#LifeIsMusic: A peek into the childhood of ace violinist Dr. Sangeeta Shankar

Grammy nominated violinist Dr. Sangeeta Shankar comes from a family of stalwart musicians. Her grandfather was the Carnatic exponent A Narayana Iyer. Her mother is the Padma Bhushan winning violinist Dr. N Rajam and her uncle is the carnatic violinist TN Krishnan.

It's safe to say that Dr. Shankar has music in her blood. Playing the violin since she was child, she does not even remember when she first held the instrument.

Trained by her mother, Dr. Shankar was taught to practice at the break of dawn. While her training acqainted her with maestros of classical music, her family name brought the added pressure of having to succeed.

The exemplary training her mother put her through ensured that even as a young girl, she learnt to handle all these pressures with élan.

Here she recounts how she practiced the violin as a child: 

“My mother’s childhood was just about music, music, music and academics and that’s it,” she says suggesting that her family was made up of disciplinarians. The strictness though watered down with the generation, her own daily schedule included waking up at 4 am and practicing for two hours, then getting ready for school in one hour and then sitting back down with the violin from 7 am to 8 am before going to school. Riyaaz in the morning would start with little Sangeeta seated in front of her mother, learning a new piece for about five minutes. Then, she was left to practice it for the remaining part of the two hours, while her mother would go to the kitchen to begin the morning chores. One can almost picture the little girl, with two well oiled pig-tails attempting the nuances of a raga on the violin. “The minute I would make a mistake, a quick reprimand would float out of the kitchen along with the smell of idli and sambar,” she says.

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