People from different walks learn parai for a good cause

Coimbatore: The city on Sunday witnessed a rare sight - a group of 35 people from various walks of life playing parai, the traditional handheld drum, and dancing in unison. Among them were students, corporate professionals, entrepreneurs and farmers. They were part of a two-day parai workshop conducted by the city-based arts forum Nigar Kalaikoodam at Shri Raman Chettiar Memorial Higher Secondary School.
Prasath Selvaraj, 25, from the city, who is pursing PhD in social work at Pondicherry University, said, “I have always wanted to learn a musical instrument. But when I saw that parai and its players were being discriminated against, I wanted to learn it to show that all musical instruments are the same.”
Organizers echoed Selvaraj’s view when they said they wanted to break the idea that parai was to be played only by certain communities at certain occasions and take it to everyone.
“While an instrument such as guitar can be learnt and played by everyone, why not parai,” asks Gnatppan Siva, an organizer at Nigar Kalaikoodam. “We wanted to take the instrument to everyone irrespective of their identity,” he says.
Their intentions have become true as people from varied backgrounds came forward to learn the instrument. Latha Venkatesan, the principal of Shri Raman Chettiar Memorial Higher Secondary School, was one of them. “Not just me, I also wants my students to learn parai. It is our traditional instrument. Because of our superstitions, we have neglected it. But it has to reach everybody,” she says.
Students at the workshop are not only taught handling the instrument, beats and dance moves, but also the instrument’s history and how it is perceived today. “We don’t want them to see this just as a musical instrument, but want them to have a complete understanding of its history,” says Srinivasan, another organizer.
The forum has also been conducting fortnightly parai classes, says Siva. They also discuss with students how the instrument and its idea can be taken forward, adds Srinivasan.