Goodbye,Dear Father. (Part-V)

बंधनी आहे तरी ही मुक्त झालो आज मी,
पंख झालो या स्वरांचे विहरतो मेघान्तरी.
   -शांता शेळके

I have become free today, irrespective of all the ties.
I have become wings of the notes of music and I am flying with the clouds. 

  -Shanta Shelke

He loved music, especially North Indian Classical Music. I was exposed to sounds of Pt. Bhimsen Joshi, Pt. Jasraj, Ut. Vilayat Khan and many other bigwigs of music since childhood. The tunes which one listens in childhood are difficult to forget. My father loved a light classical thumri sung by Shobha Gurtu, and could listen to it at any time of the day.

पधारिये प्रिय पैयाँ
कुंज महल के द्वारे ठाड़े
कुंवर कदम्ब की छैयां

Welcome! O my sweet lord,
Standing on the door of the palace
Beneath the shady Kadamba Tree

Portayal of Raga Megh Malhaar

It was a fairly difficult tune, which I caught up in a very early age. I used to mimic Gurtu, in a very childish way and he used to laugh. I was 7 Years old and both my parents, especially my mother realized that I have musical abilities and something needs to be done for that. They quickly decided to send me to a music school, and I was taken by him to a nearby music school, where they just took a simple singing test of musical notes (Which I already knew!! I felt so flattered) and admitted me. The parade to the music school started and continued for the next three years. He was a big critique of classroom pattern of teaching music, and specially exams of music theory. Though I had no complaints with the system, he took me out of the music school and a teacher was called at home to teach me music. He used to pay quite an amount per month, to get me trained in music. This  also continued for the other three years until we left Gwalior in 1999. Those six years of constant training in music, gave me an opinion and taste about music, created my likes and dislikes, and opened a new way of looking at it in terms of language, lyrics, voice, harmony, sounds of instruments and style of singing and rendering.  

 Cover: Morning to Midnight Ragas

Music was never in short supply at our home and especially Indian classical music. He was an aesthete in terms of music. Our music collection is interesting as it has many cassettes with music programmes recorded from radio by him, using our old National Panasonic tape recorder. A huge collection of North Indian Classical vocal music and Instrumental especially Sitar recordings are also part of it. He kept buying many cassettes, and his choice was good in deciding what to buy, in a time when music as a hobby was just too expensive to undertake. His constant additions in our music collection, and my sister’s cassette buying spree for Jagjit Singh’s albums, inflated our music collection by leaps and bounds. I also added many other cassettes of hindi film music later, but never bought a single cassette of Indian Classical music. Like other children, I also found classical music boring, too complex and not worth the labor. His music listening time was more or less fixed, it used to be mostly in the evenings, just after the office, with a short nap before dinner on the chair in our drawing room. I kept listening to the music of his choice everyday, as there was no escape. Actually after some point of time, I started loving classical music but I never came out admitting it, due to the ego of an earlier mistaken declaration.

My music teacher Mr. Santosh Purandare, was a very good singer, actually the best person to train with. I learnt a lot, but even after singing and winning in so many competitions across the city, I somehow managed to pull out myself from a performers jacket to the listener’s category. I never perceived music as a profession for myself, nor my parents did. Probably it was also not the right era, for this kind of a decision. Those years of musical training did not create a performer out of me, but at least created an individual, who is able to appreciate many forms of music. I came out of the well of Indian classical music, to a reality of many different kinds of music and started listening to all of them. Today I have no shame in saying that, whenever I feel like listening to soothing good music, my first choice is North Indian Classical music or something based on it, and it is only due to my parent’s constant efforts to keep me connected to classical music.

I also cannot miss writing about innumerable musical concerts we attended as family. The unforgettable Tansen Festival of Gwalior, which he loved to attend it every year*. There also used to be a Hafiz Ali Khan memorial concert, in Scindia Kanya School auditorium, which we attended every year. In the list there are also many other concerts which happened in other parts of Gwalior city. “Tansen Samaroh”, and nights spent there listening to good music were the most memorable ones. An agglomeration of many good singers used to be very interesting, because there is no limit till what time you can perform in the night. Many artists used to go on for the whole night, if people requested so. People many a times brought blankets and heavy woolens to save themselves from Gwalior’s spine chilling December winters. A canteen just outside the venue, kept going on for the whole night selling, hot and crispy samosas and innumerable cups of tea and coffee in the breaks.

His choice in music was limited yet very rich. Music is a tool of expression. It can express anything, any feeling in a way, that it leaves an effect on the listener. Appreciating good music is also an art, which requires great labour and practice, and skill to segregate good music from bad music. One needs great practice just to appreciate good music and feel the essence of it. Lyrics are the most important component in music, to communicate expressions. He always had this attention towards to the lyrics of any song. He sometimes completely floored some lyrics, as if they were a piece of crap. My sister’s Jagjit Singh love was on peak in the years of 1993-98. A gazal she loved to listen had decent lyrics,

सलोना सा सजन है, और में हूँ
जिया में एक लगन है, और में हूँ

He used to get much irritated over the “mei hoo” part, and used to shout, “are mei kya hoo”?. What is more important? Salona sa sajan or the lady? but equally liked many lyrics sung by the same singer, in mystic Urdu.

कोई समझेगा क्या राज़-ए-गुलशन

जब तक उलझे न कांटो से दामन 

He completely disliked “Dhrupad” style of singing. Dhrupad is a rarity these days and not many people sing it. Styles like Dhamar and Tappa are also kind of extinct. Dhrupad was his special enemy. There used to be an Umdekar School of Music trained in Dhrupad singing. Every year their students performed in Tansen Festival. He went to listen to that, but it didn’t fit into his ideology of not singing orchestral classroom music, where everything is fixed without improvisation. Dhrupad is not supposed to be a style of singing fixed notes. It is even more complex and meditative in nature. The only way to explain it is that Dhrupad is not very entertaining, but more spiritual in nature, which takes a singer to the state of trance.

Sitar Maestros: Vilaayat Khan and Shujaat Hussain Khan

The way Dhrupad is sung very slow, with stress on each alphabet of lyrics, sometimes kills the complete meaning of the lyrics of the composition. I am not against Dhrupad, or any specific style of music, but seriously, I cannot appreciate any music without the quality and clarity of its lyrics, and for me they are very important. Interestingly, my father who used to give such bad names to dhrupad, actually liked singers like Mallikarjun Mansoor, who used to sing beautifully, but what were the lyrics? one will always keep guessing. Even today I just listen to those classical singers, who keep the beauty of lyrics intact, and that is my personal choice about music. He also loved Vilayat Khan, and preferred him over even Pt. Ravi Shankar. He loved his style of singing lyrics in between the sitar sounds. His son Shujaat Hussain Khan has also taken up his legacy and the style is still intact. I completely agree with my father on his choice now, taking into consideration my position about the importance of lyrics in music. In instrumental music, it is equally important to know the lyrics which the maestro is playing, to feel the music in a better way. As far as the Dhrupad is concerned, I sometimes do love to listen to dhrupad too. As one grows in age, the complexity of music that entertains him also grows. 

He was a suave and talented person. His ears were trained to find even a little bit of missed musical note here and there. Many a times, I sang the notes my teacher told me to practice, and just one facial change on his face was sufficient for me to understand, that some note has been missed by me, or is just not right. He himself played the sitar, which he learned to play himself, by some guidance from one of his friends. His sitar’s sounds of Raga Khamaj, still linger in my ears. His Sitar was also bought in much excitement long before my birth. He got it repaired in 1994, by some nice instrument maker in Gwalior, who was amazed to find such a nice piece of sitar. He repaired it with much patience and finesse, putting nice little parts made of tusk. Then suddenly, he decided to get trained in Sitar, and a lady started coming to teach him. It continued for a few months, and his skills got improved greatly. Due to his professional commitments and the senior post he was holding, it became almost impossible to find time for this hobby, and the sitar was again abandoned for once in a while amusement. Like many of his hobbies, Sitar also became a silent memoir of changing choices. 

Choices are a celebration of one’s individuality. Choices in life decide, which way a person would walk on. Recently there was a concert of Mukul Shivputra, in CEPT University. I completely believe, that he would have loved Mukul Shivputra singing. His singing was ornate, skillful and nothing less than perfect, with complete stress of the beauty of lyrics. I stumbled upon an amazing set of lyrics, portrayal of a strong sense of individuality. I can actually connect these lyrics with him, a person who wanted to live his life the way he wanted to, making and modifying choices, moving on the rhythm of his own tune. and Yeah! you guessed it right. It was Raga Khamaaj. 

गुरूजी, में तो एक निरंजन ध्याऊँ जी
दूजे के संग नहीं जाऊ जी, न जाऊ जी

पत्ती न तोडूं, पत्थर न पूजूं , ना कोई देव जगाऊँ जी
बन बन की में लकड़ी न तोडू, न कोई झाड सताऊँ जी
दूजे के संग नहीं जाऊ जी, न जाऊ जी