There’s music composed for the beauty hidden in our minds, did you know?

There had been just one radio in his village, Navagaththegama. It belonged to the person who owned a shop and so everyone could listen to it. It was one of those large, cumbersome affairs with large knobs to adjust volume and select station.

Well, one day, the elephant had fallen down. There were no technicians trained and/or able to fix radios back then; there was just not enough business to warrant setting up shop and offering such services naturally.

People fiddled around, as people always do. The radio was spoken to, cajoled, shaken and even given some sharp knocks. At one point the machine had crackled back to life. There were cheers and smiles and then mild consternation. The tuner had hit on a channel playing Western classical music.

The ‘radio repair men’ of the village quickly came to a decision: they would let it remain there for fear of losing even this if they tried to fiddle some more. Simon explained that this is how he came to appreciate and enjoy classical music. He would say that certain things need to be associated with for a long period of time before we get to a point where we know something of what it is all about. Classical music was one of those things, Simon said.

I think this is true. When I was very young, my mother took me for violin and then piano classes. I learnt some pieces. My brother and sister, both talented, like our mother, learned to appreciate such music. Our father brought home records. Beethoven. Bach. Mozart. Handel. My siblings took the trouble to listen. I fell asleep, even at concerts, or got up and did something else.

It was the same with North Indian Classical Music. My father took me to several Sitar recitals by ‘Ustad’ Podi Appuhamy. This was in 1977 and 1978. I fell asleep. He brought records. Pandit Ravi Shankar. Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Ustad Alaudin Khan. Later, Hariprashad Chaurasia on the flute. My brother listened. I did other things.

I think I was endowed with enough ‘ear’ to appreciate both kinds of music. I just didn’t hear it enough. I didn’t know how to let it under skin and into heart and how to close eyes and let it take me to places I didn’t know existed. I was lucky, though. I had a friend at the Peradeniya University who played the Esraj. He was by then ‘Visahrad’ and later ‘Nipun’.

Nishad Handunpathirana’s father taught music. He was a Kala Bhushana, a title conferred on him for having invented a new instrument, Chathuradvani, a combination of four instruments. Nishad lived in Sinhapitiya, Gampola and I spent many months during the tumultuous eighties when the universities were more closed than open in his house. I was forced to listen. Therefore I was able to understand Simon.

Yesterday, I got this email from my friend and benefactor, Errol Alphonso: ‘There is a party in progress, and a young man, is feeling lost and wandering about a mansion, very much like you and Hattha at the British Council in Kandy, those years ago. He finds himself in a huge library where an old man in a shaggy white mane is bending over a gramophone listening to a record. Suddenly, the old man sees and beckons him closer. “Beethoven”, he says. The young man stutters, “I cannot understand”. “You will, because it was written for the beauty that hides in your mind”, says the white-haired one. Over the next hour, passages are played, phrases reveal their enchantment, music becomes magic. Then, the symphony ends. The young man finds speech has fled him. He utters some thanks and turns away. Then quickly remembering another courtesy, he asks for a name. The old one bows his head gently, and softly says, “Einstein. Albert Einstein”’ Princeton, New Jersey.’

It could take just an hour or a moment, theoretically, depending on person, hour, circumstance etc., but for the vast majority this kind of music demands a lot more exposure for it to be understood and appreciated to a point where it reveals to us the beauty hidden in all our minds. A couple of months ago I met Lakshman Joseph de Saram and he said the same thing, in different words of course.

Lakshman is of the view that classical music need not and should not remain a preserve of the privileged. Today, we can find most things on the internet but only if we know what to look for. It is just a window that opens and invites us to peek. We need to go out thereafter and breathe that thing which the window shows us is out there. Exposure is the word that’s not in the streets we usually walk.

We can’t all count on being that boy who loses his way and ‘blunders’ happily into a library where an old man happens to be listening to that one piece that could turn heart into soul. Lakshman says it can be done. I think our children should learn as many languages as possible especially English for obvious reasons. The same logic holds for music. Not because these things are somehow ‘better’, but they are useful in many ways. In the very least they will expand our horizons and make us appreciate more than which we have. Like Sinhala (far richer, to my mind, than English) for example.

There’s magic awaiting our children. Are we going to gamble on fortuitous circumstances (the boy and Einstein story) or happy accident (Simon)? I don’t think we should, simply because we can do better.

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