‘Vilayat Ali put the visitor right. “You’re mistaken, janab. This is our family servant who dusts and sweeps and shops and prepares my hookah.”
‘“It is you who are mistaken, sir,” persisted the guest. “This, may the offence be forgiven, is the famous pakhavaj player, Imam Baksh, and I am ready to swear on the Holy Book. Summon him and he’ll bear me out.” But Imam Baksh, seeing the game was up, fled. The master grew troubled, wondering why a famous performer should have resorted to such a step as to pose as a servant for so many months. He set off to search for the runaway and after many days and many inquiries he came to a small house beside a mosque on the outskirts of the city. From its window came the sound of tabla-trot, briskly prancing, thunderous as the crackle of monsoon lightning, an intricate cantering of masterly fingers on the two drum faces. Someone was practising. The master halted in surprise. “But that is my style entirely!” he exclaimed to himself. “Such energy and finesse, such symmetry of pace! Who is this?” Thoughtfully he pushed open the door and walked in unannounced and stopped short. For it was indeed Imam Baksh, his servant. The tablas fell silent as the shocked disciple stared horrified at his master. But the master advanced and embraced Imam Baksh and asked him: “Why ever was this necessary? Why the pretence?” To which Imam Baksh faltered: “I was afraid you would refuse to teach me if I came and asked you.” The master conducted this new—and best—pupil home and displayed him proudly before his class. “See this fellow.” He smiled. “Hear him play. He’s one of the best, is he not?” The other pupils were jealous. “How is he a pupil at all? He hasn’t even had the ritual ganda tied!” challenged one. The ganda, as you well know, is no small thing. That ordinary-looking strip of black cloth with its knot of jaggery and Bengal gram, tied to the wrist at the time of initiation, is sacred to both teacher and pupil, the jaggery standing for the sweetness of the art, the Bengal gram representing the severity of the discipline and the black cloth wristlet serving as a talisman and a covenant of honour between maestro and initiate. But Imam Baksh had ignored this mandatory ritual, hadn’t he?—protested some. Where then was the rightness of it all, the sanctity of the tradition? Hearing this, the master’s wife, herself the daughter of a famous Lucknavi musician, came quickly forward and pulling off her bangles, slipped them on to Imam Baksh’s wrist, saying: “Here is the ganda. There now, the ritual is over. Are you satisfied?” Ever afterwards, there has existed a school of percussion named after Imam Baksh of the Bangles.
‘But of course some teachers there are who are the soul of generosity. Like my noble kinsman, Bande Ali Khan, son-in-law to my brother, Haddu Khan. Now Bande Ali Khan spotted a poor lad singing at a theatrical. The boy had a voice of gold, ah, such a gifted one he was as would shame the angels to let his divine talent go waste for want of money or a proper teacher. So Bande Ali Khan calls the boy, provides the black-cloth wristlet and the gram and the jaggery and ties it round the lad’s wrist and says: “Now take this rupee, son, and this paisa, and put them in my hand as your sacred offering to me and I forthwith take charge of you as my pupil and you don’t ever have to pay me anything any more.” That was him, our great-souled Bande Ali. Not many like him in the old days and never more shall be, say I. For teachers have been who have had to be terrorized into teaching wicked pupils who were as menacing as they were ingenious and as inventive as they were stubborn. Let me tell you what that hot-headed young Nawab of Rampur, the younger one, the son of the one I spoke of, did to the frightened Bahadur Hussain Khan when he refused to take him on as a pupil. The junior nawab, Sahibzada Haider Ali Khan, son of Nawab Yusuf Ali Khan, had set his heart on learning to play the sursingaar from the maestro, Bahadur Hussain Khan. But would the latter agree to waste his time on that whippersnapper of a piffling dandy-boy? Not one whit. For peevish maestros have often held their own against mere rulers of little states. The young prince tried everything—flattery, threat, temptation—but nothing worked. So he invited the master to a feast at his pleasure house in Bilsi. He put him up in a splendid chamber, offered him every courtesy and the choicest hospitality and the evening went in music and poetry and wining and dining and after much revelry the party ended and the guest retired to his chamber for the night. Lo! What should he find there but a nestful of serpents. Yes, real live snakes let loose into the room. Is this hard to believe? I speak only truth. The mischievous young nawab had sent for half a dozen snake charmers and paid them to release their creatures into the chamber. True, the beasts had been defanged, but can you spend a night sharing your bedchamber with an army of serpents? Can I? Can anyone? The maestro was on the brink of a mental collapse when he realized who he was up against, the sort of wily, wilful mind he was vainly striving to oppose. In the dead of night Bahadur Hussain Khan fled the young prince’s estate and made his frenzied way to Rampur and sought an audience with the nawab’s father. The senior nawab learnt of his son’s misdemeanour gravely, and summoned him into his presence. “What do you have to say in your defence, sir?” he demanded to know. The young nawab made reply with due deference but great obduracy: “Beg pardon, Highness, but I’m clear on one point. Ustad Bahadur Hussain Khan Sahib shall not stay alive, should he dream of refusing my entreaties to accept me as his disciple. He knows this well—that I shall stop at nothing.”
‘The maestro knew when he was beaten. Sighing, he gave in, though he made some tough conditions—a handsome sum of money at the time of initiation, a promise that the prince should consent to being treated exactly like the other pupils and that he should be obedient in every particular. The young nawab accepted the teacher’s conditions, but he had a condition of his own—that he be taught in comprehensive depth and detail, and no family secret, no traditional knowledge of the veena should be withheld from him, this he must swear to before witnesses at a mosque, with his hand on the Holy Book. The weary master agreed to everything. And thus did the secrets of his family, the three hundred and sixty ways of addressing the veena strings, pass out of his safekeeping.
‘The point I am trying to make, daughter,’ said Hassu, ‘is that betwixt teacher and pupil it is a pact of honour, iman. This is not to say that there are no departures from iman—but all is fair in art. I myself, Hassu Khan, learnt invaluable things from one Bade Muhammad Khan, the prime singer of Gwalior, when my brothers and I were mere urchins. Now we three, my brothers Haddu, Natthu and I, being blessed by the grace of Allah in being natural singers and being twice-blest in having teachers of the likes of Natthan Khan Peerbaksh, were trained in the Lucknavi style. Our grandfather Peerbaksh thought we might possibly benefit from some exposure to Bade Muhammad Khan’s Gwalior style. But artists are jealous beings, this you must early learn. Muhammad Khan refused to teach any but his own-begot sons, everyone knew. So we three were made to hide in a hencoop, close to the chamber where Bade Muhammad Khan did his daily riyaz. And soon enough we’d picked up all we needed to know. When Bade Muhammad Khan discovered, ah, he had his revenge, he did! At the durbar of the great Scindia he besought me to sing, addressing me in the most honeyed, endearing tones. I sang. Whereupon the chamber rang with applause, especially his. Applause and a rain of blessings. I should have known better. Then he crept up to me and said, “Son, let us hear that particular taan again.” That was indeed a special taan, such a throat-heaver, such a tempestuous heaven-blaster of a taan, it was even called the “kadak-bijli taan”, the crackle-of-lightning tremolo. I executed it. Perfectly, let me admit. Then, said he, cautious, insidious, “Encore. Now another one.” Before anyone could stop me I launched into another kadak bijli. Do you know what happened?’
‘What?’ asked Janki, wide-eyed.
Hassu played out the suspense.
‘I, ignorant wretch, was all aflush with achievement and delight that the great Bade Muhammad Khan was actually demanding an encore from me. Little did I know that this corporeal throat, this body of flesh and bone, cannot take that breath of fire which a second crackle-of-lightning taan brings. What had to happen happened, daughter.�
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Hassu sat gazing woefully into the well of his bitter memory.
‘What happened, sir?’ whispered Janki.
Solemnly Hassu pulled up the left panel of his loose tunic and revealed his thinly carved ribs. ‘Dislocated,’ he pronounced, not without some pride. ‘I began coughing blood. I might have been taken up into the realms of the angels and the prophets, were it not for a hakim who was present at the durbar. So you see, madam, this music has thrashed me within an inch of my life, this I say is God’s own truth. Not once but twice.’
He paused, enjoying the pregnant silence.
‘When else, sir?’ prompted Janki.
‘At another concert, daughter, in another nobleman’s soirée. In the middle of a taan the blood came. And this time no hakim but an angry hiss from my revered grandfather made the blood freeze in my throat. My noble ancestor, my murshid, Natthan Peerbaksh, descended wrathfully upon me and threatened: “If you must die, boy, finish the taan first, then die at your pleasure, a curse fall upon you! We shall not hold you back!” Such panic did his voice occasion in my heart that the bleeding instantly stopped. I finished the entire performance without a hitch. Such was my terror and reverence for my teacher.’
The first few days Hassu prepared Janki’s mind by recounting tales about taalim and legendary teachers and ragas and their stories.
‘Ah, teachers, they are all sorts,’ he said. ‘A certain maestro of Gwalior was extremely vain and mocked his new disciples by first making them crow like a cock at the royal durbar. But the noble Bairam Khan of Jaipur shattered his vanity by sending a sarangi player who claimed to have mastery over 5040 taans. And this effectively demolished the vain ustad.’
If Hassu’s intention was to impress upon Janki’s timorous sense some idea of a teacher’s claim to proper trepidation in a pupil’s heart, he succeeded only too well. Janki’s timid face was enough to confirm his satisfaction. So much so that he hastened to comfort and reassure.
‘Nay, nay. Don’t look so frightened, daughter. If teachers struck terror in a pupil, there have been those who were mother, father, sage, beloved, muse, all, all things to their chosen disciples. Consider the relationship between the sainted angel-beloved, heaven-sprung sufi-master Nizamuddin Aulia and his noble companion Amir Khusrau. They did not need to speak one to the other, no. Thought flew invisible from the bough of one’s mind to the heart-nest of the other. When Khusrau went to Nizamuddin the very first time, he was petrified and dared not come into the saint’s presence. Instead he sat outside and made up a prayer in the silence of his mind, which said: “You are such a king whose power can change even a pigeon on a cornice into a falcon. A poor beggar has come to your door. Do you allow him to enter or should he go back?” Wonder of wonders! The holy master received the transmission in the chalice of his soul and sent back his own sacred vibration. A little later a servant appeared before Khusrau, waiting outside, and recited two couplets written by Nizamuddin, which commanded: “In the arena of truth, if a true man stands, let him enter. But if the guest is undiscerning of truth and unready for it, let him return the way he came.” Khusrau immediately went in and laid his head on Nizamuddin’s feet and became his mureed. Remember, daughter, he whom the mind accepts as master, the mind casts itself in his mould. Even in the master’s absence. Even when the teacher is long dead. The soul of Mridanga Rai, during visitations to his young son, Keshav Rai, taught him the niceties of mridanga playing to wreak vengeance on the dancers Kalika–Bindadeen who’d craftily made him lose a beat at the court of the Nawab of Lucknow Wajid Ali Shah and made him die of shame and a broken heart. Stranger things have happened in music. Even centuries after the passing of a great maestro. There is a tamarind tree above the tomb of Tansen that pilgrim musicians visit, yes, even I, Hassu. To chew the tamarind leaf of that holy tree is to be graced with a voice like Tansen’s. Please God, some day you too shall go on that pilgrimage.’
8
For an entire year Hassu made Janki practise notes and scales only. Just sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa. This eight-note scale, he discoursed, was called Malaw Gaud in south India and the Bhairav Thath in north India. The origins of this basic sound alphabet lay in the Pratham-nada, the primal sound-essence such as only saints and risen ones know. Therein resides the full palette of notes as the colours of the rainbow lie potential in primary white light.
‘For music is of divine provenance. Hindus trace it to their celestial minstrel-sage Narada, who learnt the notes and scales and the ragas from the Muse, Saraswati, and by some accounts, from Shiva himself. Muslims believe that the seven notes of the musical scale originated from the sound of seven streams that gushed forth when divine rain thundered down on the sacred stone that the prophet Moses possessed. The notes of the scale are the voices of nature’s creatures, such is the old Vedic belief. The peacock’s call is the “sa”. The bullock’s is “re”. The goat’s “ga”. The jackal’s “ma”. The cuckoo’s “pa”. The horse’s “dha”. The elephant’s “ni”. Amir Khusrau, that great thirteenth-century genius, who wove together so much of Hindu and Muslim music, used the Iranian names for the “swaras”, the notes. Raast, shahnavaz, doka, kurd, seeka, girka, hijaz, nava, hisaar, hussaini, agnu and neem. He based his classification of Indian ragas on these twelve names.’ Hassu taught Janki the old gharana maxim—‘Taal gaya to baal gaya, sur gaya to sar gaya’—if rhythm be lost, consider it the loss of a hair. But if the note be lost, consider it the loss of the head itself. To get one note right, just one, is the fruit of years of rigorous effort. For the finished note must glow from within and the singer’s body and being must experience the vibration of this radiance. And not only must the note be perfect, its echo must be perfect too.
There was a great vocalist who was taken by his teacher to the great mosque at Lahore and made to sing facing a massive wall which tossed back the echoes to each uttered phrase of music. The teacher asked the pupil whether voice and echo sounded the same. To which the pupil was constrained to admit that the echo did not match the voice. Then the teacher began singing. The wall sent back its resonance and the pupil, paying close attention, observed that both voice and echo were tonally perfect.
‘That’s what a singer must strive for, the interior purity of the single note. As they used to say in the old gharanas, “ek sur sadhe to sab sur sadhe”—when one note steadies all the other notes stabilize. It is absolute rightness that we are talking of,’ Hassu said, ‘the essence of a note and its inner incandescence, which, when achieved, unlocks the door to real excellence. All else is mere cleverness. That pupil became one of the greatest singers of his age. You’ll be amazed to learn that he made a living selling kulhars of tea at railway stations and playing the sarangi at a dancing girl’s kotha. But nights he headed for the Hindu burning ghats and practised singing in those vast, desolate wastes where pyres burned and wild-eyed sages drowsed. Where else could he find the emptiness and silence except in the place of death? Later, when he was a famous man, he’d stand beside the sea at Chowpatti, in the middle of the tempestuous Bombay rains, and try competing with the ferocity of the roaring sea, taking each wild wave as his natural rival, pitting his voice against the ocean. That was one who lived his music, not just performed it. You’re not an artist some of the time, remember this. You’re an artist all the time, in sleep and in waking. You breathe in your medium as a fish breathes in water. It is your chief reason for existing. It steers your ears and your eyes and the coursings of your blood. Whether the world accepts or rejects you is immaterial. The element you inhabit and stay all awash in fills your days and nights with purpose, with the promise of truth. The achievement of that one perfect note is God’s currency whereby you are unexpectedly and serendipitously paid. The song you sing isn’t the real one, the real song is elsewhere. The one you sing is a copy, a shadow cast on the waters of the self. Try to get as close as you can to the real one. The soul of each raga is made up of esoteric alphabets, in ideal conjunctions, in transcendental chronologies. Make
yourself worthy of each note, the descent of each raga in all its astral nobility.
‘My friend Abdul Rehman makes his disciples sing the first note of the scale “sa” hundreds of times before allowing them to move on to the next note “re”. Only seldom does anyone succeed in producing that transcendentally pure sound, but when they do, the teacher’s face thrills and the entire chamber trembles with the knowledge of something surpassingly excellent. And though one’s belly must be filled and one’s vanity be honoured, still there is a cause aside and apart from all these, such a cause as the world’s fools and saints and artists and madmen of genius know. This teacher that I speak of is the son of one of the greatest. Yet he lives in terrible poverty, supports himself by tuitions, just about Rs 5 or 10 a month. His white jacket has turned yellow and his dhoti has been darned so often and grown so threadbare that he carries a needle and a length of thread stuck in the lining of his cap. Poverty is a wretched thing and no one must ever valorize it, but there are marvels that lay claim to our wonder, that a man should carry, in the thick of sweat and struggle, in hunger and illness and exhausting, demeaning chores, the fastidious striving for one excellent note and the pursuit of that possibility of perfection. You may call it compensation but you cannot call it illusion.
‘So be patient,’ said Hassu, ‘and go on practising the notes, individual and in their proper order. Then in paltas or prescribed combinations. Ascend and descend, run down the staircase, skip, overleap, alight and take off, land on your feet and fly up again. Others have done it before you—for five, six, seven years. This is what gives “taseer” to the voice, bloom and body. Timbre and flexibility. The grandson of the venerable Ghulam Abbas Khan who, take my word for it, will one day rule the world of music, has not been allowed to sing any raga, much less attempt any taans or venture into the forbidden terrain of a song. No, it is just the notes of the scale for young Faiyaz Khan, with wrestling and push-ups as part of his grooming. Once when the mischievous lad climbed a tree and let loose a loud burst of song in Raga Yaman, of which he was very fond, he was immediately hauled down and given a right royal thrashing by his grandfather, for breaking rules and singing a raga with all the melodic trills and other tricks of the throat, much before his voice was pronounced ready and ripe to go ahead. But you, daughter, are now ready, as I behold in the greatest satisfaction. So that very raga it shall be—Raga Yaman, and we shall begin with its particular scale.’
Requiem in Raga Janki Page 8
