A Lithuanian at a Carnatic kutcheri, can come as a mild surprise to some. But a Lithuanian learning and playing the mridangam?

Pranas and Ghatam Suresh.

“You would not know my country, let me write it down for you,” said the man challenging my general knowledge. In a sea of silk sarees of myriad colours, veshtis and angavastrams, he towered over the others, dressed in an olive green T-shirt and grey crop pants. He had the usual attributes of any tourist visiting south India, except that he belonged to a country with less than half the people in Chennai — Lithuania.

A Lithuanian at a Carnatic kutcheri, can come as a mild surprise to some. But a Lithuanian learning and playing the mridangam? As I listened to Pranas recount how he found Carnatic music in Eastern Europe, I wondered for a moment at the perceptiveness of the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan. Was his idea of a global village actually taking shape, at least culturally?

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