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Reader’s Column

Of men and music

H.Q. Chowdhury
It was sometime in the early 1950s when Bhimsen Joshi was on stage at Jnan Prakash Ghosh's Dixon Lane music room in Calcutta. In the front row was a well-known actor. He played Suchitra Sen's father in "Saat Paake Bandha”, her mentor in the film “Dwip Jele Jai” and Sharmiia Tagore's father in “Aradhana” — Pahadi Sanyal, a connoisseur of classical music and a singer of yesteryears. After the recital, the bewildered and enthralled Sanyal asked the artiste the name of the last raga sung by him. Joshi touched his feet and humbly said “Issko chhaya kahke seekha humney"(I've learnt this raga by the name of chhaya). Sanyal wished to know, because Joshi was dwelling on the ascending “nishad” in a raga which the former was not familiar with.
Touching Sanyal's feet was no big deal as he was a popular personality. But the aging actor was somewhat embarrassed, for he
could not quite place Joshi. Noticing Sanyal's discomfiture, Joshi said, “Lagta hain aap humko nahin pehchanney. Mein Bhim hoon jo aap ke paas gaana sikhney aaya tha, jaab aap Raja Basant Roy Road pe they.” (It seems you have not recognised me. I am Bhim, who had come to learn music from you when you were staying on Raja Basant Roy Road).
Pahadi Sanyal was now at his wit's end. With the exchange of pleasantries over, he took [Pandit] Kumar Prasad Mukherjee aside and said, “Goodness gracious, I cannot believe he is the same person who approached me to learn classical music and whom I thought had a buffalo/calf like voice and that too with a cold! I told him he had no future and promised him a job at New Theatres; until then he could run errands for me at my house for a paltry sum. Then he left suddenly.” Prasad Mukherjee told me this sometime back at his Short Street residence in Calcutta.
Hailing from the south, Gadag Karnataka, to be precise, Joshi has
roots in a family that has a long tradition of erudition. At a very young age he revealed his passion for music. It was so obsessive that he followed bhajan troupes, tracked down muazzins in mosques calling to prayer, moved with marriage processions and spent hours in gramophone record stores.
Then suddenly a recorded song changed his life. At the age of 11, on the pretext of being “badly treated,” (which was nothing but a slight reprimand for asking for an additional spoon of ghee for lunch) he left home without a coin in his pocket, in search of a music guru. With indomitable courage he moved on, from city to city, singing on trains to the delight of fellow passengers, who in return would share their lunch with him, while charmed ticket collectors looked the other way; he sang on streets for change and even became a domestic help at times until he found his first guru Sawai Gandharva.
Joshi's struggle for his art reminds us of Tarapada
Chakrabarty, the Faridpur (now Bangladesh) born classical vocalist who to many was the first true Bengali khayal singer. Coming from a well-known family of musicians, Tarapada went to Calcutta at the age of 16 when his father died. What battering in life, the maestro had to go through to develop his art! He took to the streets when his maternal uncle threw him out for returning home late after his music lessons.
One day while sleeping in the veranda of a house in Calcutta, he was caught by the police as a vagrant suspect, but the young man convinced the policeman that he was a singer. Days, weeks and months passed and he could not afford even one meal a day until he chanced to meet Rai Chand Boral, then a big brass in the radio, who gave him an opportunity to play the tabla. Once Jnanendra Prasad Goswami, aka Jnan Goshai, failed to show up for a radio programme, and Tarapada was given a chance for the filler. He sang a khayal, which was much appreciated. Thus began the mae-stro'sjourney.
Tarapada was a musician of exceptional talent, with an amazing gift of copying anyone he thought was worth it. Self-taught, like a chameleon he changed his style every three to four years with his deep, flexible and melodious voice. He had the uncanny ability to create the right ambience with ragas like Darbari, Yaman and Chhayanaut. In later years he became a disciple of Girija Shankar Chatteijee of Vishnupur gharana who had taken talim (lessons) from Muzaffar Khan. Pundits thought Tarapada's gayaki (style) was finally a fusion of Kirana and Agra gharana.
In one of the music conferences — where interestingly music discussions are never done even to date — Muzaffar Khan, was billed to sing immediately after Tarapada Chakrabarty. Tarapada began singing in Kirana gayaki and soon it caught the attention of the great maestro. The ustad for once chose
to listen to the young man. As the music unfolded, an overwhelmed Muzzafar Khan said, “He is following Kirana and this is outstanding music. Amazing! I cannot sing after this!" The ustad refused to go on stage after Tarapada had finished. The organisers were baffled. After all, the audience had paid to listen to Girija Shankar's ustad. There was confusion all over and there was no one to handle the stubborn Muzaffar Khan. Then at the organiser's request, Tarapada went to Muzzaffar Khan and fell on his feet.
“You are my guru's guru, my music is not worth a khota paisa (flawed coin) to your rupee. If I am the cause of your refusal to sing, I will go home and hang myself," said Tarapada. Khan Saheb was literally moved; he gave in and went on to present a glorious khayal in Adana.
Such humility and grace is hardly found these days.
So what do Tarapada Chakrabarty and Bhimsen Joshi have in common apart from their
early struggles?
Both are great exponents of khayal and they initially adopted the Kirana gayaki and later established their own styles.
Talking about Kirana gharana, one is immediately reminded of Abdul Karim Khan, one of the greatest classical exponents of the last century. Not many people are born in the calibre of Abdul Karim Khan. Known for his romantic exposition of khayals, Bengal unfortunately has not heard much of him except for music conferences in 1934 and 1936. He probably was the first to fuse the vocal art of the South with the North to develop one of his specialties.
At the 1936 music conference, a shorts-clad Kumar Prasad Mukherjee discovered that Khan sahib “after singing for a while” sat with his mouth open, the tanpuras playing, the accompanists active, and yet no sound was coming out from the maestro's mouth.
“Mukh ha kore boshey acchey keno? (Why is sitting with his
mouth open?)” “Chup!” (Shut up!) said his father.
The fact is, Khan sahib was singing raga Basant, and as he was lingering on the “sa”, the tonic in the upper octave and his voice merged with the finely tuned tanpura and the shadaj of the harmonium so well that it created the illusion that he had lost his voice. His swarasiddhi was very well known.
Sangeetarya Tarapada Chakrabarty in his heyday could emulate Abdul Karim Khan very well. He escaped police arrest as mentioned earlier by singing an Abdul Karim Khan thumri in Jhinjhoti, and some years later Bhimsen Joshi left home for a career in music after hearing the same Jhinjhoti piece. The song was “Piya bin nahin aawat chayen” (No peace without my beloved).
The writer is a music connoisseur and associated with research in science and technology.