The philosopher's song

PONDICHERRY: Bamboo stalks in Auroville, Pondicherry, gently sway to the music that wafts through the French windows of the old house in the middle of a lotus pond. The trill of the breeze slicing through the foliage and the chirp of a lonely squirrel under the banyan tree merge with the classical euphony of the stringed instrument. Nadaka is at work.

You don't expect Nadaka to be a foreigner with a golden mane, playing the guitar. Looks apart, he is no longer a foreigner. And his musical instrument is not just a guitar. With a scalloped neck and mobile frets, his instrument catches the nuances of a guitar, a veena and everything in between.

The man has been in search of the nuances of life. A Canadian by birth, this 46-year-old embraced Indian music and philosophy in 1974. That was when, at the age of 16, he listened to the "inner-call" and set off on the "journey of his life".

Born into a well-off family, the teenager was attracted to western classical music. At the age of 13, he played with a small-time band.

Realising that he was "not learning much at school", he started reading Buddhism at the age of 11. At 15, he discovered Sri Aurobindo.

It was time to leave.
"With a few books, a loaf of bread and a guitar in hand, I left my home, land and even my name," he says. "I knew I had to go to Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, but didn't know how".

Hopping on to a ship and hitch hiking, he reached Italy and then Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. He was stopped at some borders; elsewhere, he was given food. "I didn't think of borders. I don't know how I crossed them," he says.

Once in India, he slept at the Golden Temple and walked down to Chennai. He named himself 'Nadaka', which means "the carrier of sound". ("Don't ask me my previous name. That is dead."). He arrived at the Aurobindo Ashram sometime in 1975.

For six years, Nadaka travelled all over Tamil Nadu, learning mrudangam, veena and Carnatic vocal. He was greatly influenced by Balamuralikrishna.

"At first, people looked at me as a western guitarist, while I wanted to learn more of Indian music," he says.

Practising with such stalwarts as Vikku Vinayagram, Sivamani, Ganesh and Kumaresh, Nadaka evolved his own style and, to get the right notes of a veena, he improvised his guitar.

After years of struggle, Nadaka got a break when Govind Nihalini asked him to play guitar for an AR Rahman composition for Khamosh Raat.

Nadaka has to his credit, such albums as Straight to Your Heart, Celebration, Lotus Trilogy and Living Colours.

Not one to define his genre of music, Nadaka is working on a solo guitar album named Natural Impressions.