I'm fascinated by this bank ad that ran on the front page of DNA India:
First, the suggestion that comfy retirement offers the chance to finally play the violin—a worthy goal, though I wonder how often arthritis might get in the way. But what really struck me was the non-Stradivarius-copy features of the fiddle: the slightly larger f-holes, and, above all, the fact that there's only one string! Was this just an error on the part of the props department, or a subcontinental adaption? A few quick searches turned up references to a one-stringed Indian viol called a riti, so perhaps it's that. Though I think in India classical music, the violin tends to be held in a pretty different posture. So who knows? Maybe you!
In any case, I was reminded of the 19th-century Italian virtuoso Niccolò Paganini:
In performance Paganini enjoyed playing tricks, like tuning one of his strings a semitone high, or playing the majority of a piece on one string after breaking the other three.
