A healthy audience with a sprinkling of performing musicians at a non-ticketed afternoon concert, cooing appreciative chuckles and nods in the viruttam tells you the full story. Dr. Baby’s classical bent puts her in a minority league. What keeps her brand active is her confidence and swanubhavam. She was not perturbed by her low pitch or lack of dynamism in the early phase,
‘Kalaye deva Devam’ (Swati Tirunal, Ranjani, Rupakam) had a good gait but could not provide the lift off she may have wanted. Nor did ‘Vazhi maraithirukkudu’ (Gopalakrishna Bharathi, Nattakurinji). But everyone seemed to know that the big moment was coming. That was Dr. Baby’s Thodi.
Bright start
The alapana traced all the crevices of the raga, intelligently circumferencing the ‘pa’ and ‘sa’. Apparently simple with large portions in lower octaves, the alapana still left a haunting trail. ‘Emani migula’ (Adi) the Syama Sastri kriti that starts off brightly in the upper shadjam was brilliantly rendered.
The more scholarly part came at the niraval at ‘Saramati’. This was clearly Baby's piece de resistance , coating the sangathis with laya permutations.
She had the perfect support , especially from violinist L. Ramakrishnan and ‘Ganjira’ Trivandrum Rajagopal, who snatched the glory from the mridangist A.S. Ranganathan.
Ramakrishnan’s Thodi alapana and the viruttam reposes were matured and succinct. The concert packed a lot of emotive phrases in the viruttam that traversed Hamsanandi, Khamas and Komalangi before culminating in her own composition, ‘Arul puria’ in Komalangi. Classicism still prevails.
