“What do I do of this then?” My Goan grandmother asked, wrinkling her nose while looking at the rusty remnants of a snare drum. I looked at it, wondering about how many weddings, birthday parties, gatherings, band rehearsals had this piece of beauty seen in its glory days? It had a tiny engraving on the side that read Raymond, the lead drummer’s name; my grandfather.
It had been 10 years since he passed away, but I remember the stories he’d told me crystal clear. Stories about an Elvis-esque styled drummer with a tatted right arm (yep I’ll admit, my grandfather was pretty cool) bringing the rock and roll to the party with his band. “I’ll play it” I said in a split second. Eyebrows raised, “You? Why would a girl play an instrument like that?” my mother retorted. A little over a month, she was forwarding videos of my first song played on the drums to her friends on Whatsapp. Back in Mumbai, since I couldn’t get the whole set here I decided to enroll for classes. I was a little skeptical at first. “Is this actually a good idea?” “What if I don’t enjoy it?” I kept thinking on my way to getting myself enrolled all alone (Thanks mom!) But the instant I heard the sound of this beautiful instrument played live, I knew there was no turning back. “How hard can it be? It’s just banging around with a pair of sticks!” Oh boy, was I wrong. There’s a correct length at which you grip the stick (Did I mention different grips too?), sticks’ had different girths: 5B, 7A that procured different sounds. Pedals? Right foot on the bass drum, left foot on the hi hat cymbal. Wait what? Each limb has to play a different beat independent of the other? I wasn’t even sure the human body was capable of that kind of coordination. Rhythms, beats, fills, syncopation, keeping time, phew; drumming is so much more technical than one perceives it to be. All of my doubts washed away the day I mastered my first beat, then another, a song, songs of different genres, Wow. The more I fell in love with drumming, the more I fell in love with music. I looked forward to saturdays after college, to venting it all out on the weekends, to the patient practice sessions that required me to clear my head and focus only on what each of my limbs were doing to play complicated beats and then mastering it as I picked up the tempo. It was absolutely priceless, the satisfaction of once thinking it was impossible to gain that kind of accuracy and coordination, to playing to songs that went up to 140 bpm. From Hoobstank’s The Reason to Green Day’s American Idiot, I learnt it isn’t that difficult to master anything you thought you couldn’t do, with consistent practice and patience. As for my grandmother, who had been ecstatic from the start about me playing the drums, you can already guess who has her own shiny new acoustic drum kit in a particular house in Goa right now, Me! Ba dum Tssss
Glint 2020 