented several times that I was very brave to come to India for the first time by myself and to meet so many different types of people. I really appreciated this, as I often felt a little overwhelmed!

This was a great opportunity for me to study in-depth an ancient and vital musical culture. As I explained to Durga: 'How can I be a real student of music and not study the main great living traditions that we have, including Karnatic music?' The music that I have been concentrating on over the last few years has been what Ross Daly has termed Contemporary Modal Music. This strictly melodic music suits the recorder perfectly, and the open finger holes allow us to easily play all the tones of most tuning systems and to adopt many complex ornamentations and slidings. These musics focus on rhythm with percussion perfectly partnering the melody. So far I have been concentrating on Turkish, Persian and Greek musics, so it was great to have a glimpse of something similar, but completely different.