Archive

"Music has always been my passion. I want to keep it that way,” says Tara Kumaravelu who enthralled the packed audience at the Cursetji Manockji Cursetji Hall of the Alexandra Girls’ English Institution with the bell-like clarity of her singing. The repertoire of songs, beginning with Memories from London’s stage hit Cats included a variety of semi classicals and perennials of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, rendered with every syllable ringing true.

The fund-raiser for the Psychoanalytic Therapy and Research Centre (PTRC) on August 7, 2010 was the Coimbatore based Kumaravelu’s first performance in Bombay. Though remarkably poised and easy on stage she confessed to Parsiana the following day that she was far from being totally confident and had come down with a bout of flu a few days prior to the show — just as she had before an earlier performance in Madras.

It was at the Ooty Club that Tara cut her teeth singing in public (where she was first spotted by a PTRC activist and provisionally booked for the Bombay event), followed by a show organized by the local Rotary Club in Coonoor where the proceeds were earmarked for the vocational education of girls from the surrounding population. At a club in Madras she was one of two performers followed by the opening of the ITC Gardenia in Bangalore, she speaks of her nascent career as a singer.

It was the piano Tara began to learn at the age of seven, singing along as she played it. Music teacher Benita Fernandes noticed she could "hit the right notes” and sought the parents’ permission to teach the little girl singing. Fernandes was Ooty based so Tara traveled up the Nilgiris for her music lessons on weekends and was rewarded with tasty titbits — "a dark secret” from her mother, as recalls Homai (née Adenwalla) who tried to keep her then chubby youngster in shape! Further training followed from Kate Woolveridge in Cardiff and Suzanne Murphy at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama along with undergraduate study in engineering at Cardiff University followed by MSc EBM (engineering business management) at Warwick University. "They are not only excellent teachers but lovely people. It was a joy to be associated with them and work under them,” reminisces Tara. Now she continues with lessons three days a month in New Delhi from the German trained Situ Singh Buehler. 

Would Tara become a professional singer? "You need to be exceptionally good and also very lucky to make it in the music world,” she notes. "Singing requires daily practice, it’s hard work, almost like aerobics! Sometimes I feel I should quit classical singing… Singing is a very serious hobby,” says the lady who is more interested in helping her dad Kumar Kumaravelu and earning her place in his brainchild Aquasub Engineering, a manufacturer of water pumps for agriculture under the Texmo brand which employs 2,000 people. She is apprenticing on the job right now and wonders whether her colleagues will take her seriously: "I am going into a male dominated set-up; even in our factory there are no women at all!” The main attraction in Coimbatore, she says, is "to live and learn under dad… With his guidance it’s possible.” The only thing she misses in her town are her friends and concerts like in Delhi: "In my town there’s not even a choir,” she rues.

A science enthusiast since her school days, engineering was the logical course for Tara who says she finds "science more interesting, easier to understand. People change by the day!” So she goes to the factory with her father, using music to break the monotony of regular work. "I enjoy coming home, staying at home and strumming my guitar.” It’s her mother who coaxes her into taking up performances. "She feels I should share my talent by singing for causes. It helps to know that I am doing it for a cause.” Meditation, exercises, tennis and reading — "a lot of science and also medical books”—take care of the leisure hours. She used to play golf but says she doesn’t find the time for it any more.

"I have never been an overly ambitious person. I am not proud of it. I wish I had the will to pursue something more challenging… My dad is fond of music and was a classical guitarist. He could sing also but he is so shy, he doesn’t do it. His mother was British and a singer… I am like him. I seem confident on stage but I am not an extrovert. My mother is the one who pushes me to achieve and make me better.” Homai who uses her time and resources to help others, runs her own SOS Village, currently housing 93 abandoned children, on the outskirts of Coimbatore. "Mum goes there every day and I go on weekends when I am in Coimbatore,” says Tara, adding, "It gives us a sense of purpose, a meaning in life… I get my inspiration from my mother. She is the propeller. Without her I wouldn’t have started singing.” 

A beagle named Oscar is the fourth member of the family, "the love of my father’s life, a notorious chap who enjoys dirtying my mother’s carpets… The three of us are always fighting for dad’s affection.”

 Tara’s maternal grandparents Gulnar and renowned maxillofacial surgeon Dr Hirji Adenwalla of Trichur have had a "huge impact” on her life, "almost like my own parents… His life is all about giving to those who don’t have very much.” She is also very proud of her lovely, trim grandmother who she says is the most supple member of her aerobics class! Barely conscious of religious and communal boundaries, "I was brought up to be a good human being,” she tells us, one to whom prayer is meditation and faith in Meher Baba, like her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents who lived their life in Ahmed­nagar under his benign shadow. 

At 24, Tara’s mother thinks she should get married soon. "But I feel I’m too young and she talks of babies and I get hysterical. I don’t have it figured out yet! ...Peace and calm is what I want most from life.”