Tempo toddler

“His tryst with music started when he was barely 18 months old. He would sit at the kitchen listening to my mother singing devotional songs. One day,we saw him hammering away furiously on two aluminum dabbas. We initially brushed it off as an act of playfulness but the two months later when his aunt got him a small dhol to indulge him,he began playing it in tandem to the beats of the song that we were singing,” said Truptraj’s father Atul Pandya,a tax consultant by profession who started Swar Sadhana,a music group comprising people who may not be formally trained but nevertheless love music.

Incidentally,Truptraj’s first public performance was at a weekly Swar Sadhana meeting in January when Pandya decided to put his son on stage to see whether his musical proficiency was a fluke. “That day he played the dhol with rhythm that I was convinced that he has an inborn talent on the instrument. A couple of weeks later Truptraj also performed at a festival organised in Somaiya College and he received a vociferous response and a certificate,” said Pandya.

While he started out with the dhol,Truptraj soon took a fascination to an old tabla that had been gifted his father. “The tabla was in urgent need of repair and I had kept it in the back seat of the car. When we were taking it to the repair shop,Truptraj was seated behind and he immediately began playing it. We bought him a set of drums and he played that well too,” said Pandya.

Incidentally Pandya had sent a video clipping of Truptraj’s performance to the Limca Book of Records which was sent back with an apology saying that they no longer accept children’s entries. A slightly disappointed Pandya had then decided to send the clip to the Guinness World Records even as his colleagues smirked at his decision to persist despite a rejection.

“I sent three applications to Guinness; first saying Truptraj was the youngest tabla player,then as the youngest drums player and sent the latest application on May 19 describing him as the youngest percussionist. All three applications were accepted and the website of Guinness World Records has put up his name and a link to the clipping of his performance.”

After spending over an hour talking about what Truptraj could do,it was finally time to see it. As his mother Veena began belting out a Gujarati bhajan,a smile crept up the toddler’s face and he began playing with the precision of a prodigy in the making.