When seven-year-old Tezewe-U sits at the piano to play her favourite tune, Mary Had A Little Lamb, her feet hang a good two feet above the ground. She fingers the keys gently, does a self-rebuking “issh issh” whenever her little fingers hit a bum note and goes “yesss” when asked if she wants to be a pianist when she grows up. As of now, though, Tezewe daintily renders the signature The Post Man, occasionally whispering the words: Postman I’ll be, when I grow tall/ Letters I’ll bring you in, winter and fall.”

It’s hard work, says her piano teacher, 26-year-old Bethel Therie, teaching the nuances of piano music to kids this young. Bethel wants her 30-odd students to turn into fine women, and as Western Classical pianists, maybe even finer than her. Mary Had A Little Lamb, Bethel considers, is only a stepping stone to Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and Schumann, some of the teacher’s favourites. “You can branch out anywhere from Western classical. It really is the base of music,” she says.

Bethel returned to India, after majoring in piano from Singapore’s Bible College in May 2006, to pass on the baton of classical music to youngsters in her native state Nagaland and “not let the music die in me”.

Like her, 38-year-old Nibano V Swaro, who completed a Bachelor’s degree in classical vocal music from a Southern Californian college and who now teaches music at a church and school in Nagaland’s capital Kohima, says interest in western classical music is growing among youngsters in the state. It comes as a contrast in a region known for its young flocking to pop-rock and rabid heavy metal music, and where more than 5,000 people daily attended the recently-concluded, week-long Hornbill National Rock Contest.

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