By Lavanya Narayanan
Vocalist Nisha Rajagopalan stands in her kitchen over a pot of
simmering Akkaravadisal. It’s
her paati’s signature recipe,
and amidst the screams and laughs of her children, six-year-old Vidyuth and
16-month-old Kavya, she calls mother Vasundhra in a frenzy to verify that this
is actually what it’s supposed
to look (and taste) like.
They are adding to the cooking blog, A Pinch of Turmeric, that began as Vasundhra’s aid to
daughter Nisha and her two sisters, Deepa and Divya, as they attempted to
recreate podis, masalas for their own households. A
passion project that took roots as early as May 2019, it became a full-time
venture during the lockdown, in light of the Corona virus pandemic that seems
to have usurped 2020 and the Margazhi season as well.
Now, Nisha is what mom
Vasundhra jokingly calls “tech support”.
“I don’t understand technology at all, so since the beginning,
Nisha has been in charge of the website, the formatting, everything. And now,
we’ve begun a YouTube channel for it, which she is taking charge of. So a huge
thank you to her,” she chuckles. Ask Nisha,
and she’s just grateful for the abundance of recipes that have come to her aid
and satiated her taste buds.
The blog is just the tip of the iceberg for the mother-daughter
duo that share much more than a love of indigenous cooking. Both Carnatic
vocalists, an unexpected and rather-delayed love for the arts took hold in the
1960s when, at the age of 16, mother Vasundhra began learning vocal music from
Delhi-based vidwan Gopal Iyer. A dream that seemed short-lived at the time,
marriage whisked her away to Toronto, Canada, a mere six years later and,
occupied with a full-time corporate job, her passion transformed into classes,
annual Tyagaraja festivals, and
the one-off concert in a city barren of Indian classical arts at the
time.
“Because I had just had around five years of exposure to Carnatic
music in India itself, I hardly considered it a career option. It was just
something I was passionate about and wanted to share with others, especially
with our communities in Toronto and Ottawa,” says Vasundhra.
Hands full with a life abroad and raising her daughters, the
family journeyed to the popular Sri Venkateswara Temple in Pittsburgh, PA
occasionally, often when visiting artists presented concerts or a festival was
being held. It was on one such occasion that they chanced upon a concert by
vidwan T.R. Subramanyam (TRS) who Vasundhra happened to know during her time in
Delhi, all those years ago.
“He was thrilled to see me, as I was him! As it turned out, he was
spending that summer in Pittsburgh, teaching music and running a summer programme,”
she adds.
The next day, Vasundhra went to meet him, taking young Nisha, only
10 years-old at the time, along with her. TRS prodded her to sing and she did:
she remembers the incident vividly.
“It was Siddhi Vinayakam in Mohanakalyani – Amma had taught
it to me,” she smiles fondly. The rendition immediately caught the vidwan’s
attention and he had only one piece of advice that he shared with Vasundhra,
almost instantly: “Move back to India if you want to have Nisha make it in
music”.
Of course, it would be a
few more years before that move materialised. While Nisha spent her weekends
that year attending the summer music camp along with Vasundhra, the family
visited Delhi just a year later for more intensive training. It was then that a
surprise cancellation in a temple saw Nisha present her very first concert: it
was a 45-minute-slot that would trigger a life-altering decision.
“I hadn’t realised the importance of music when I was growing up
and honestly, I didn’t want Nisha to have the same regrets I did. So I spoke to
my husband and we decided to follow our instincts: we moved back,” Vasundhra
says.
Whether or not Nisha would pursue music as a full-time career was
yet-to-be-seen, but with the ball rolling, the family packed their bags in 1992
and headed back. They went first to Delhi and, under the guidance of guru TRS,
continued to learn from him before journeying and finally settling down in Chennai
in 1995.
Adjustment, of course, is never immediate, and it was far from it
in Nisha’s case: plagued with a slight foreign accent and placed in a new
environment, immersing herself in both music and its new social strata took
time. Despite having led what most people would consider an ‘Indian lifestyle’ in
Toronto, the new environment posed a host of challenges. Continuing under the
tutelage of guru TRS, she began to grow and evolve as a musician.
Comfort, however, gradually came calling in the form of additional
gurus P.S. Narayanaswamy and Suguna Varadachari, who both Nisha and Vasundhra
began to learn from whilst in Chennai, supplementing classes during guru TRS’
short Chennai visits. Guided by the intricacies and nuances of each guru, Nisha blossomed. This novel
phase even allowed her to begin to perform, compete, and get involved with the
popular youth-led organisation, Youth Association for Classical Music (YACM).
“That was when I really
began interacting with musicians my age and got involved,” she tells us.
Juggling education as an engineering student and what evolved into a full-time
performing schedule as an artist, a seemingly well-timed hiring slump gave
Nisha the time to pursue music full-time before, three years later, she was
bitten by the ‘work bug’.
“I started wondering what a corporate career would be like, for
some reason,” she laughs. She joined the HR department of Flextronics,
beginning what would be an incredibly hectic phase as she balanced corporate
culture and performance pressure alongside mother Vasundhra’s balancing act of
her own.
The stint lasted for two years before finally, Nisha was
exhausted. Something had to give and somewhere, she knew what that ‘something’ would
be.
“One day, I was sitting at Nandanam signal, stuck in traffic – as
always – and I called Amma and said ‘Amma, I’m quitting my job’. Her only
question to me was ‘What took you so long?’ ” They both laugh heartily. Not an
‘aha’ moment, they say, but one that Vasundhra could more than relate to: it’s
how she felt when she quit her own job at a prolific multinational firm in
India after returning.
“I was working steadily but one day I asked myself: Didn’t I
return to India for the sake of music, for me and my daughter? So why was I
distracted? That clarity, it seems, was all I needed,” Vasundhra shares.
It’s been over a decade since that paramount shift and the ladies
have only gotten busier with time. They tell us that in the busiest of Margazhi
seasons, they will practically not see each other, often occupied with their
own concert activities and schedules.
Strangely, it seems, the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic has been its
own blessing in disguise. A forced lockdown means a lack of concert flurry –
now, Nisha is able to see mom Vasundhra and dad Raju (alias Rajagopalan) weekly
and despite having her hands full with her young toddlers, the two stay
intimately connected through their love of food, music, and A Pinch of Turmeric, a venture that has
now grown far beyond their initial humble dreams.
In actuality, it’s far from ‘just a blog’. When Vasundhra’s ‘vaasana podi’, a powder used for
organic baths for Nisha’s daughter Kavya, went live on the internet, it
attracted the attention of someone who would become her first customer. At her
behest, she began to sell it commercially, creating an e-commerce platform that
sells homemade, indigenous soaps, herbal powders, and the like as close as in
Chennai and even as far as America by way of courier services.
Of course, the never-ending pandemic has thrown up challenges of
its own: shipping products abroad is a tall order, what with the multiple
restrictions that have been imposed. But the mother-daughter duo continues to
serve their local apartment communities, many of whom have ramped up their
purchases, hoping to boost their own immunities in the wake of this deadly
virus.
It has also given the ladies a chance to develop the blog into a
YouTube channel, one that continues to grow as Vasundhra now attempts recipes
that reach outside the realm of ‘native foods’. For instance, her repertoire
has grown: products like ‘tofu’,
which have been harder to acquire in the market due to lack of supply, are
being made in-house, allowing both Vasundhra and Nisha to continue to innovate
and avoid the recipe and food fatigue that seems to plague other households as
they attempt to innovate with what they have on-hand.
Listening to the tale of the blog begs the question: What time is
left for music? Especially when concerts are virtual and the hustle, bustle,
and demands of the live festival season are absent this year, one would imagine
that complacency sets in. But if anything, it seems the opposite is taking
place.
“When we listen to these new, young singers nowadays, they all
seem so talented, so equipped. There is a technical understanding and prowess
that I definitely didn’t have at that age – it’s unbelievably inspiring,”
Vasundhra says.
“Definitely. I think the access to material and resources has
helped that; the wealth of concerts and knowledge available on the internet now
is immense, and young artists are really taking advantage of that! It’s
extremely praiseworthy, all the things they are able to do and constantly
present,” Nisha adds.
Ask the ladies what they personally prefer, tradition or
innovation, though the answers might shock you ever-so-slightly! While Nisha is
more comfortable in the realm of a conventional concert, Vasundhra presents the
newer ‘katha kutcheri’ in which
storytelling is juxtaposed with kritis
to tell a compelling tale, often one taken from mythology or religious
texts.
“The speaking bits can still get me and nowadays, there is an
increasing demand to speak on stage, even just to describe the piece you are
presenting! I think the audience has become more aware, more knowledgeable
even, of what they are listening to and well, I still have those slip-ups when
it comes to telling stories, especially in sentamizh, on stage,” Nisha admits while Vasundhra laughs in the
background.
So much, it seems, has changed since the days of Toronto,
corporate life, and even the family’s heydays in music. There is a settled
comfort in the music scene and its community now, one that the ladies have
sought solace in during this trying time. A product of the evolving dynamic
that surrounds them? Seems so.
And yet, in some ways, they say it seems like nothing has changed
at all. As they speak about those initial struggles, juggling schedules,
gulping mouthfuls of ‘thayir satham’
between paatu classes and
work shifts in a rapid, almost blink-and-miss-pace, there is a sense of
heartwarming nostalgia. It’s one that reveals what the secret of this
mother-daughter duo really is -- the tight-knit camaraderie that, if one didn’t
know better, would suggest that they were sisters, best friends, or both.
Entwined by music and food equally, enshrined in the throes of family
loyalty and love, it stands testament to what the two have built in these
multiple decades and to the years of both that lie ahead, waiting.
