LS: “My generation was different. We couldn’t voice our opinions.”

“DAD’S A PACIFIST: IF HE DOESN’T LIKE WHAT YOU’RE DOING, HE WILL IGNORE IT AND WAIT FOR YOU TO SORT IT OUT. MAA WEARS HER HEART ON HER SLEEVE AND IS A PRESSURE COOKER…!” —DR NARAYANA SUBRAMANIAM

Kavita: “With this generation, it’d be foolish to expect that. You need to praise, not scold.”

Bindu: “The unquestioned obedience must go. I don’t let students touch my feet. Give me a hug instead!”

Ambi: “Classical music is like a structure. There’s so much improvisation that you can have 10 people playing the same thing in 10 different ways.“

Dr Narayana: “Puritans may say Indian classical is not cool, but it is a lot more accessible today, which itself indicates change.”

of mother which has not taken away anything from my amma,” Bindu says.

“My children accepted me as ‘maa’ overnight,” Kavita beams. “I came with a lot of trepidations. Suddenly, I was in another city and a wife and a mom to kids whose eating habits I didn’t know. My family worried if I’d be okay.”

There were some dramatic confrontations, though. Such as, when Kavita visited them and a book titled How to Deal with Troublesome Adolescents fell out of her bag! “Understandable as there were two boys and Ambi went around biting everyone,” laughs Bindu.

“These kids would do everything last minute. I was used to waking up at 5.30 am for a 7 am class. After six months of trying to straighten things out, Ambi had reached the ‘oh she isn’t as nice as she seemed’ phase,” Kavita laughs.

But the dust soon settled and Kavita became the person the kids would approach for permission to attend parties. “Because LS would say ‘I don’t believe in parties,’” Kavita says.

Kavita and LS have different parenting styles. “Dad’s a pacifist. If he doesn’t like what you’re doing, he will ignore it and wait for you to sort it out. Maa wears her heart on the sleeve and is more of a… pressure-cooker,” smiles Narayana.

NATURE VS NURTURE

Today, Bindu considers herself a contemporary musician rather than a traditional one. “I write in English and the structure’s like a pop song,” she explains. Her collaborations with Ambi are in the same vein, though he does a lot more classical work.

Though the guru-shishya tradition still exists, that’s not how the junior Subramaniams learnt. “It’s ingrained in us, but we’ve also been taught to separate the art from the artist,” Bindu says.

Her father explains, “My generation was different. During any discussion, my father would answer. We couldn’t voice our opinion!”

Though there’s no doubt that gurukuls have raised some stellar musicians, Kavita says, “With this generation, it’ll be foolish to expect that.

You need to praise and then urge them to do better, not scold them. There’s a change and we’ve stayed abreast with it.”

Bindu and Ambi have actively been trying to dismantle the ‘too much respect’ part of the tradition. “The unquestioned obedience must go,” says the music educator who doesn’t let her students touch her feet. “Give me a hug instead! That way, when you don’t agree with or understand what I am teaching, you will be able to speak up.”

“The idea is to groom musicians who are the best versions of themselves, instead of 100 musicians like you,” adds Ambi.

This, they say, is the way towards a future where many more people have access to music than those who were born into it.

“There’s no ‘music in the blood’. Between nature and nurture, nurture always has a lasting impact,” signs off Bindu.

karishma.kuenzang@hindustantimes.com Follow @kkuenzang on Twitter and Instagram