Dudurudh

In the middle of playing the teen tal for the first time in something like 15 years, a realization dawned on me: the hardest part of playing the tabla was never the complications of a rela or memorizing the bols, or even the technique of finger placements—it was simply the discipline of paying undivided attention for one hour. Back then, the distractions were the thoughts of my friends outside playing cricket or loitering in the basement, or sneaking onto the roof of some building while I was “stuck” here in front of a middle-aged tabla teacher who looked like he’d rather be asleep after lunch. Today, the distractions are sillier and more trivial — anxieties about work, finances, romances and even some amorphous, undefined ones about the state of the world and life in general.

Even as this thought dawned on me, I realized that I had unintentionally picked up the tempo of my teen tal. I slowed it back down. The practice is really the discipline of being present. Of starting a teen tal at 120 bpm and sticking to it for 30 minutes. Of not only knowing that after the 12th beat a TeTe replaces the Tha but also then playing it with the clarity each Bol deserves. That’s when your fingers begin to fatigue, sweat rolls down your sides, you hold your breathe, your back begins to slouch, and thoughts start drifting. That’s also precisely when you have to drag those thoughts out of the picture—those distractions must wait—and pull yourself back to the start of the beat, back to the first Dha–Dhin–Dhin–Dha at 120 bpm. This is a meditation.