evan’s day out

Clients of RikiRam’s musical Instrument store include: Pandit Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerjee, Vilayat Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Alla Rakha, The Beatles, George Harrison, and hundreds more of India’s best classical musicians. Upon entering the quaint shop, I saw sitars, sarods, tabla, harmonium, and tanpura lining the walls along with hundreds of pictures of his more famous clientele. I had the opportunity to interview the current RikhiRam himself which was a remarkable opportunity since I’ve idolized this maker since the age of 14 . He was so nice and open; he had even been to Nashville. I could also tell he was more liberal than most traditional Classical Indian musicians because he had created a magnetic transducer to produce a high quality electric sitar which has not been done before. He even gave me one of his fusion CDs for free! On par with most attempts at fusion Indian music, it was poor quality in my opinion. He told me he dumbed down the rhythms (tals) and ragas (note patterns) so the westerner could understand it. As I was hailing an auto rickshaw to leave, a Sikh driver and a midget pulled up and told me to get in. While I was getting in, a group of Indian men came over to me and told me that I was beautiful and asked if I was a model. Then they asked for a photograph and an autograph, I again declined all their request. One of them finally asked for a handshake; that I could do. As I was shaking his hand he quickly came down and kissed my hand and asked, “You like men?” I told the midget who was fluent in English to tell the Sikh driver to gas it. The midget asked me if I knew the man who kissed my hand. I said I didn’t. The midget told me I was definitely a smoker since my eyes were so red. Little did he know that my eyes were actually red from dehydration and a cold. He proceeded to show me many little bags of marijuana that looked more like blackened dried river algae than any pot I’ve ever seen. He told me the bag was ten grams and cost 2000 rupees. The bag was about three grams, and I told him he was crazy for trying to rip me off like that. After talking to me about classical Indian music and how RikhiRam was supposedly a cheat, he told me that his marijuana was bad quality and was a scam for tourist.