Drumming up a chenda storm!

Breaking the glass ceiling: Hema Malini Pramod, one of the handful of women chenda exponents in India, has made things happen…and how! Her journey to mastering the ancient percussion instrument is an achievement in gender diversity as she has breached a traditional male preserve, the chenda melam, reports Priyam Chhetri

Her shoulders hurt, her fingers bled, but nothing could break her spirit. 37-year-old Hema Malini Pramod whose neighbours in Sadashivnagar have little inkling there’s a drummer,  and that too, a female one, next door, is one of the few women exponents of the Chenda Melam, who can drum up a storm.

The cylindrical percussion instrument is played at weddings, births, feasts and any celebration, particularly at temples across South India, and mainly in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, invariably by strapping men, muscled, pot-bellied, but men all the same.

Hema first heard the mesmerizing thump of the chenda when she was three-years-old. She stood rooted to the spot, totally transfixed. Little did she imagine that she would grow up to become one of the first women to perform the Chenda Melam before hundreds of people.

It was her grandfather, Govindan Nandilath, a police-constable, who first noticed her growing love for the drums. As a child, she found it physically impossible to lift the instrument and hang it around her neck —  it weighs about 15 kilos.

“This is why men were more dominant in the field. Women were always seen as physically weak,” said Hema. It was her grandfather's idea to enroll her in a Bharatnatyam school, where she could build her base in the classical form of dance, attune her to the rhythms that drive the inner drummer, as a first step towards realizing her dreams.

 It wasn’t long before Hema moved to Bengaluru to begin learning the chenda under Aneesh, who had trained at the Kalamandalam for five years. Starting out, she found, was the hardest. Traditionally, gurus make their disciples train on rocks before they graduate to using the actual instrument. The movement of the drum sticks is also unusual, emphasising the wrist over the upper arms.

"The initial days were very difficult. I had to treat the rock as a drum and learn the intricacies of the rhythms," she recalled. "The sticks need to be held in a particular way too, not too close to either side of the instrument, not too tight and not too lose. I remember my fingers bleeding and my shoulders hurting, but that did nothing to break my spirit."

 She studied with two other kindred spirits -  Beena K and Vibithi Nair, who began preparing for the performance of a lifetime. Last week, the amazing trio became the first women to perform at the Ayyappa Temple in Malleswaram.

“It was a moving experience. The audiences liked it because we transported them back to their childhood. And of course, we had their complete attention. Here we were,  surprise, surprise, three women, leading the performance,” recounts Hema.

  In 2015, the trio found themselves a spot in the Guinness Record for the largest Kaikottikali performance, where some 5,200 women came together in the overwhelmingly feminine clap, tap and whirl routine. In April that year, they bagged a place in the Limca book of records, as part of 101,000 women who performed the Pinnal Thiruvathira, the sacred dance of Lord Shiva that created the universe 132 trillion years ago. “It is performed with two ropes. The dancers hold onto each end, braiding and unbraiding the rope as they dance.”

 Hema is now 37-years-old and her passion has only grown. Now, she wants to inspire and encourage more women to break the mould, and experiment with art forms that were traditionally, the sole preserve of the male.

“The beat of the chenda transports me to a different realm. However, as a woman, I feel like I have a baton that I need to pass on now. Taking on something that seemed impossible fills me with a strength I never knew I had. It’s a life lesson, and it is simple. Believe in yourself.”