All music is comprised of tune (which in turn comprises of definite notes and pitch) and rhythm. In carnatic music the tune is what I call as raagam. Raagam is composed of a sequence of swaram. The sequence of swaram is sung at one particular pitch throughout the song which is called the sruthi. The rhythm that the song goes with is the thaalam.
I consider music as the perception of sound. How one perceives a sound is very subjective. For e.g. my husband loves rock music. I cannot stand it. I call it noise. Although my husband does not detest carnatic music, he really does not enjoy it so much. Hence it is how one feels when the sound affects him is what I call as music.
I was initially never a fan of carnatic music. It was my mom who forced my sister and me to attend the classes. We had 3 to 4 different tragic episodes of attending classes. Then we successfully finished our junior exams with something called scraping through the exams. We thought it was over. But it was not. Mom had big plans of putting us into higher learning. We went to a very reputed teacher this time. All her students were professional by now (all of them school going kids and I was almost in college by then).