Every year on Guru Purnima day, the students of the noted violinist Pandita Supriya Pathak gather at her home to perform in her honour on this momentous day.
The Pandita is very particular that all of her students should perform on that day. But then she also expects everyone to practise and rehearse so thoroughly that they give as close to a flawless performance as possible. When her students perform she sits close to them and listens to them very minutely. Mediocrity is frowned upon, and she would rather a student completely drops out from performing than render a shoddy performance on this great day.
Ravi, who has been studying with her for the last 4 years dreads this particular day. Ravi is a self taught violinist who wanted to become a better violinist after his early retirement from his corporate career. So when he heard that the Pandita has finally started offering online classes he joined her online classes with great enthusiasm. He was already playing confidently in a small local band, and he imagined that learning under the Pandita will make him a more refined player which will enable him to join a bigger band.
However, soon after he joined the online class, Ravi realised he has bitten off more than he can chew. Firstly the Pandita told him that he had to unlearn a lot because he was using wrong bowing techniques. Secondly he had never learnt music in a formal manner so he did not understand anything about notating and scales. He belonged to a group who had all studied some music formally so he became the odd student in his online group who could not comprehend what was being discussed in the class. Finally, he realised that learning to play violin online was very difficult as some of the wrist movements and bowing techniques require a lot of sensitivity, and this was difficult to teach/learn using an online format.
Consequently he started dreading the weekly violin classes as every class was sheer struggle. Earlier he used to play the violin for the sheer joy of playing it, but now he stopped playing it for enjoyment - nowadays he plays it only to finish the homework assignment that the Pandita gave every week.
The Pandita is a very encouraging and dedicated Guru, but how can he keep telling the Pandita that much of what she says in the group class just flies over his head? And the Pandita had the habit of mentioning names of her brilliant students in her class and narrate how well they were progressing, and how quick they were in comprehending. For Ravi, this subtly meant that he had to compare himself with the bright students in the class - all of whom were less than half his age and who were all talented and aspiring professional musicians. The comparison element made the fun element disappear in music, and even though Ravi was competitive in his corporate career he disliked comparisons because he had left his career to discover his own path.
So with Guri Purnima approaching Ravi started feeling a deep dread even when he is sleeping. He took the help of a musician friend to figure out what to play and organised the script, and practised like crazy for the next 1 month.
On Guru Purnima a procession of the Pandita's students performed, each better than the previous. Ravi's turn was next and the cold dread again started, and he cursed himself for being in a situation where he felt that some 60 experts (all the Pundita's disciples) were evaluating him and passing judgement over him.
His fingers were clammy, and the accompanying tabla player got into a faster rhythm than Ravi could manage comfortably. Yet he played as best as he could, and was glad when he played out the last line of his piece without too many errors.
He knew he could have done a better job - but somehow the stress got into him - and he fails when there is no joy. His peers from the online batch told him he played well, but he felt they were saying it merely to make him feel better about himself.
"There is pain in learning anything new - but is this level of pain not crossing my threshold? Is all this stress worth it - and for what purpose if I have stopped enjoying playing the violin?" he asked himself as he went to bed that night.
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