Chakradar Tihai & Galsworthy

In Hindusthani Music, a Tihai is a musical phrase played thrice to reach the Sam, the place of the loudest accent in a Tala cycle. In Chakradara Tihai, this complete Tihai is played thrice to reach the Sam, so that to the listeners that musical phrase appears to have been played 3×3 or 9 times. (Ref: The Dictionary of Hindustani Classical Music by Bimalakanta Roychaudhuri). Pandit Nikhil Banerjee used these copiously in his concerts.

Coming to the literary equivalents of the above, many trilogies are published like the tihais of music. But literary works like the Chakradar Tihai are rare, the most famous example being the Forsyte series by Galsworthy (Nobel Prize 1932), which comprised three trilogies.

The first trilogy, "The Forsyte Saga" deals with the prosperous family of Forsytes, especially Soames, a solicitor & art collector, whose ill-fated marriage to Irene, divorce & second marriage to the French Annette is detailed in 3 novels called "The Man of Property", "In Chancery" & "To Let'.

The second trilogy, "A Modern Comedy", comprising "The White Monkey", "The Silver Spoon" & "Swan Song" deals with the doings of Fleur, daughter of Soames & Annette, her marriage to Michael Mont, book publisher & parliamentarian, & ends with the accidental death of Soames, who was trying to save his beloved Fleur from a falling picture from his art gallery, enveloped by a fire.

The third trilogy, "The End of the Chapter", comprising "Maid in waiting", "Flowering Wilderness" & "Over the River", deals mostly with the Cherrells, cousins (by marriage to the Forsytes) with an occasional appearance by Fleur. The heroine is Dinny Cherrell, who nearly dies by contracting an infectious disease from a poor child. Also there is Diana married to a man periodically insane &  Clare, trapped in a marriage with a sadistic husband. Added to this are a military man facing a court-martial & a poet forcibly converted to Islam & there is never a dull moment.

However, the Forsytes fortunes were continued in "The Forsytes - The Saga continues" by Suleika Dawson, a well written pastiche.

Turntable Snobbism: A Nostalgic Journey

Some manufacturers are marketing affordable "suitcase turntables" with built-in amplifier & speakers. The invective poured upon them by the audiophile community is unbelievable. So I was tempted to write about my forays into turntables.

The advent of the LP & EP records in the early 1960's, also saw the emergence of equipment to play them, mostly of the "suitcase variety", both made by HMV. They had ceramic cartridges, sapphire styli & idler drives, all spares being easily available & inexpensive. I also started buying records (classical) & played them on these equipments with enjoyment. Later Philips also started making stereo versions but with same styli & idler drives. 

This continued till the beginning of the 1980's when separate amplifier & speaker systems by specialised audio manufacturers arrived & HMV & Philips also made turntables with magnetic cartridges, diamond styli & belt drives. I switched over to these with stereo pre & power amplifiers & speakers with woofers & tweeters. Still the spares were easily & cheaply available. It should be noted that my records, played & enjoyed for 15 years on the detested suitcase turntables had no audible damage.

But when CDs arrived towards the beginning of the 1990's, the Indian manufacturers decided to shut down plants making records & turntables, even as the rest of the world was continuing to make them.

Now in the beginning of the 21st Century, we are importing both records & turntables because of our foolishness in scrapping them in a hurry. The imported stuff costs the earth & spares being difficult to get. The Marantz turntable & the 2.1 MMS system with a sub- woofer which I have now sounds great, but earlier also the "suitcase" systems gave undiluted pleasure for many years.

Vigilante literature

When people feel that justice has been denied to them, sometimes they take the law into their own hands & become judge, jury & executor rolled into one. Literature has also many examples of vigilantes, mostly portraying them favourably.

One of the earliest & most famous of such books is "The Four Just Men" by Edgar Wallace. This book so impressed Martin Edwards, who produced the magisterial study of the Golden Age of Detection called "The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books" that he included it that book, even though he overlooked the books having the genuine detective J. G. Reeder, created by Wallace himself. 

Wallace was one of the most prolific writers of the first part of the twentieth century but has rather fallen out of fashion now. But his first book was launched amidst a flurry of fanfare, which though it guaranteed best seller status to the book, was financial ruin to Wallace. Undeterred, he wrote five sequels to the book, all of which were well received. All the six books are issued in an omnibus edition by the publishers of economy editions, Wordsworth Publishers.

Even Agatha Christie's classic "Murder on the Orient Express" featuring her detective Hercule Poirot, he of the "little grey cells" & also filmed many times, is a vigilante novel, where an assorted dozen of them assasinate a child murderer.