by Sheela Chari
“A ruby?” Neela repeated.
“You can’t tell by looking, but with his tools, he detected some residue of the stone. He was familiar with the story of Parvati, and he said rumor had it that the ruby was a gift from the King of Mysore. If that’s true, the stone itself would be a priceless gem today.”
“Was it one of her wedding jewels?” Neela wondered, remembering Mohan’s book.
“Maybe. But we don’t have the ruby, and we don’t know what happened to it. So Grandpa and I decided not to get the instrument appraised anymore. We weren’t planning to sell the veena, and without the ruby, the original isn’t fully the original anyway.”
A missing ruby.
Neela stopped. “Mohan,” she said out loud.
Lynne didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
“Mohan’s ruby ring.”
Lynne drew in her breath. “You don’t think he had it all the time? And knew?”
There was a silence as both girls digested this possibility.
“If he has the ruby,” Lynne said slowly, “he might come after the veena. He’s stolen it before. He could do it again. Maybe the curse is true and the veena will disappear again.”
Neela wondered the same things herself. But then she saw Lynne’s face. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Mohan wanted to play the veena, and he’s doing that. And he’s in Thanjavur, the best place in the world for him to be. He wouldn’t jeopardize all of that.”
“You think so?” Lynne asked anxiously.
Neela wasn’t sure about anything when it came to Mohan, but she nodded anyway.
Lynne breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Neela. I feel better.”
And that was when Neela decided to put Mohan and the ruby ring out of her mind for good. After all, her life had gotten so much better since the veena mystery was solved. She had a new veena, she was playing better, and she had two new friends in her life. And even if she didn’t see Pavi at their lessons, she saw her on the weekends and whenever their moms got together during the week. Besides, the problem of losing her carpool partner was soon solved.
One evening after dinner, while Sudha Auntie was over, the doorbell rang.
“More visitors—what, my company alone isn’t good enough?” Sudha Auntie joked.
Mrs. Krishnan was equally surprised. “Who could it be?” she wondered. When she and Neela answered the door, they found Lynne and her grandfather on the steps.
“Hi,” Lynne said. “Can we come in?”
“Sure,” Neela said, shivering from the cold air outside the front door.
“My grandfather wanted us to come,” Lynne started when they were inside.
“Okay,” Mrs. Krishnan said politely. Since the day at the train station, Neela’s mother had made up her mind not to hate them. But she hadn’t made up her mind to like them just yet, either.
Hal glanced around the room, then turned to Neela. “I came because I never thanked you properly, Neela. Here I am, once a minister, and my good senses had left me. All I can say is that I’m sorry and hope you can forgive me.”
“You don’t have to apologize again,” Neela said.
Hal shook his head. “No, you ought to know. I told you how much Veronica meant to me. But I didn’t tell you how much what you did meant to me, too. It’s changed our lives. Lynne and me, we’re finally talking these days like we didn’t before. I’m starting to understand her pain, her difficulty with living around an old-timer like me. In fact, we’re finally joining the twenty-first century and getting a computer.” He gave Lynne a playful pat on her back.
Lynne looked embarrassed by her grandfather. “The good news is that I’m going to learn the veena,” she said to Neela. “We wondered if you have a teacher to recommend.”
Neela and her mother looked at Sudha Auntie.
“Actually, we know someone with an opening, don’t we?” Mrs. Krishnan asked. “What a lucky coincidence.”
“If you believe in coincidences,” Sudha Auntie said.
Mrs. Krishnan smiled at Neela. “I believe in luck.”
Sudha Auntie took a card from her handbag and held it out to Hal. “Please call me and we’ll make the proper arrangements for Lynne’s veena instruction.”
“Wonderful, thank you. We’ll definitely be in touch.” He took the card. “Sorry to intrude on you all like this. You’ve been a good sport, Neela.” He turned as if to go, then stopped. “But since we’re here, would you mind playing us something?”
“Grandpa!” Lynne said.
“It’s just that neither of us know anything about playing the veena.” Hal turned to Neela. “No pressure here. You can say no, if you want.”
Neela wondered what to do. What if she messed up? What if she forgot some notes? If she made a mistake, her mom would know right away. Not to mention Sudha Auntie, who would probably point out to everyone exactly what Neela was doing wrong.
But before Neela could say anything, Sudha Auntie spoke. “That’s an excellent suggestion,” she said. “You’ll also get to hear what my most promising pupil sounds like.”
Neela was agog. Promising? Had Sudha Auntie actually said something nice about her for a change? Behind her teacher, Mrs. Krishnan was smiling and shrugging as if to say, Yes, it’s been known to happen.
“Let me get my veena,” Neela said.
It took a few minutes to tune. The sound of the strings being adjusted filled the room, and carried all the way upstairs, where Sree had nearly fallen asleep. But when he and Mr. Krishnan heard it, they crept down to listen. On the couch, the others waited patiently as the tuning continued, up and down, until all the strings were correct.
Neela cleared her throat. “I’m going to play a keerthana. Do you know what that is?”
Lynne and Hal shook their heads.
“A keerthana is a kind of song,” Sudha Auntie explained. “After you learn your scales and elementary songs, you start to learn keerthanas. This is the first one I’m teaching Neela.”
With that, Neela began. The new veena had taken time to get used to, but she soon found it a far more powerful instrument than her grandmother’s. Her hands shook slightly, then steadied as she played on, taking advantage of the sound. The keerthana she was learning was filled with long, lilting melodic lines, each of them like a small mountain to climb until she reached the summit, breathless and ready for the next valley to cross. She was conscious of Sree and her father on the stairs, and her mother, Sudha Auntie, Lynne, and Hal, sitting around her. But this time the few mistakes she made didn’t faze her, and she even stopped counting them. Her notes grew bolder as her keerthana sailed in the air and washed over everyone in the room, the honey-toned instrument rocking slightly while Neela played.
Several years ago, I was on the phone with my niece, when I realized I had forgotten to send her a birthday present. So I said, “I’m writing a story. About you.” Right then, while she was on the phone, I wrote the first page. She likes mysteries, so I made the story a mystery, about her instrument getting stolen in a church, and…you might guess where this is going. That first page, which I read to Neela on the phone, followed by a second and third, was the beginning of what would eventually become Vanished.
I should point out that my niece, Neela, bears little resemblance to the Neela that ended up in my book. The funny thing about real life is that it doesn’t always translate into good fiction. As writers, we might borrow bits and pieces from our lives. But most of the time, we have to make things up.
When I first began, I wrote about a veena because that was what my niece played. Later, I thought of changing it to a violin. As a violinist, I know the mechanics of playing the instrument. But I didn’t want to write about a violin. I wanted to write about something I didn’t know. And I didn’t know much about veenas. I had to learn everything from scratch. By observing, researching, and asking a lot of questions, I was able to get closer to the truth of what it might be like to play this ancient and stately instrument.
The veena c
omes from South India and is part of a musical tradition known as Carnatic music. In the novel, when Neela talks about ragam (scale), thalam (beat), or keerthana (a musical composition), these are terms used frequently in Carnatic music. The veena is also one of India’s oldest instruments, dating back to the eleventh century, or even earlier. Some historians suggest that a stringed lute instrument described in the Vedas, a body of religious Hindu texts composed around 1500 B.C., is, in fact, the veena.
Made from jackwood, a full-size veena can range in size from four to six feet, and can weigh from ten to twelve pounds. The instrument is positioned on the floor, partly against the player’s lap, and is played by plucking its strings. The veena has no counterpart in Western music, but in terms of sheer size, the double bass might be a musical friend for the portly veena.
Like the veena in the story, all veenas have a peg box decorated with the head of an animal, which can be made from wood or papier-mâché. The animal can also have other details, like ivory (a material whose trade has been banned in many parts of the world, including the United States), gemstones, and intricate carving. Generally, the animal is thought to ward off bad luck, kind of like a lucky rabbit’s foot. More often than not, the animal on the peg box is a dragon.
Dragons have always occupied a special place in my heart. In high school, I was fascinated by the tale of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. Like Lynne, I often doodled in my notebook, drawing knights in armor, ladies with special powers, and dragons—many dragons. When the dragon in my novel began to take on a greater role, I did more research and stumbled upon the wyvern.
Described as a winged creature with two clawed feet, a beaky nose, and a spiked tail, the mythological wyvern is placed in the category of serpent in some countries, and dragon in others. Wyverns often appeared on crests, coat-of-arms, and other forms of heraldry in the Middle Ages. Today, you can spot them on the logos of colleges and other institutions.
To me, the wyvern was perfect for the maya veena. With its distinct features, the wyvern was instantly recognizable, describable, and a tad mysterious. And once I brought the veena and wyvern together, I discovered other synergies, too.
In medieval England, the wyvern was seen as a symbol of valor, and also as a harbinger of disease. In Indian art, the veena is often shown with Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of wisdom. But it is also described as the instrument of Ravana, the demon king from India’s epic story The Ramayana. With the veena and the wyvern both encompassing good and evil associations, it seemed only natural that they should come together as the maya veena, a beautiful instrument that attracted people with the best and worst intentions alike.
Even so, Vanished isn’t just a story about the balance between good and evil, but also how we can sometimes overlook the very things that we love. Because you might wonder how Neela could lose such a big and beloved instrument in the first place. As it turns out, musicians have had a long history of misplacing their instruments. The famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma accidentally left his Stradivarius cello, worth an estimated $2.5 million, in the back of a New York City taxicab. Lucky for him, he was later reunited with his missing cello. Was it circumstance, bad luck, or just one of the perils of being a world-class performer? We might never really know.
FOR MORE ON DRAGONS…
To read more about wyverns, other kinds of dragons, and heraldry, here are some books to look at. Most of them are for young people, with the exception of the last title by Arthur Fox-Davies.
Dragons: A Natural History, Karl P.N. Shuker, Simon & Schuster, 1995
Dragonology, The Complete Book of Dragons, Ernest Drake, Candlewick Press, 2003
Bestiary: An Illuminated Alphabet of Medieval Beasts, Jonathan Hunt, Simon & Schuster, 1998
A Complete Guide to Heraldry, Arthur Fox-Davies, Adamant Media Corporation, 2006
FOR MORE ON VEENAS…
To learn more about veenas and Carnatic music, visit the New England School of Carnatic Music’s Web page: www.nescm.com. Durga Krishnan, the school’s founder, is a graduate of the Carnatic Music College of Madras, India, and a certified teacher of Carnatic music. She has lectured at several institutions on the history and development of the veena and Carnatic music.
Better yet, attend a music festival! Music festivals and concerts play an important part in the tradition of Carnatic music, by providing a meeting ground for artists and music lovers. Two major music festivals in the United States include:
The LearnQuest Music Conference. Hosted by LearnQuest Academy of Music, this is a five-day music festival that offers a chance to hear performances on the veena and a variety of other classical Indian instruments. The LearnQuest Music Conference is held annually in Boston. For more information, visit the LearnQuest Academy of Music Web site: www.learnquest.org.
The Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana. This is a ten-day music festival held annually in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s the largest Indian classical music festival outside of India, and provides a wide variety in instrumental and vocal performances. For more information, visit www.aradhana.org.
Publishing a book is the result of perseverance, luck, and most of all, the generosity of those who have guided a writer in the right direction.
I give special thanks to my agent, Steven Malk, who has been with Vanished from its inception. In my writing world, I can’t think of another person whose judgment I trust more, whose sincerity and unflagging support has helped me in too many ways to count.
I’m also indebted to my editor extraordinaire, Abby Ranger, whose insight, humor, and striving for excellence has made me a better reader, a better writer, and a better person, too.
Thanks to Namrata Tripathi and the rest of the folks at Disney •Hyperion for making Vanished a reality.
Thank you to my family: Keerthana, Meera, and Suresh. You are the floor, walls, and roof in my life, holding me up and keeping me safe. Thank you for your love and understanding, for hearing my crazy ideas, for being excited about all the things large and small that happened to my book, and for eating some very strange concoctions for dinner when I was under a deadline.
Thank you to my parents, Geetha and B.R. Ramaprian, and to my brother, Sumanth, who have been the strongest and most enduring advocates in my life. I could not have succeeded in my endeavor to be a writer without your strength of character and your love for me.
Thanks to Neela, Srinidhi, Sumanth, and Bhuvana, for being my good-natured guinea pigs. The time I spent with you was not only one of my happiest, but has provided endless material for my fiction. Thanks for lending me your eyes and your ears, and for reading through the original gobbledygook of my first drafts.
Thank you to Pavitra and Bharat for lending me your names and for being part of the fun.
My sincerest gratitude to Durga Krishnan (no relation to Neela Krishnan!) who generously shared with me her knowledge on the history, mechanics, and other details regarding the veena. As a scholar, musician, and teacher, she answered all my questions with complete thoroughness, kindness, and humility.
I must also thank Mr. A.V. Kashinath for his expertise on the history and craft of veena-making. Like Mohan, Mr.
Kashinath travels frequently from Bangalore, India, to the United States to tune and repair veenas. From him I was able to deduce what a turn-of-the-century veena might look like.
A heap of thanks to Blair Hickson Riley, Gloria Koster, Ian Freedman, Abby Crews, Carol Frank, Howard White-house, Liz Basecu, Amy Spitzley, and Kelly Fineman for reading early drafts.
And where would I be today without the generous support of the online community of children’s writers? Special kudos to my writing friends from LiveJournal, and to the Elevensies and Tenners. Thank you for sharing your writing lives with me. You are priceless.
Thanks also to SCBWI for introducing me to the nuts and bolts of children’s literature. I had no clue about what I was doing until I got onto their discussion board and attended their conferences.
Thank you to all my friends over the years,
especially Elizabeth Luchangco-Yamaguchi, Midori Im, and Neena Dhuri for their support, and to Clare Seaton, who gave me A Wrinkle In Time and the gift of letter-writing.
Last of all, thank you to Sasha Ericksen, for your loyalty and your wisdom, and for sleeping out in the Quad with me during sign-ups. I wouldn’t have taken that fiction-writing class if it weren’t for you. As always, thanks for being my first reader in everything—and I don’t mean just books.
