The Delhi weather is a bit muggy. It has rained recently but when the sun shines it’s hot. Rather like Chennai, perhaps. So the Chennai-based M. Lalitha and M. Nandini, popularly known as the Violin Sisters, should be okay with that. On the other hand, this chirpy duo always seems to be smiling.
The noted young musicians are at Le Meridien’s 24-hour café The One for an evening of chitchat. Lalitha is happy to choose a glass of watermelon juice. “I’ll go with that,” chimes in Nandini. Lalitha usually takes the lead in conversations, while Nandini is often content to nod and smile. Lalitha it is, whose name is always mentioned first in references to the musical duo. But no, it’s not a case of the younger sibling playing second fiddle to the elder. Because when it comes to concerts, these two Carnatic violinists give each other equal weightage. In everything else, they admit, they are two peas from different pods.
But then, even different pods have lots in common, and so, after all, do Lalitha and Nandini, as we soon discover. Though Nandini laughs, “Music is the only thing we agree about,” it seems even their differences run in tandem.
The sisters make a lively, laughing picture. Over biscuits from the high tea buffet, they describe the travails of being globetrotting vegetarians, especially the kind whose standards were set high during their childhood, garnished with home-ground spices and doting parental love.
Performing as a duo since their early years, the sisters had the advantage of family support and not much need to go into the kitchen to fend for themselves. But mummy’s apron strings can only be so long. Since both sisters have a penchant for the academic aspect of music as well, they left Chennai to pursue doctoral degrees. While Lalitha went to the U.S. as a Fulbright scholar, Nandini went to the U.K. on a Charles Wallace Fellowship.
Being alone meant not only continuing their career as soloists but also learning to cook. And like other children of good cooks, they have found, even if they mimic what they have seen being executed in the home kitchen, “when we cook we don’t get the same taste,” as Lalitha puts it.
Lalitha stakes claim to having cracked the culinary conundrum first. But in London, Nandini struggled. “She used to send me all the authentic spices, but still the authentic ‘Amma taste’ didn’t come,” confides Nandini.
Eventually, authentic ‘amma’ flavour or not, Nandini too learnt to survive and when the elder sister visited London, Nandini surprised her with an array of dishes to make a Tamil Nadu kitchen proud.
Brought up on staples like idli, dosai, upama, sambars and kozhumbus, et al, they have by now trained their palate to a cosmopolitan pitch. Instead of the regular South Indian ‘tiffin’, says Nandini, she goes in for healthy habits like green tea.
Lalitha adds, “I used to get a very bad headache if I didn’t get the same filter coffee that was made at home.” She then took up drinking tea, which she finds more easily around the world, and its variations more tolerable.
Performing artists are usually looked after like royal visitors on their tours abroad, their every wish catered to – as far as possible, that is. Once, while in South Africa, Lalitha had to explain at length the kinds of vegetables that could be tossed into a simple dish she could eat without taking recourse to any non-vegetarian ingredient. The employee assigned to prepare her meal for the next day noted all instructions carefully.
In the middle of the night, Lalitha was woken up by a knock on her hotel door. Opening it, she found the employee apologetically standing outside. “She wanted to know whether the carrots should be cut lengthwise or round,” chuckles Lalitha.
Luckily today, those who avoid meat don’t have to settle for boiled vegetables and soups alone, what with pizzas and pastas having been taken into the vegetarian fold in a big way. As we listen to tales the violin will never reveal, we tuck into slices of The One’s campanella pizza, adapted for vegetarians.
Is there room for dessert? The duo decides to split a pastry. Lalitha admits to a sweet tooth. But Nandini is all for savouries.
Ah, a dissenting note at last!
