C
IF one can recall and thus revel in
the good old British music hall days
when Ronnie Ronalde spruced up
his opera voice with his restful
whistling or the years of Guns n’
Roses and the subtle whistling prel-
ude of the still admired Patience,
it is only deemed that any listener
will nod their head in harmony
with this bunch of Indian
whistlers.
When they rewrote history last
week, by whistling in unison, saare
jahan se acha, making it the max-
imum assembly (48) of whistlers
so far, it is with pride that they call
themselves whistlers, and their
hobby, an art. Their record, if not
broken before August 15, will soon
go down in the Limca Book of
Records. It was on September 19,
2004, in Lucknow that the Indian
Whistlers Association was birthed,
when a young whistler Rigveda
Deshpandey having realised his
dream to extend his whistling hori-
zon to a wider sphere, invited like-
minded people to his Yahoo group,
now making it one of the few such
communities in the world.
Rigveda, 22, currently a student
of the School of Audio Engineer-
ing in Chennai is only in high spir-
its, seeing the association burgeon-
ing into a 350 member empire, em-
bracing people from all walks of
life, even as young as eight or as old
as 75. “We are a happy group. I say
that because I’ve noticed that
whistlers are usually the happy-go-
lucky sort of people. Have you ever
seen anyone whistling when they
are sad? You may sing, but you
don’t whistle,” he explains.
They take on, with fervour, new
entrants, encouraging them to be
more than just bathroom whistlers,
meeting up regularly on every third
Sunday, putting their skills into
practice and zeroing in on their fu-
ture campaigns. What was once
considered a bad habit is perhaps
shedding off its prejudicial nature,
by what the association is genial-
ly indulging in. “Whistling was
once considered an ill-mannered
act. I remember my father beating
me up and making me go without
food the whole day because I whis-
tled,” remembers Arun Kumar, a
devoted member of the association
as two other patrons Jagat and Na-
garajan nod in agreement. “We are
glad to break that taboo,” they say.
Everyone can whistle, in their
opinion, sans a cache of musical
expertise. “You need the basic mu-
sic sense. That’s all. The rest is
about practice,” notes Rigveda.
For Rigveda, who has been
whistling since the age of six, it
was a college performance, in Luc-
know, that got him to display his
skills for the first time. But having
set a pedestal for those passionate
about whistling, be it pop, rock or
classical numbers, what he and the
rest of the members pine for next
is an entry into the Guinness Book
of Records and also to cut out an al-
bum showcasing what they call,
‘flutes without bamboo’. For more
details about the association, log
onto www.whistleindia.org.