A 21st century essayist

Foreword to KN Rao's 'A Mosaic of Human Thought'

I first came across Prof. K N Rao’s writing in a column he wrote for the city portal Chennai Online on the trees of Madras. Little did I know at the time that I would one day be involved in an editorial capacity in publishing a book on the subject by the professor. Not only is he an expert on trees, in Chennai and elsewhere, and botany at large, but also the archetypal polymath we do not come across nowadays. They don’t make them like that anymore!

During the course of that interaction, I came to develop a comfortably warm relationship with Prof. Rao, a friendship between two people interested in literature and the arts. He is more than twenty years my senior, but more energetic than many of my age. I was at the time responsible for Indian Writing, an imprint of New Horizon Media, which was then publishing Indian, notably Tamil, literature in translation into English. He was a great supporter of our initiative and bought every title we brought out. Not only did he read all of them, he also commended us for the great trouble we took to maintain quality. He was probably more hurt and disappointed than we were when some of our efforts did not measure up to our own standard. He took the liberty of scolding us when he thought poorly of our choice of works to translate.

Over the last few years, I have come to know the many facets of Mr Rao’s creativity. He has written several short stories in Telugu, which I have not read as I do not know the language, but his writings in English have been delightfully varied. William Shakespeare is a particular favourite of his, as we can gather from a number of essays included in this volume. In a chapter entitled Wit and Wisdom of Shakespeare, Prof. Rao refers to the chair in which he lounged and spent the “happiest hours of my otherwise drab and long life.”  “And thank God, I chose to read the bard without the help of Verity, Arden and such others,” he continues, a tribute to not only his excellent taste in literature but also his superior intellect. “The Shakespeare bug bit me in the early fifties of the last century. Play after play, I devoured, refusing to seek outside help.” 

Prof. Rao is no ordinary devourer, though. He draws parallels between literature and life, literature and philosophy, literature and nature, so on and so forth. For instance, quoting Nerissa from Merchant of Venice (The ancient saying is no hersy/ Hanging and wiving goes by destiny), he finds resonances with the Hindu doctrine of Karma.

Or take the pathetic plea of the much-maligned merchant of Venice, “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions…If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If we poison us, do we not die?” Rao says, “This has been the plight of Dalits in our own land, for centuries. Now after millennia, they speak the language of Shylock.” They “eke out their livelihood by manual scavenging, cleaning the cesspools, going down into the drains braving poisonous gas…”  

While on his Shakespearean journey, Prof. Rao is in his element when he compares “the noblest Roman of them all”, Brutus with the politician of today, of whom he says: “Do such men have a chance of succeeding? More often than not, men with ideas of cleansing politics are likely to meet the fate of Brutus. This Brutus had had the satisfaction of dying for his cause. It is more likely a modern day Brutus will end up as a Cassius.”

Prof. Rao’s explorations of Shakespeare lead him to an analysis of the motivations and psychology of three murderers from Othello, Macbeth and Hamlet.  “Othello had the makings of a murderer in him: Iago was merely the stage director for the action,” he observes. Macbeth “was at first a murderer by instigation, through suggestion next and finally a callous, cruel and wanton bloodbather.” “Hamlet’s murders were the fruition of the workings of a highly cultivated mind through its conscious and subconscious moorings,” he says, drawing clear distinctions between the three protagonists

While on the subject of Shakespeare, Prof. Rao is really in his element when he carries out “a brief botanical survey of Shakespeare.” He takes us on a tour-de-force of the many-splendoured vegetation that abounds in the Bard’s plays, starting from acorn cups and burr to the willow and yew trees of Much Ado about Nothing, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Titus and Andronicus.”

The essay, “Harbingers of Indian awakening” provides proof if proof is needed of Prof. Rao’s expansive range of interests that cover far greater ground than nature or literature. A man of science, one who swears by science, Rao does not fail to acknowledge the role played by two outstanding spiritual gurus in Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda. He says, “All leaders from Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose and Rajaji downwards agree that the political struggle they launched had gained substance, thanks to this great work of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. Their memory will forever be enshrined in the Indian consciousness.”

In ‘Three great men of Athens”, Prof. Rao writes with awe about Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Unsurprisingly he says no other city has nurtured such great sons through the millennia. Socrates was so fond of truth that he questioned the wisdom of the wise.  He resisted unjust commands at the risk of his life. “One might say that Socrates was the father of definitions. But it required great courage to pursue his path.”

In another chapter, Rao tries to grapple with the problem of what is or is not truth. He calls it the most elusive element of things in human experience. It is elusive because it stems from the perception of an event, implying understanding of an observation. “Obviously, what appears as truth to one may appear quite differently to another.” He goes on to claim that the truth of science is not the truth of socio-ethical colour. “Rather, it is a bundle of facts, every one of which is incontrovertibly demonstrated as true by observation and experiment.”            Yet, Rao refuses to dismiss the truth as experienced by Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.

Rao, the compassionate human being and Rao the man of science seem to coexist without much conflict. In the chapter “On Death”, Prof. Rao is able to speak of the devastating personal tragedy of his son’s death in an accident as well as the continuity of creation, of species, including the human race. If after that terrible loss, he could console his wife by narrating a story of Buddha to demonstrate the inescapable fact of death, he could also marvel at the “wonderful mix of mortality and immortality” that began in a group of green algae called Volvocales.”

Death need not be bemoaned, he goes on to conclude. “It is a mechanism which made possible senescence and consequently organs with a lesser degree of efficiency of vegetative functioning die out. The mortal coils of the individual are shed so that the immortality of the species is ensured.” And the last sentence of the book says it all. “”. Whichever way one looks at the question, the thought of God has to reign our minds: maybe not a personal God, but a principle which is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.”

I often meet Prof. Rao at events connected with books or the performing arts. I have invariably been struck by his youthful joie-de-vivre and positive outlook. And though he often has a good laugh at his own frailty and mortality, maybe because he does so, he fills me with inspiration and hope for the morrow. That he has brought out this volume at such an advanced stage of his life is proof of his immortal spirit.

V RAMNARAYAN

10 July 2009

Chennai

‘What do they know of music?

(First published in SAMAHIT, the Natya Kala Conference souvenir, 2012)

The day after Priya Govind and Akhila Ramnarayan asked me to write on cricket and music—unfortunately not as separate topics, and therefore complicating my life no end—came a telephone call from Carnatic vocalist Unnikrishnan, a call that straightaway lightened my burden considerably. As many of you know, Unni is a good sportsman who continues to play recreational tennis but also someone whose cricket is of a very decent standard. His phone call had nothing to do with either cricket or music, but my thoughts immediately went back to the time some years ago when our paths in these two fields intersected. Unni and I played some cricket and less tennis together. He is of course much younger than I, so much younger that I have also played cricket with his father Radhakrishnan, who, besides being a qualified Ayurvedic physician, was a pretty useful batsman in the 1950s and 60s, even into the seventies.

To cut a long story short, Unni’s quite promising cricket career started when mine was already over, though I continued to play from memory, to enjoy the perverse pleasure of competing with men half my age. By the time we first played against each other, I for Alwarpet CC and he for Madras CC, I had heard him on the concert platform, starting with a recital at the wedding reception of a fellow cricketer. I still remember the pride with which Radha informed me that the singer of the evening was his son, and the resemblance I noticed in the early Unni voice to that of Yesudas. Later, by a strange quirk of fate, I was invited to first play for and later captain the Parry’s Recreation Club when well into my 40s, though I had nothing to do with the Parry group. Unni, a business management graduate, was by then a management trainee in the company, and a leading member of the cricket team. During one of our matches, I told Unni how much I enjoyed listening to his first film song (a fairly straightforward rendering of Venkata Kavi’s Alai payude in a Malayalam film). Unni’s response was quietly modest: “I’ve sung some 50 film songs already, Ram.”

My most memorable Unnikrishnan experience was to follow in about a year’s time after this episode. I had organized a chamber concert of his at home (the second or third such occasion) one Sunday, when we cam e to know that the programme was clashing with a league game for Parry. As captain, I could not relieve Unni from the match, nor did he, as a competitive sportsman, want any such privilege. I toyed with the idea of postponing the concert, but too many people had already accepted our invitation with great anticipation, as Unni was at the very peak of his popularity. Domestic discord was a serious possibility even a probability if I did anything so foolish as to call off the performance. To complicate matters more, it turned out Unni had a wedding concert at Nagercoil the previous night.

The match was at distant Pallavaram, at the English Electric ground, which proved to be a small mercy, as Unni was able to get off the district bus (after travelling all night) very near the ground. I lost the toss, and the good soldier he was, Unni fielded in the hot sun with the rest of the team. He was dependable no. 3 batsman, perhaps our highest run-getter that year, but I asked him to open the innings—a role to which he was not a complete stranger—so that he could go home early and rest after his batting. Unfortunately, Unni was dismissed for zero or thereabouts, but simply refused to go home, waiting for us to complete the match in the evening. We happened to win the match, so we all went home in a happy frame of mind, but poor Unni had to go all the way to his Royapettah home, shower, change and come to my Kottivakkam home on the East Coast Road. We started the concert half an hour late, but it was a superb performance by Mr. Dependable.

Unni was not quite the first professional classical musician to have played competitive cricket I personally knew. That honour went to the late Ravi Kichlu of the Hindustani vocal duo the Kichlu Brothers. Ravi often entertained me with snatches of alap standing next to me in the slips on the maidan of Calcutta. We were both playing for Rajasthan Club in the 1969-70 league season. But I almost forgot wicket keeper Sivakumar my Mylapore Recreation Club teammate, mridanga vidwan, son of DK Pattammal and father of Nithyashree Mahadevan.

At the national level, I knew or knew of a few musically inclined cricketers. The great Vijay Manjrekar was a good singer and so is his son Sanjay. Padmakar Shivalkar was another Bombay player who gave vocal performances on stage. Some of us have heard Bapu Nadkarni do a more than passable imitation of KL Saigal. The late ML Jaisimha, under whose captaincy I played for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy, had an impressive voice with which he belted out popular songs. He brought the roof down at a restaurant at Bangkok back in 1978 when the house orchestra handed him the microphone and he gave a few lusty samples of his Frank Sinatra repertoire and Louis Armstrong’s When the Saints Go Marching in.

Also seated at the same table was an accomplished vocalist in Shanti Hiranand, disciple and biographer of Begum Akhtar and sister-in-law of former India captain GS Ramchand. Mr & Mrs Ramchand were the gracious hosts that evening and Jaisimha, Murtuza Ali Baig and I the lucky guests during a Hyderabad Blues cricket tour (Thailand has some cricket and on our way back from Australia, we played a game at The Royal Bangkok Sports Club). We even got Ms Hiranand to sing a song for us.

Jai was the life and soul of the party during cocktails after my brother V Sivaramakrishnan’s benefit match, which was between two teams of star-studded veteran India players of the past. He completely replaced the band of the evening at the Connemara that night. My own personal highlight was to be part of an improbable trio of MLJ, Sunil Gavaskar and I. Only cacophony resulted, but nobody in the audience seemed to mind.

Jaisimha’s friend and teammate MAK ‘Tiger’ Pataudi, whose last season for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy was my first, had a keen ear for music, and could play the tabla, according to some of his close associates. I had this habit of whistling constantly in the dressing room, and Tiger caught me whistling a song from the film Jahan Ara—which had some exquisite music by Madan Mohan—and gave a stentorian interpretation of Phir wohi shaam in sharp contrast to Talat Mahmood’s dulcet tones. Another verse he was fond of bellowing in a voice that threatened to shatter the windows went Gulshan, gulshan, shola-e-gul ki. I was intrigued and curious to know the rest of the song, but I had to wait for quite sometime before I solved the mystery. It turned out, of course, to be the opening line of a gentle, romantic Mehdi Hassan ghazal, the first I was to hear from that master of the genre.

The ubiquitous two-in-one dominated the recreational needs of the cricketers of the 1970s, and thanks to the great leg-spinner BS Chandrasekhar, the Hindi film songs of Mukesh were the most popular choice of a whole generation of cricketers. Chandra must have been all of 18 or 19 when he first heard a Mukesh song wafting in out of transistor radios in the crowd during a match. ‘Tu kahe agar’ I believe was the song to cast a spell on him, and he actually mistook Mukesh’s voice for KL Saigal’s. That Chandra became a diehard fan and later a close friend of Mukesh is part of the cricket lore of the period.

If the reader is left wondering why I chose this topic or what my credentials for the task of writing on it are, let me explain. I was an active, sometimes semi-professional cricketer for some 30 years, and have been writing on music and editing a magazine on performing arts during the last decade or so. People sometimes ask me to explain how a cricketer like me took to writing on the arts, and I sometimes tell them that I was dropped on my head as a child—which sometimes causes startled, incredulous responses. The real answer is that if you were born in the Madras of the 1940s in a middle-class brahmin family (even if you are a bad brahmin like me), chances are that you grew up in the midst of much music and much cricket. This is probably still true of most households that come from similar backgrounds. Add to that a love of language and you can end up writing on both music and cricket, as I did after failing at several other vocations!

There have been a few—though all too few—great writers through history whose gaze focused on these two great arts and sciences. You may raise an eyebrow or two at my inclusion of cricket in the category of art and science, but you would then be indirectly doing that to possibly the first writer to excel at both—Sir Neville Cardus, who described the batting of Sir Garfield Sobers thus: His immense power is lightened by a rhythm which has in it as little obvious propulsion as a movement of music by Mozart.” Yehudi Menuhin once said, Cardus “reminds us that there is an understanding of the heart as well of the mind… in Neville Cardus, the artist has an ally”.

According to writer, broadcaster and biographer Robin Daniels, Cardus believed in the power of great art to change lives from within. “Genius is a miracle to be revered whether in fashion or not,” Cardus said, and he did revere genius in cricket as well as music. Daniels also said that Cardus fought the good fight for Gustav Mahler when the composer was largely unknown. He rated him as a great critic “because he combines deep feeling and imagination with an eye that saw symbolically”.

Cardus was knowns to exaggerate, even accused of writing on matches and concerts he did not attend, but he brought literature to cricket writing as much as to music criticism. “To go to a cricket match for nothing but cricket is as though a man were to go into an inn for nothing but drink,” he said

He described CB Fry, the great English all rounder, as “a national gallery and a theatre and a forum”. Of the inimitable KS Ranjitsinhji, the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, he said “he never played a Christian stroke in his life”, in praise of his delightfully unorthodox ways.

One of the most remarkable personalities of English cricket was the radio commentator John Arlott, the man responsible for Cape Coloured cricketer Basil D’Oliveira’s entry into English cricket and eventual ascent to world fame. Arlott had an unconvetional voice for BBC, "a sound like Uncle Tom Cobleigh reading Neville Cardus to faraway natives", according to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, his drinking buddy.

Arlott was a most unusual all rounder whose career included stints as a policeman, in a mental hospital, as a wine-taster, poet and hymnist, and above all a humanist of the best kind. He was the epitome of the ultimate cricket person whose breadth of vision extended far beyond the boundary.

In more recent times, John Inverarity, former Test cricketer and chairman of selectors for Australia has such impeccable academic and artistic credentials that the John Inverarity Music and Drama Centre in the city of Perth has been named after him in honour of his sterling contributions. (A side story is that he was once recalled after being bowled by Greg Chappell, because the umpire realised the ball had hit a sparrow on its way to the batsman. Unfortunately the sparrow, did not live to watch the rest of the match).

Tony Lewis, the last cricketer to captain England on his Test debut, and an ace rugby player, was also an accomplished violinist (he was once a member of the Welsh Youth Orchestra). He later distinguished himself as a man of letters and a broadcaster who came to be known as ‘the face of BBC’.

Did not CLR James, the West Indian author of Beyond a Boundary say, “What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?”s

And indeed may we ask, ‘What do they know of music, who only music know?”

When raags become ragas

First published in The Hindu

Charukeshi, Kirvani, Hansdhwani… (note the spellings). We heard them all this season or in the months leading up to it. So did we listen to Sohni, (Hindustani) Todi, Hindol, Durga, even Shudh Sohni. In case you are wondering if a constellation of Hindustani musicians crashlanded in Chennai, we heard all these ragas in Carnatic music concerts. Some of these north Indian avatars of ragas have been masquerading as Carnatic ragas in cutcheris of recent vintage—as Charukesi, Keeravani, Hamsadhwani, Hamsanandi, Suddhasaveri, Vasanta and so on. Not to mention Kafi, Patdeep, Behag, Bairagi, Brindavani Sarang, Madhmat Sarang and Shudh Sarang, besides the notoriously popular Ahir Bhairav, Kedar, Madhuvanti and Bhairavi, with or without Carnatic monikers.

The crowning glory was achieved by Yaman, that staple offering of Hindustani musicians visiting Chennai, when one southern star made it the piece-de-resistance of an epic journey of winding, gliding twists and turns through three octaves.  Kalyani was however the raga announced.

Jugalbandis and fusion concerts may be popular among a section of our audiences, but others—no doubt hidebound in their views—find that these concerts are ill rehearsed, and offer no new music. New music can only emerge from the collaboration of masters of their genres who have also worked hard at learning another, these critics say. Their usual tired joke is that fusion concerts produce more confusion than fusion. The idea of presenting Hindustani ragas in Carnatic concerts is therefore perhaps an attempt to avoid the fusion tag, yet appeal to a youthful audience.

I do not refer to the bhajans, thumris or abhangs that dot the tukkada section of the concert, but main or “sub-main” ragas being presented in typically Hindustani style, deficient in, even shorn of, the gamakas and azhuttam so typical of their orthodox delineation. 

Vowels and consonants of undoubtedly north Indian origin sometimes replace the standard tadarina, cooing or exploding forth from the vocal chords of our futuristic tyros accoutred in flashy kurtas and splendid saris with blazing earware to match. Some even adopt the typical Hindustani opening sally in deep mandra sthayi tones, as well as ultra fast taans during raga alapana.

On their way out are stern countenances or unseemly gesticulations on stage, demonstrating the next aspect of the makeover cutcheris seem to be undergoing. In their place are bright smiles to ostentatiously demonstrate the extent of enjoyment of one another’s music on stage, and carefully choreographed mudras and arm-stretches to pinpoint the note struck or emotion emoted—just in case you missed it in the listening. Beatific smiles and bheshes, sabhashes and bale-s (a friend swears he actually heard the exclamation ‘kya baat hai!’ on the stage in a recent concert) in praise are not just reserved for accompanists but also bestowed on your singing or instrumental partner, sometimes in mid-phrase or sangati. This can create new sounds for the rasika to mull over, on top of the confusion created by mridangam, ghatam/ khanjira and morsing. 

The whole effect is one of bonhomie, a convivial jam session among friends, calculated to win applause every three minutes, standing ovations after every two kritis and a thunderous mega-ovation at the end of the concert. Fortunately, the habit among some rock musicians and fusion bands of demanding applause from the audience (“Don’t be shy, give us a big hand!”) has so far not caught on in Carnatic music.

One welcome development has been the general reluctance to burst into applause when the vocalist touches a dramatic high note. (I remember a Hindustani pair of vocalists a few years ago pleading with listeners to defer applause to the end of an item, as during a piece it interfered with their manodharma). Recently a Carnatic vocalist so interrupted signalled a silent appeal to stop, followed by a eyes-closed namaste to his listeners. They immediately acceded to his request, even sportingly laughing at themselves. Polite courtesy seems to work better than a show of annoyance. 

Returning to the original theme, Chennai audiences have this year also had to suffer Hindustani musicians trying their hand at Carnatic compositions. The popular cry as a result has been “Give us Hindustani ragas in Carnatic concerts any day!”

Sruti Magazine: Train House

Sruti Magazine: Train House: By MV Swaroop "Park your car in that corner, you won't be able to take it inside the street," the old lady said, hauling a mridangam...

Noises off

Reproduced from the pages of Sruti.

A recent concert had the audience running for cover from the explosive decibellage of voice, strings and drums. The volume levels were unprecedented even for a city inured to unwholesome assaults on the listener’s eardrums in the name of amplification considered de rigueur in the urban milieu of large halls with non-existent sound engineering. Sadly the concert was taking place at the Music Academy auditorium, once famed for its perfect acoustics designed to accommodate mikeless concerts—before alterations to its structure changed that somewhat—but generally accepted as one of the better halls in the city for listening pleasure.

This was one of the first issues Sruti decided to address on the eve of the greatest spectacle of Carnatic music on the planet—the Chennai music season, which used to be called the December season before it expanded forwards and backwards some years ago to straddle the calendar in a fusillade of concerts. We decided to pose a number of questions and invite responses from all parties concerned, with the hope that we can start a process leading to a whole new aesthetic experience: Why are audiences subjected to murder by sound by people who should know better—practitioners of nadopasana one and all, from musicians to mikemen to sabhanayakas, to steal a couple of phrases from Sruti’s founder? Why do musicians regularly agree to perform under acoustically unsatisfactory conditions, musicians who are used to the state of the art in sound systems on their travels abroad? Why do listeners put up with tympanum threatening noise instead of the divine music everyone promises Carnatic music really is? Why are organizers of concerts impervious to criticism and apparently reluctant to invest in equipment and personnel that can ensure such an experience? Why is a sound test at the start of a concert such a rare occurrence, if ever attempted in Carnatic music?

Not long ago, The Hindu commented editorially: “There is little doubt that the standard of acoustics at most venues falls short of a minimum assured quality. Improvements in this technical area will go some way in sustaining interest in live performances as a socially worthwhile experience in the age of mass-produced compact discs. Moreover, acoustic quality is a real concern to artistes, since the overall impact of a performance depends on the symmetry between appropriate amplification and feedback on the stage. Debate on some of these wide-ranging issues will shape the future of Carnatic music in the 21st century. At the same time, it is vital for the mega event — the extraordinary Chennai music season — to retain the character of a self-regulating enterprise, something it has managed to do over many decades.”

Back in the 1990s, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer told Sruti: “...it is neither necessary nor desirable to have separate mikes provided to the accompanists. A single mike should do, preferably the sensitive kind that is hung from the ceiling. Where is the need for a forest of mikes planted on the platform in front of the artists taking part in a concert?"

“The number of loudspeakers used and their placement also contribute to the quality of sound. ..It is better to use several smaller speakers and place them judiciously around so that each part of the hall gets to hear the musicians as if there were no amplification."

“Ideally, of course, I would like the kutcheri to take place in a small air-conditioned hall without any sound amplification.”

“Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, on a concert tour of India, laid down a few conditions at the Swati Tirunal Sangita Sabha, Trivandrum. There should be no amplification; all doors should be closed once he started performing; all fans should be switched off; no member of the audience should be permitted to move about during the performance; so on and so forth.” Menuhin was heard clearly at every part of the hall throughout the concert, Semmangudi continued.

Vocalist Vijay Siva spoke up for the right use of technology (Sruti December 2001). State of the art microphones could help to get the purest sound reproduction in recordings and also in the auditorium.

When we asked vocalist Sanjay Subramanyam for his views on the standard of acoustics in Carnatic music cutcheris, he wondered aloud if instead of writing about the unsatisfactory situation, someone would take the initiative in organizing a workshop by an international acoustics expert on proper sound management at concerts. He said that he never let poor acoustics or other inconveniences affect his performance on the concert platform. “I focus on my job—that of singing—regardless of the conditions. The only thing that can bother me is the recalcitrance of my voice if and when I run into such problems.”

Speaking in a similar vein, Aruna Sairam had not long ago informed a small private audience that she would be willing to participate in any effort to educate sound engineers on the best contemporary practices in acoustics for music concerts. She was replying to a query from a Hindustani music aficionado about the high noise levels in Carnatic music concerts.

Audiences, sometimes even music critics, believe that the musicians are accessories after the fact, often the instigators of the excesses perpetrated by the soundmen. P Orr wrote in Sruti, February 2001: “Poor acoustics is characteristic of a majority of the sabhas. Many don’t have really top class sound amplification systems and arrangements either. ..The musicians performing on the stage are the ones who usually tell the sound technician what to do. They always ask the volume to be jacked up.”

Young vocalist Savita Narasimhan clarifies that the musician on the stage rarely asks for the volume to be turned up for the listeners. He or she is actually asking for help with the feedback (or fallback) so essential for the performer on stage. “Often the vocalist cannot hear the percussionist or violinist and vice versa. The musician’s request to increase the volume of the monitor is misunderstood and the technician increases the volume for the audience.” In the West, mikes are provided for the vocalist as well as the accompanying instrumentalists and the amplification is perfectly balanced. The result is aesthetically pleasing. For instance, even in concerts where two microphones are provided for the two sides of the mridangam, the overall balance is maintained perfectly, and the percussion does not drown the voice. It is this balancing, giving due weightage to different types of voices and instruments, that is vital for correct sound amplification.

That brings us to the need for sound checks before the start of a concert. How often do we see artists reach the venue in time to carry them out? Is it their fault that they don’t?

We’ll soon be witness to the frenetic programming of the “season” in which each sabha will pack three to four concerts into each day of the festival. The artists of one programme will ascend the stage barely minutes after the previous performers have left it. What kind of sound check can be done in the time available? And, increasingly, sabhas seem to despatch their sound engineer—if such an animal exists—to some unknown destination minutes before the concert begins, not to surface until the end of the programme.

Is it time then to organise workshops on aesthetically acceptable acoustics in Carnatic music to be conducted by experts in the field of sound management? For every self-respecting sabha to hire a full time acoustics engineer available round the year or at least during concerts to ensure listening pleasure? For auditoria specifically designed for music concerts to be built or for existing halls to be redesigned to suit the purpose? For audiences to behave themselves as they are forced to everytime a Yehudi Menuhin or Zubin Mehta descends on us?

Ravi Shankar

From the pages of Sruti magazine
Issue 296 May 2009

‘Ravindra’ sangeet
Ravi Shankar: the man and his music

V. Ramnarayan

Many of us of the 1960s generation easily identified with the sitar music of Ravi Shankar (sick and tired of the number of Pandits in Indian music, he has renounced the prefix Pandit). We saw in him an iconoclast and a youth icon, an advocate of protest—Make love, not war. We were easily swayed by the purity of sound of his instrument, his fascinating collaboration with Ustad Allah Rakha, his tremendous success with the lotos eaters of the 20th century who flocked to his concerts for all the wrong musical reasons. We didn’t know then that they were the wrong reasons; we didn’t know that for all his dalliance with experimentation and crosscultural collaboration, even film music, he was a highly accomplished exponent of traditional music. We didn’t know then that among his contemporaries he was perhaps the one Hindustani musician who appreciated Carnatic music, not to mention his respect for its practitioners.

Yes, he was a matinee idol among classical musicians. For perhaps the only period in its 80 odd years of existence, the Madras Music Academy broke its own rules in the 1960s to accommodate the spillover of Panditji’s New Year’s Eve concert into the New Year. He would pause at the midnight hour and offer his greetings to his audience to thunderous applause. What could be more exciting for young people straining at the leash to be liberated from the conservative norms of Madras by arguably the most charismatic of India’s classical musicians!

Yet to listen to the lilting strains of the sitar, losing ourselves in the sensitive raga explorations of the maestro, was a transporting, spiritually elevating experience. Even to the uninitiated, it was quite obvious that this was no mere entertainment, not cleverly packaged razzmatazz. There was depth in the music, and the contours of the raga-s were so brilliantly etched, whether in the elaborate alap-jod-jhala that opened the concert, the shorter, brisk piece that followed, the Carnatic raga-s the maestro had made Hindustani music’s own, or indeed one of the raga-s he had created. The mastery of the music and the instrument was so complete, it seemed effortless, though we now know how much devotion, tireless practice and intelligent absorption of all his guru offered him it took to make him a complete musician.

Ravi Shankar travelled extensively in the West as a boy dancer in his elder brother Uday Shankar’s troupe that wowed audiences everywhere, but when he went West again as a sitarist in the 1950s, the audiences were small and unappreciative of Indian music. They dismissed it as limited, repetitive and simple. Ravi Shankar was determined to show the West what a great music he brought from India. He learnt to give it initially in small doses and educate his audiences step by small step. He held countless lecdems at university campuses, and with his natural charm and articulation, he won them over in time, aided in part by the handsome praise the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin showered on him.

Today, Ravi Shankar is one of India’s oldest living musicians of international fame. Awarded the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999, he has received some 15 honorary doctorates, the Ramon Magsayasay Award, two Grammys, the Crystal Award from Davos, the Fukuoka Grand Prize Award from Japan, and countless other awards and honours. He has played his music to a great variety of audiences, from the knowledgeable rasika-s of Varanasi and Pune, to wildly cheering young fans at the Woodstock and Monterey pop festivals. He taught the Beatles sitar music and he collaborated with Yehudi Menuhin in creating world music albums. He orchestrated Indian music for All India Radio, composed music for Indian and international ballets and films including Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, Godaan, Anuradha, Gulzar’s Meera and Attenborough’s Gandhi, and with Ali Akbar Khan, kickstarted a whole new variety of Indian classical music–the jugalbandi.

Born in Benares on 7 April 1920 as the youngest of four brothers, Ravindra, named after Nobel laureate Tagore, hailed from a privileged background. His father, a bar-at-law, and a minister in princely states, was an amateur singer at local soirees, and there was plenty of music in the family. Elder brother Uday Shankar was to become a world famous dancer, taking his troupe, including his siblings, all over the West. Another brother Rajendra was involved in theatre, and stored his drama troupe’s musical instruments at home. Ravi would play those in secrecy, but his singing at house parties and school parties did not have to be clandestine.

His first guru and first major influence was brother Uday Shankar. Not only did Ravi Shankar travel with his brother’s dance troupe, he was also a permanent fixture at the Almora India Cultural Centre, as a singer and dancer–until one day he answered the irresistible call of the sitar, going from a life of comfort to rural Maihar and gruelling lessons from the great Ustad Alauddin Khan. It was after years of extraordinary hard work and perseverance that he became a successful instrumentalist and achieved fame.

Few of India’s great musicians have had to handle as much adverse criticism as Ravi Shankar has had to endure in a lifetime of constant endeavour to project the greatness of Indian music to the world. For long accused of diluting Indian classical music to please Western audiences, the maestro was deeply hurt by such charges. Over the decades, however, his critics and the vast majority of lovers of Hindustani music have come to recognise the value of his contribution and the purity of the sound produced by his sitar, his brilliance as a composer and creator of ragas, his unparalleled eclecticism that resulted in the transmission of some of the finest ideas and attributes of south Indian classical music to its north Indian counterpart.

Yet another criticism aimed at Ravi Shankar has been his alleged promotion of daughter Anoushka as a sitarist when she first came on the scene, back in the late 1990s. It was perhaps no fault of his that the media made a superstar of her even before she had proved herself in the big league of classical instrumentalists. Any charge of nepotism against Ravi Shankar cannot wash because he produced many excellent disciples, presenting them on stage alongside him long before Anoushka made her debut. And the daughter’s talent is unmistakable.

Ravi Shankar is an old friend of Sruti magazine, of its founder editor N. Pattabhi Raman in particular. His decision to perform free of charge to launch SAMUDRI, an archival initiative of the magazine in 2001 was a magnificent gesture (Sruti 198). So was his warmhearted cooperation with us when we profiled him in depth back in 1996(Sruti 147), a sequel to an issue devoted to his guru Alauddin Khan (Sruti 135). Reading those issues and the material collected for it, it becomes immediately clear that more was to have followed in subsequent issues of Sruti.

Lakshmi Shankar and her sister Kamala Chakrabarty had put down their thoughts on Ravi Shankar for our use. More recently, we spoke to his disciple Janardan Mitta about his “Guruji”.

Lakshmi Shankar first came into contact with the Shankar family in March 1940, when she joined Uday Shankar’s India Cultural Centre in Almora, where she went as a Bharatanatyam dancer along with her guru Kandappa Pillai. Ravi Shankar’s guru Alauddin Khan, his son Ali Akbar Khan, and Uday’s Kathakali guru Sankaran Nampooodiri were all there, each stalwart supervising his part of the ballet.
Soon afterwards, Ravi Shankar, a dancer in his brother’s troupe so far, became a erious convert to the sitar, and accompanied his guru to Maihar, where he stayed for the next four years doing gurukulavasa.

The young man showed rare dedication and grit in his pursuit of music, forsaking his position as a reputed dancer. He was 20 years old when he decided to start from scratch as a musician. He did riyaz for 14 hours a day! Lakshmi said, “I’ve seen blood coming out of his fingers. Baba would ask him to do something and Ravi Shankar would achieve it in the shortest time possible–and Baba would be pleased and give him some more. It was a wonderful guru-sishya relationship.”

Lakshmi was a dancer all right, but was also interested in music and had a malleable voice. Celebrity visitors to the centre, including the Paluskar family, Prof. B.R. Deodhar, Dilip Kumar Roy and Vinayakrao Patwardhan and Pandit K.S. Bodas, all loved Lakshmi’s voice. Through these greats, Lakshmi learnt the rudiments of khayal music and Bengali songs.

By 1945, when news arrived that Ravi Shankar was seriously ill at Maihar, Lakshmi was already married to his brother Rajendra Shankar, and Ravi Shankar to Alauddin Khan’s daughter Annapurna Devi, and the Almora Centre had closed down owing to financial difficulties. Rajendra and Lakshmi had moved to Bombay, and Rajendra brought his brother home and nursed him back to good health. The Rajendra Shankars found a house nearby for Ravi Shankar, his wife and two-year old son. Ravi Shankar’s sitar career just about began then and he was soon performing regularly at chamber concerts. He also found a job in HMV as a sound recordist.

Ravi Shankar joined IPTA (The Indian People’s Theatre Association) hereabouts, composing the music for ballets like India Immortal. Lakshmi sang for some of these ballets and Rajendra dramatised Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India. Lakshmi was the prime ballerina for the ballet which debuted in New Delhi in March 1947. The ballet was a superhit, and Ravi Shankar’s music for it was “unbelievable”, but Lakshmi had health problems, her husband broke a leg, and her son had to be looked after. To top it all, Lakshmi was acting in the Tamil film Bhakta Tulsidas, with music by Veena S. Balachander. Though her mother helped her, she also did all the housework, and paid a heavy price for all the stress and strain. She had pleurisy, which ultimately meant she could not dance any more.

Ravi Shankar had moved to Delhi. He had joined All India Radio but was also a successful concert musician. Not long afterwards, he was so busy performing that he had to give up the AIR job. Lakshmi was singing playback for films. When they met after a gap, he said, “Why don’t you take up Hindustani classical music? Your grounding may be in Carnatic music, but your voice is ideally suited for Hindustani music.”

In her search for a good teacher, Lakshmi was lucky. The music director Madan Mohan introduced her to Ustad Abdul Karim Khan and by April 1954, the classes were underway. The guru was keen on Lakshmi taking the place of his successful disciple Nirmala Devi with whom he had had a parting of ways. In Lakshmi, he found a hard working student determined to make it as a classical vocalist, well supported by mother and husband. He worked as hard as she did, and the lessons and practice sessions went on for hours together. Lakshmi progressed so rapidly that she became an A grade artist of AIR within six months. Unfortunately, Karim Khan stopped teaching her, owing to some misunderstanding, and she then took lessons from Prof. B.R. Deodhar.

An MKT fan
There was a time when Ravi Shankar was crazy about the song Manmatha leelaiyai venrar undo sung by M.K. Thyagaraja Bhagavatar for the old Tamil film Sivakavi. The team would be motoring down 200 miles to a concert venue or going by an intercity bus and he would ask Kamala to sing it. ‘Aha, what Charukesi!’ he would say. He even went around collecting MKT’s songs while in Madras.
He was deeply, reverentially appreciative of Muthuswami Dikshitar’s compositions. He had tremendous fascination for the Sanskrit language, too. His love of music was broadbased and generous.

His childlike love for TV was in sharp contrast–especially the way he lapped up serials like Mission Impossible. Sometimes he would be pacing up and down on the veranda, sometimes sitting with a paper and pencil deep in thought. “How can I wait to find the answer to the mystery? Shall I phone TV and ask them?”
This was the time Ravi Shankar came back into Lakshmi’s life, musically speaking. She recalled, “I was fast making a name in Bombay, singing here and there. He told me, ‘I’ll coach you in new aspects of music.’ It was an advanced course in khayal, vilambit and drut, in raga-s like Jog, Behag and Keeravani. There were no songs in Hindustani music in raga-s like Keeravani (Kirvani), essentially south Indian as they are. Ravi Shankar would instantly make up a composition in half an hour, teach it to me and there it was, one khayal in my bag. He did it so beautifully, you’d think he did vocal riyaz everyday! What he could not demonstrate vocally, he played on the sitar. He was terribly busy, but would snatch a few half-hours, come up hurriedly and say, ‘Fine, let’s sit down and do this raga.’ Sometimes we would both be travelling and he would sing on the plane for me to note down.”

Shamanna Kothi was a record based on a small poem by Rabindranath Tagore. Uday Shankar had made a fabulous ballet on the theme, a roaring hit. Ravi Shankar composed the music for it. This was in 1961 during the Tagore Festival. Lakshmi Shankar sang throughout, while Ravi Shankar sang a few pieces in the record. She also sang for his music in a few Bengali films. Back in 1946, she had sung for his music in a few films like Dharti ke Lal.

In 1968, Lakshmi accompanied Ravi Shankar on a trip abroad for the first Festival of India and again in 1974, to sing as well as help him organise. “I was really very fortunate to learn close at hand how his creative genius worked,” Lakshmi recalled. “Most of the time I would write down the music. Like all geniuses, he would forget what he created. Writing down also helped me when I rehearsed with the other musicians.”

Ravi Shankar composed a ballet for a record on that tour. One side of the record featured a piece in Vachaspati, in 7-1/2 beats. Hari Prasad Chaurasia and Shiv Kumar Sharma were part of the orchestra, so the complex piece was shaping well. A shehnai player in the ensemble played beautifully, but his lack of formal training made it difficult for him to grasp the tala. Ravi Shankar made several attempts to teach him, but he repeatedly made mistakes. Finally Ravi Shankar lost his patience and told Lakshmi, “Boudi (sister-in-law), please teach him. Make him understand it.” The shehnai player waited till Ravi was out of earshot and said: “Didi, mujhe to saat hi nahin aati, saade saat kahan se aayegi?” (I can’t get seven beats right, how can I ever get 7-1/2 right?”) Feeling sorry for the poor man, Lakshmi explained the problem to Ravi Shankar. A remorseful Ravi changed the piece for the shehnai into something easier.

The other side of the record was another story altogether. As Ravi Shankar and the two sisters entered the studio, he was saying, “What am I going to do? My mind is blank.” He then asked them both to tune the two tambura-s there. When he said “Play”, the women kept strumming the tambura-s and that was the only sound for ten minutes. And then he said: ‘Ok, here we go.’ “He composed such a beautiful piece, I can’t describe it,” said Lakshmi. “It had a ragamalika which I sang, and Jai Jagadeesa harey sung by Jitendra Abhisheki in the end.”

Ravi Shankar went abroad on a concert tour as early as 1958. As a pioneer, he underwent much difficulty in the West and suffered criticism in the East. He trained Western audiences to listen to Indian music. They had no notion of his music and he had to do the training slowly, little by little. In the beginning, he wouldn’t play a raga for more than 15 minutes; he increased the duration slowly, till there was an Indian music boom of sorts in 1966 in the US–partly because of the hippie movement, partly because the Beatle George Harrison started learning the sitar. The criticism was nasty: that Ravi Shankar was playing the guitar not the sitar, that he was ruining tradition and so on. Lakshmi Shankar defended him. “All wrong. He played sitar to the hippies, yes. But he played good, chaste, Indian music with alap, jod, jhala. He did many experiments, yes. But a creative mind like Ravi Shankar’s cannot be static–it needs some experimentation all the time. His experiments never resulted in any dilution of his music. When he played with Yehudi Menuhin, for instance, or when Zubin Mehta teamed up with Ravi Shankar, Menuhin or Zubin Mehta’s orchestra played Ravi Shankar’s music; it was not the other way around.

Ravi Shankar’s Beenkar gharana goes very deep into the traditional mould and is highly classical. It comes from the dhrupad style. It is not at all light, contrary to all the criticism levelled against his music. “Quite the reverse,” Lakshmi said. “Even when he plays a thumri or a gat, he is strictly classical. It so happens that in a thumri you are allowed to flirt a little bit, stray from the raga’s notes slightly to add colour to the rendering. You can’t call that light music. I think it was just plain jealousy–people just wanted to pull him down. Even newspapers. And he has survived all that, so has his music, our music. He once said, ‘Yes, I did some format changes to basically attract the Western audiences to our music.’ If he had not done that, if he had tried a one-hour alap, jod and jhala to begin with on an audience that didn’t have a clue to our music, it could have meant curtains for our music in the West. Now everyone goes and plays or sings there and people there understand our music. He went to almost every university in the US and explained Indian music through lecture demonstrations. Of course, in the beginning and in the boom period, there were superficial audiences. That’s all gone now. Now you have elite listeners who know what they are getting, who are genuinely interested.

Whether abroad or at home, classical music is an acquired taste, you have to develop an ear for it. That to this day Ravi Shankar is heard and revered everywhere is proof that he gave nothing but top class classical music, not light music. He’s still tops in terms of pulling crowds.”

“Ravi Shankar’s music has remained largely unchanged, except what Father Time has dictated,” Lakshmi Shankar continued. “As you grow older, you get weary of speed, the body doesn’t cooperate. So you substitute depth for speed, spend more time in leisurely, reflective, analytical music. Maturity, refinement, bhakti rasa–these come automatically with age.”

“The creative urge is still there in him, very much alive. The one sensible outlet for him is teaching. As you grow older, you cut down performances and start teaching. When you teach your mind opens.”

Lakshmi’s sister Kamala met Ravi Shankar first in Almora. She was twelve then and he 19 or 20. She remembers, “He was with Dada (Uday Shankar) in his troupe and even then he would compose little songs and make us all sing. As a dancer he was simply fantastic, which is why he was able to make so many memorable ballets. He knew every little step. I was fascinated by his music, his dance, his way of putting things. I was one of the dancers in the troupe too at the time. We did two tours then all over the country. I was the baby of the troupe–Dada selected me as the best dancer among 60 girls.”

“After Raviji went to Maihar, he came to Almora once in a while and even participated in the tours. After some years I lost touch totally, except for seeing him in his concerts in Bombay. I got married and everything changed.”

“I then met him in 1959-60. My husband Amiya Chakrabarty had made the Hindi film Seema for which he won five national awards posthumously. (Daag starring Dilip-Nimmi, Patita with Dev Anand and Usha Kiran–were also great hits he directed. All of them had music by Shankar Jaikishen). Raviji saw my photograph and the news of my husband’s death in the Illustrated Weekly in London, and sent me a condolence message–he keeps in touch with people despite all his schedules. Our contact was revived when he came back to India. As my sister happened to be his sister-in-law, we met at family reunions.”

Kamala accompanied Ravi Shankar on a 13-month tour all over the world in 1967–Europe, the U.S., Russia and Japan, playing the tambura for him. She was a constant companion and came to learn the amazing range of Ravi Shankar’s music.
Subsequently she was with him for almost 24 years, travelling with him, anticipating his needs and attending to them. A perfectionist to the core–he went through the minutest detail from rehearsal to final programme. He made no compromises–every item had to be rehearsed meticulously. “I can sing a bit though I’m not a professional singer. He taught me many compositions but I had a handicap–I couldn’t write notation, unlike Lakshmi Akka. I had to be taught the whole thing. It would be a part of the daily routine, almost–he would be singing, I’d be cooking or making tea and ask him to sing louder. But this way I learnt a great many compositions of his.”

Performing or traveling with Ravi Shankar exposed the team to so many facets of his personality including his sense of humour. One scene in the ballet Labour and Machinery, portrayed the confusion of the common man–whether to take to machinery and adopt it as a way of life, or to stick to farm labour. In that scene, all the actors were supposed to shout meaningless syllables vaguely and aimlessly. They were directed to go round and round on the stage mumbling, shouting. The idea was to convey the confusion. Raviji would say “Dosai rendu, onnu murugal, onnu saada!” (Two dosa-s, one roasted, one plain!). The cast would start laughing, but he kept repeating his chant with a straight face.

Mistaken identity
A taxi driver kept stealing glances at Ravi Shankar on his way from Bombay city to the airport. At the airport, there was a glimmer in his eyes and Ravi Shankar told his companion, “I’ve had it now. The chap has recognised me and is going to ask me.” Raviji checked the meter and took out his wallet. The cabbie stopped him and said “Saab, I don’t want money, but please give me a ticket to your movie Jhanak jhanak payal baje.” He thought he was speaking to the actor Gopikrishna! “There goes my ego!” Ravi Shankar said. “Not only is he ignorant of Ravi Shankar he can only see Gopi Krishna in me!” The best proof of a person’s sense of humour is when he can laugh at himself. And Ravi Shankar could do that.

There were several instances of how seriously Ravi Shankar took his role of propagator of Indian classical music. He once performed at Omea, a very small town in Rotterberg, Switzerland, which the musicians reached by ferry. It was a mini-concert of about 90 minutes. It was terribly cold, Alla Rakha and Ravi Shankar were both freezing and wondering how they were going to play their instruments. The organisers offered some brandy to warm up, but Ravi Shankar demurred, naturally. Somehow, battling the cold, he played a superb Charukesi. The organisers did not arrange any food for the party, and when they returned to the hotel, they found nothing to eat, not even water to drink. The restaurants closed at seven. Alla Rakha was literally in tears–he could never withstand hunger pangs. Ravi Shankar sat quiet, apparently lost in deep thought. Upset by his demeanour, Alla Rakha demanded to know, “What’s this? We’re stuck in this godforsaken place with no food or drink. What are we going to do?”

Ravi Shankar’s response was typical of the maestro: “I feel neither hunger nor thirst. All I know and am happy about is, we’ve brought Indian music to such a remote place, made quite a few people sit through and enjoy our music in the biting cold. That’s enough reward for all the suffering.”

On another occasion, Ravi Shankar’s troupe returned from a concert to the hotel and found there was no power. They had to climb the stairs to their room on the fourteenth floor. All of them had heavy luggage–sitar, tanpura, tabla and so on. Ravi Shankar walked briskly up as if it was a simple, natural thing to do. The rest of them were trudging along far behind, painfully and slowly. Around the tenth floor, a couple of them sat down, unable to walk any further. Ravi Shankar went up, opened the room and tried to egg them on to finish the climb. When that failed, he came down four floors, took two tabla-s and went up, came down again and took the tanpura, and finally one more time to fetch his colleagues! When they started walking back, he said, “Don’t you realise what a great thing we’ve done? We are in Rio de Janeiro, exhibiting our music to the Brazilians and making them love it. It’s no small feat. Be happy and think of that. All our troubles are minor. We’re taking our music to every nook and corner of the world. Nothing else matters.”

In his mature years, Ravi Shankar became quite an addict of television serials. He usually slotted the time for different items in his concerts so that the curtain could come down precisely at the end of the allotted time. In one concert, however, every item was going faster–each finished with a few minutes to spare. The concert was supposed to be till 8.30 but he was through by 7.45 pm. It was the day of Mission Impossible, a serial he loved. As soon as the curtain came down, he snapped, “Come, come, we’ve got to rush. We’ll be just in time for the programme.”

‘Hemangana’–the house of his dreams–was built in Varanasi in 1973-74. It was called RIMPA, the Ravi Shankar Institute of Music and Performing Arts. Every year 20 to 25 students from all over India would assemble there. There would be teaching sessions morning and afternoon. Evening and night would be time for fun and games. And music. Ravi Shankar taught the students through many media–including these games. The next morning, he would be a different person–a hard taskmaster, very demanding, a perfectionist. “Is this the man who laughed and joked with us last night?” the students used to wonder.

Ravi Shankar held festivals there. For five days, eminent musicians and dancers assembled there every year and performed. Ravi Shankar played on the last day.
The concept of Hemangana was something like the gurukula system, but it did not last beyond three years. It needed the guru to be in one place and the sishya-s to be with him throughout. Ravi Shankar could never be bound to one place. He was always on the move. “If he comes to a place and stays even for a week he gets fidgety and says ‘Chalo let us go to Bangalore’, Kamala said. And at Bangalore after a few days, he’d say, ‘Come, we’re off to Calcutta’.”

The atmosphere of Hemangana was fabulous. Satyajit Ray said, “I’ve never experienced anything so Indian.” There were student quarters, beautiful orchards, arches. Attention was paid to every little thing.

Janardan Mitta, whom Ravi Shankar once described as “my favourite student”, was born into a musically inclined family. His father Mitta Lakshminarasiah, was a leading lawyer of Hyderabad. Keen on music, the senior Mitta would come home on Thursdays (Friday was a holiday in the Nizam’s Hyderabad) and close his office for the weekend, to play the tabla or the harmonium and sing with his wife and six children for an audience. “Vakil sahib’s” home was the gateway to the twin cities for most visiting musicians.

Janardan, who joined the film industry in Madras back in 1956 and became a permanent fixture as a sitarist in films made here for over four decades, picked up his sister’s sitar once she left home after marriage. By 1952, he had successfully auditioned before stalwarts Pandit Ratanjankar and Veerendra Kishore and started playing for Deccan Radio. He first heard Ravi Shankar live in 1955, when he came to Hyderabad for a Sangeet Sammelan concert. Janardan had completed his M.A. and was now doing his second year in engineering, but was dying to take up music full time. His father said he had six sons and so didn’t mind one of them taking to music. He took Janardan to meet Ravi Shankar. “Are you crazy?” was Ravi Shankar’s response when Lakshminarasiah said he would take Janardan out of engineering college if Ravi Shankar would take him as a disciple.

Ravi Shankar came to Hyderabad again in 1956, and this time he did listen to the young sitarist. He said, “You seem to know some of the advanced things without knowing the basics.” He appreciated the way Janardan played the raga, the taan and the meend, but corrected a basic mistake he was making in the number of front and back strokes. “That’s why I need a Guruji,” the young man shot back in all innocence. Ravi Shankar asked him to apply for a government scholarship, but though he did not get it, Janardan still went to Delhi in 1956 to learn from Ravi Shankar. It was a busy year for Ravi Shankar. He had just quit the AIR job and become a full time musician. That year he travelled to Afghanistan for the first time on a concert tour. “Whenever he found time to teach us in the midst of his travels, he opened a treasure box,” Janardan remembers.

Janardan was one of the students to take part in the annual camp in Benares. Kartik Kumar, Shamim Ahmed, Rama Rao and Arun Bharat Ram were some of the others. At the classes, Ravi Shankar was a strict disciplinarian. “He was never satisfied until you got every nuance right,” he said. “Outside the classroom, he was a friend, mixing freely with everyone. At Benares, we always had lunch with him. ‘Today, we have an apology for sambar,’ he would apologise. In the evening, we were free to go where we chose, but sometimes he would accompany us on outings, taking a childlike pleasure in simple things. He took us on boat rides to watch the sunset, even liked to go to movies. Once after a concert in Chennai, he said, ‘Let’s go to Bobby’, referring to the Hindi superhit film of the 1970s.

“Guruji had been trained in the tough school of Ustad Alauddin Khan. He taught him dhrupad, the surbahar, complicated tala-s. It was Guruji who reintroduced the complex laya techniques of Carnatic music like tisra nadai and khanda nadai to Hindustani music, which had lost them over time. Even last year, he played a composition set to a tala of 10.5 beats at a Hyderabad concert. Every Sunday for a whole year, he presented a programme of ‘aparichit’ or new raga-s, 52 different raga-s.”

Janardan has the greatest respect for Ravi Shankar’s intellect. “For instance, Guruji had an original explanation for the relative simplicity of laya in Hindustani music. In the north, we sang for the king, while musicians sang for God in the south. At the temple, they sang without inhibition, exploring the entire range of raga and tala, with no fear of displeasing their compassionate God. But in the durbar, you did not dare to go beyond teen taal for fear of offending the king who would not then know how to keep the beat along with you.”

Ravi Shankar’s respect for Carnatic music and musicians is well known. “He still keeps track of what’s happening here,” says Janardan. “He keenly watches the careers of young musicians like T.M. Krishna, Vijay Siva and Sanjay Subrahmanyan.”

Editor, be not proud

Pathfinders is the name of a book on Indian art, literature, music, dance, theatre and cinema brought out by Ace Publication of Mumbai, to which I have made a small contribution, doing some half a dozen profiles of Indian classical musicians. Along with me, S Janaki, Executive Editor of Sruti, the magazine I edit, and Gowri Ramnarayan—who contributed substantially more than I did—were the other two writers from Chennai featured by the book.

The book is really mammoth in size, weighing 5.5 kg as it does, and is a visual treat. It has contributions from some very eminent artists besides critics and experts. It is by and large readable and rich in content. It should be a collector’s item that will make its owners proud, if only they make a suitable stand on which to place it and turn its pages. It was released in Mumbai sometime last year, when I got to browse through it.

Last evening, the publishers collaborated with Taj Coromandel to launch the book in Chennai, amidst some fanfare. The programme started half an hour late, unusual for Chennai book releases, with a jugalbandi concert by Rakesh Chaurasia (flute), Purbayan Chatterjee (sitar) and Satyajit Talwalkar (tabla), a pleasant enough affair appropriate to the occasion.

This is when Shashi Vyas, musician-music critic and son of eminent vocalist Pandit CR Vyas—whose brainchild the book was—took over. Welcoming a number of celebrity guests from the music world seated in the front row, he went on to thank a number of people who had helped bring out the book. He also made frequent references to Vijayabai, who was like a mother to him and who was writing her biography (“She’ll fire me [sic] for revealing this secret”), leaving everyone in the audience who did not know Vijaya Mehta, the theatre personality, guessing Vijayabai’s identity. He also went into raptures about the greatness of Vikkuji, (Vinayakram) and Sriniji (Mandolin Shrinivas), but missed out on Lalgudi GJR Krishnan who sat next to Shrinivas in the audience. Later, he spotted Chitravina Ravikiran in the audience, thanked him for accepting his invitation, and recalled the exciting interactions they had had at the National Centre for Performing Arts, Mumbai. Followed speeches by Ravikiran and Vijaya Mehta, which were well received by the audience.

Now I come to the central part of the evening’s proceedings: the book release.
Vyas had both Vijaya Mehta and Vinayakram release the book, in the presence of all the celebrity guests who were asked to ascend the stage. Shrinivas was very reluctant to do so, but we soon found out he was only drawing attention to the noticeable lack of an invitation from Vyas to GJR Krishnan to join the crowd on the dais. Once this omission was repaired, both Krishnan and Shrinivas joined the star spangled daispora—to coin a word—of the evening.

Now Vyas launched into a fairly comprehensive vote of thanks, in which he expressed his gratitude to a number of actors—from the publishers and Taj Coromandel to the stenographer and the light boys—before condescending to mention the editors and at long last the writers from Chennai. He finally remembered the name of Gowri Ramnarayan and of course “her husband Mr Narayan.” Some of us then loudly reminded him that he had omitted to mention the name of my Sruti colleague and fellow contributor S Janaki.

Obviously horrified to realise what he had done, Vyas then went into overdrive and profusely thanked Janaki and Sruti (we had helped the book with many photographs from our archives). “How can I forget Janakiji and her Sruti Foundation for all their help, blah, blah, which was all very well but for his obvious ignorance of the fact that besides being Mr Narayan, Gowriji’s husband, I happen to be the editor of the magazine which gave him permission to use all those photographs.

As it happens ever so often in life, here was another instance that brought me down heavily from whatever imaginary perch of self-importance I had assigned myself.