THE SITARIST'S SITARIST [AHJK 2]

we wrote our despatch on Ustad Halim Jaffer Khan (Sitar Mehbooba Hai Kiski?) in October 2013, with a resolve to follow it up with the resident worm’s eye-view of the Ustad’s personality and his music. However we came up against too many imponderables- what Missus and Senior called mere conjectures of YT, which were open to debate. Like the writer’s view that, post the vyakhya, each sitar recital presented by the Ustad was akin to a cleverly crafted short-story- which view first saw the light of the day in the Sitar Mehbooba Hai Kiski post. Some recitals could be like the great plot-less movies of Mani Kaul, Senior said. Then: the view that  the DNA of the entire body of Hindustani Classical, be it Kirana or Maihar or Mewat- stems from a few good men, among them, Tansen, Sadarang, Inayat Khan, Bande Ali Khan..? We went through endless rounds of googling, thoroughed  every word of Pt. Ramashray Jha’s text-books, and scraped the bottoms of authoritative sites like parrikar.org and maverick ones like baithak2012.wp for succor, and a vindication of these unorthodox views, but alas it was not a path anybody had noticed in the tangled briar bushes, leave alone tread.  It was then officially declared by family that definitive views could be only firmed up after personally interviewing two of the greatest sitarists of all times, namely Ustad Shahid Parvez, and of course, the subject of our discussion mince obsession, Ustad Halim Jaffer Khan. Tall order….ehh…?! Senior, being virtually neighbour of Shahidbhai @ Kothrud Pune, accomplished his mission in a jiffy, but the von Bailiffs, residents of the North East that they were, had a distinct handicap. Moreover, Google Kaur, seemingly, had no inkling of the exact location of Ustad’s residence, which we knew was somewhere in a magic cove in Bandra.

we landed a hot and sultry Sunday early this year at Santa Cruz airport with Missus, and set off for the handsome Bandra Masjid, expecting to bump into somebody acquainted with the Ustad, but alas, the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’  key failed to work. The music stores were all closed. A speaker repairman took us to Bandra’s Banjo Master Rashidmiyan, who summarised the state of Indian Music thus: “haan haan, haan, kaun nahi jaanta unko, bus ye samajhiye ke Sitar ke Raseedbhai huzur hi hain.!” He helpfully suggested we go to Mehboob Studio and check, but we again drew a blank. The guard was a Marathi, and as we spoke in Marathi, we were chillar, ha, ha, aha [1]…. After 5 hours of leg-work, we retreated, exhausted, with the resolution that we’ll do our home-work neatly before we came next time. That took another 3 months to happen, and then it happened: the most intense, fulfilling day in the musical journey of YF and Missus, and Indayanikaathi.com: Ramnavmi day 2014 AD, that is 8^th of April 2014, when we touched reverentially Khansaheb’s feet, and then he embraced us as we had known him for ever and ever! We consciously felt the furrows of those magic hands that gave the Universe the Jafferkhani baaz. When the creases on those mubarak fingers bled from incessant riyaz, the flow was stanched with soft-stone called bilaw and the hands baked over fire lest the bleeding disturb the saadhana... In a trance we sat at his feet for 4 hours, and the dust settled on our so called conjectures about the फ़न of sitarbaazi..Bhatke hue musafir, manzil pe pahunche aakhir..

As we unshackled the elevator gate on the fifth floor on which is situated the humble abode, we heard the unexpected expected- the strains of the sitar! None else than Ustad opened the door, and instantly recognised the anxiety and eternal deewangi writ on our twin faces! We inhaled deeply, savouring the contentment in that air laden with the sheer fragrance of music and human kindness! Bataiye: jannat ke kiwad khule pade hain par zamana yeh ke kisi ko usse koi wasta nahi..! Behind the Ustad was his son, the handsome Ustad Zunain Khan - with teekhe nain-naksh. Little did he expect that we had been stalking him too..”Zunainbhai”, we said “aapka Basant Mukhari to kamal kar gaya Delhi mey…wo Mata Vaishno Devi wali mehfil mey..”. Zunainbhai was taken aback, and we muttered excuse for the stalking part, adding “ab kya batayein aisa junoon sawar huwa hai Khansaheb ka, arse se inki har cheez kai kai baar sun chuke hain aur unke taqreeban har afsaane se waqif hain..”

missus is moved at the spontaneous gestures, the refined human values of the Jaffer Khans. We detect the unspoken dram of gratitude in her eyes, and with an equal silence respond “my dear, all these things go together, intellect, genius, felicity with the sitar, the human decency…Zunain inherits it, so does his little grandson…”

first thing first- addressing the legend: how one legend should address another, he, he, he…those present address him variously. Between Ustad, Guruji and Khansaheb, we settle for the last appellation.

“khansaheb, hum bhi Malwe ke hi hain, aur mohtarma khud Gwalior gharane ki singer hain…!” we launch into an elaborate introduction. Presenting credentials…Khansaheb politely questions Missus about her gharana, fishing out the scrapbook on which he asks his guests to write by way of communication, for by now his auditory endowments have taken the back seat. “swar matra te achook olakhtaat”, says somebody from behind.  And of course the mind is as sharp as ever. Hundreds of Urdu couplets are still in place…Missus writes about her father Prof. Balaji Pathak, originally of Sagar, and Khansaheb remembers him, as also having played at their Ram Mandir at Sagar. He remembers popular disciple Pt. Ram Hershe of Sagar. Normally Pathaks will be Hindis and Phataks Maharashtrians, Khansaheb observes, and she is exceptional everybody says in chorus, led by nacheez…

As if on design, our phone rings. The ring tone is the recurrent 'sthaayi' swara samooh sa re ga ma ga re sa ga re from the 2003 Zilla Kafi, that makes a determined assault at around 15.05 mins. into the masterpiece..(5.05 or so in part 2 of alap). What happens at 6.28 for 7 seconds leaves the gunijan open-mouthed. The fantastic illusion created by the merging of a number of strokes, sounding like one long 'Parvezkhani'  meend !  Everybody gets hooked to the mesmerising strains and Ustad asks us to respond to the caller bhaiya.. “Saheb, Chabiwala Bank ka ek babu hai, apne aap ko Deputy Managing Director kehta hai, apne matlab ka nahi”…we say cockily and launch into the Ustad’s penchant for creating such swar samoohs, which in our view are often fictitious swashbuckling characters in  his narrative. Then we play the 6.47 cut of Kirwani on youtube and write on Ustad’s scrapbook- “iske pachcheeswe second se teeswe second me faisla ho jata hai ke sitar ka malik kaun hai…”. Ustad asks us to elaborate, and we say, “aap teenon, yane ke huzoor, Pt. Ravi Shankar aur Ustad Vilayat Khan ke beech.. chhota muh badi baat muaff karen..”. Ustad has a huge laughter, and evidently enjoys the comment, for he says “ye sab yahan likho barkhwurdar, padhne wale ko samajh aana chahiye…”

the Tansen of sitar!  He is teaching one of his old disciples, a dedicated lady of around 50. Accompanying him in teaching is Pt. Varman, moderator of the day, an accomplished sitarist…Khansaheb firmly takes the reins of the evening in his hands, addressing us by our first names, ordering us to first take our seats. Then he remembers: “Sawkar, inhe Ramnavmi ka prasad khilao- ye lo, Mahim ki mashhoor firni- Sawkar hamesha lekar aata hai..”

“Aur ab itminan se poocho kya samajhne aaye ho…sab batayenge, aur sath me sitar bajayenge hamare  shagird…ye koi jaldi khatam hone wala kissa nahi hai…”. “To fir baaki kissa muqwammal karne hamare ghar aaiyega.?” we scribble, and Khansahab observes sagely: ”bhai Sanjiv..tumhari likhawat padhne se to mai tumhe behtar sun loon…haan haan inshallaah, zaroor ayenge, basharte ke mohtarma Guru Purnima par apna gaana sunayen…”

the exchanges between us dabblers and the practitioners- Khansaheb, Pandit Varman and Missus are the stuff of revelation. Why for instance is the Ustad not heard playing glamorous ragas like Puriya or Darbari…or what constitutes the excellence of a sitar recital… Unfortunately, these revelations are not little shampoo sachets which can be marketed and sold for profit, hence zamana inke liye kyun waqt apna barbaad kare…?. The best things in life under today’s ‘life-model’ are destined to languish in the earnest, hospitable bosoms of irregulars like Gopal, Carl von bailiff, Senior, Junior, Missus, Mugdha, Jawahar Reddy and some deewane readers…

the discourse that followed is best cocooned into another passage. Just let us regain our orientation. So long..! Inshallaah see you behind the break!

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[1] Not as trivial as it seems- big-big guys do that! Happened with Indrayanikaathi—once it was known to professionals that Carl von bailiff was not a Khasi but a khalis Maharashtrian, the blog was dropped like a hot potato, readership plummeted, and its market-cap turned negative, he, he, he- Meghalaya is as far as the spirit of holy curiosity goes, not beyond…Now you know why Shobhaa De speaks excellent Marathi, but without concession to pronunciation…!- 

Sitar Mehbooba Hai Kiski? [AHJK 1]

We have always felt that the tradition of critiquing in Hindustani is superficial, person-centric or individual bound- ad hominem- and therefore, immature...yet to come of age....strong words, ehh...? Missus by and large agrees with this assessment of ours. By way of criticism Gunijan will normally say…So and So vs. the Other, or vice versa, he, he…! For instance, as we recalled on an earlier occasion, HT’s much-archived music critic Raghava R. Menon, the Kumarji aficionado, while reviewing a musical innovation by Pt. BSJ condescendingly remarked that the latter had at last taken a leaf out of Kumar’s book….whew…Something like that. In his book on Kumar Gandharva, Menon says “It was like a meteor that he passed across the Indian sky and cut in his wake the body of Hindustani classical music into two neat halves; one half before Kumar Gandharva and one half after him, a kind of a B.C. and an A.D. in Indian music.” That, even to a Kumar enthusiast like YT, is a grosss exaggeration, hero-worship, plain and simple. Unless someone does critiquing on basis of tools we discuss below, we can't claim that we are putting our heart and soul into the appreciation of our music..

Of course there are researchers who have made a break from the past, and have turned the gaze of new technologies on the subject of Indian Classical. Our own efforts, and those of Senior have been chronicled ha, ha..,in these columns from time to time. Recall the post where Senior analyses a taan from Vad jawu kunala sharana ga by Ashabai Khadilkar, presenting it in a visual that is, graphic, form. Witness also the fear expressed half-seriously by the writer that our music, being amenable to reduction in mathematical formats, could face extinction, if the mechanisation of music carried forward excessively (our Southern brethren A.R.Rahman and Ilayaraja were arraigned). We have also highlighted the efforts of the Kiwi researcher Gregory Booth in studying Indian Classical and Film Music.

The sort of threadbare study we are looking at has been carried on by the NCPA working with scholars of University of Amsterdam since early 1980s. Working on their project called AUTRIM (Automated Transcription for Indian Music), these dedicated musicologists have adapted a Dutch freeware called the PRAAT (Phonetic Research and Analysis Tool, which also means 'talk' in Dutch) into an instrument that automatically converts a recital into a beautiful moving graph. You can read swaras off the moving tracks, interpret taans etc. Let us take a statement 'in Bhimpalasi there is an andolan on flat ni' . The software will report the track location where this andolan can be heard in a recital and seen graphically.

Some of the eminent artistes who have lent their voices to the project are Pta. Ashwini Bhide, Pta. Veena Sahasrabuddhe, Pt. Uday Bhawalkar and Pt. Jayateerth Mevundi. Recently we witnessed Jabbar Patel's movie on Kumar Gandharva 'Hans Akela', in which one sees grandson Bhuvanesh Komkali analysing a Kumar bandish with the PRAAT. It's not clear whether or how the voice graphic can be seen as distinct from that of accompanying instruments?

Then there have been inquiries into certain features of Indian Classical from the point of view of the ubiquitous ‘consumer’. Look at the following line from the excellent paper “Audio Metadata Extraction: The Case for Hindustani Classical Music” by Preeti Rao of IIT, Mumbai (Proc. Of SPCOM 2012, IISc, Bangalore).

“To make the desired music easily accessible to the consumer, it is important to have meaningful and robust descriptions of music that are amenable to search.”

‘Metadata’ is simply the data or information or dimensions like a frequency value which are not tangible in the music. Thus the raga and the tala is not metadata, as it is mentioned on the CD jacket, whereas the graphical sketch of a taan which is extracted through a technique, is metadata.

These young researchers themselves are either artistes, or have deeper knowledge, which can come, say, by marrying to someone like Missus, ha, ha, ha…Preeti Rao’s paper contains many insights. See for example the following lines:

“In Western music, with its emphasis on discrete pitches and absolute tuning and relatively limited forms of ornamentation, the continuous pitch contour corresponds closely to a sequence of stable notes….The musical score in symbolic notation is thus a near equivalent of the melodic contour and music retrieval tasks can operate at the level of symbolic string matching. In Indian classical music, on the other hand, symbolic notation proves inadequate to deal with tuning variations and complex ornamentation that are fundamentally linked to raga characteristics. Being an oral tradition, this aspect has not seriously hampered music education. However for the music retrieval task, there is a need for more complete data representations to be derived from the continuous pitch contour.”

Basically what she says is that representation of a raga in Western notation like this:

has limited utility, given the surfeit of alankars like meends and murkis in the Indian Melodies. To reach those, you need to do the sort of research Senior does. Preeti Rao has done a lot of work on those lines, some of which you’ll see in the paper. You’ll now appreciate the odds against which Pt. Bhatkhande or Pt. Ratanjankar worked in their efforts at documentation. Dr. Rao believes that since our music is transmitted to pupils by oral means, no one acutely felt the need for metadata extraction (till an army of listeners emerged, who rely on secondary media like CDs or computer files for access to the music, and whose resources only can be the guarantee of the survival of our music.)

We shall return later to some other interesting sidelights of Preeti Rao’s paper, but let’s briefly return to our starting point, namely critiquing of Indian Classical, which in turn will chukao the namak of Ustad Halim Jaffer Khan, or to put it in plain English, justify the title of this Post and the next.

The point is that if meaningful and enriching lessons are to be drawn from an exploration of Classical compositions, one must go behind the rhetoric. For instance the profession of ‘gayaki ang’ is what we called the rhetoric, but if you really want to hear the human side of Sitar, there is no one like Ustad Halim Jaffer Khan or Shahidbhai, who never made any hoo-haa about his exalted status. And mind you, this not to say that Halim is the greatest, though that is in the realm of possibility…

All songs are great, Ashok Razdan, the hero of our post Remembering Nobody  said,…All Sitar is Great,  we declare now, and no odious comparisons…but for a real appreciation of the art, it’s essential to step into the artiste’s persona, and to possess lot of curiosity, and imagination with a touch of madness. If Nikhilda specialises in producing yards and yards of silken sitar fabric, Pt. Ravi Shankar is the Creator, Ustad Halim Jaffer is the raconteur and poet of Sitar, par excellence, and Ustad Shahid Parvez, the reigning Narrative Authority. The jury is stillll out on the merits of Ustad Vilayat Khan…Imrat Khan is talking to the jury...

We must have heard a 1000 GB of Sitar since our ear ripened, and always wondered what that Beautiful Lady, the Sitar, wanted to say or utter or articulate, passing from the hand of one Ustad to the other Pandit. What she wanted to say ever since Amir Khusro fathered her, is contained in half a byte of music, in the first 30 seconds of the following Kirwani by Ustad Halim Jaffer Khan, do listen:

And what she says is this, make no mistake: sitar mehbooba hai to bas Ustad Halim Jaffer Khan ki ! Listen two minutes, and you'll know of the whole affair between the two...two minutes of sitar one can and must die for, he, he, he...saare deewan ek taraf, ye chhabees lamhe ek taraf..Uffff...the things he does to her, she reciprocates and surrenders abjectly...she's made for only one man, the rest are mere hangers on, wasting their time and the listeners' time...she's  a wafadar dulhan.... وفادار بیوی میں, hope Mir is asleep...

In the next despatch we discuss Ustad’s personality and his music from the Worm’s perspective, aspects like creation of sthayi like motifs which Preeti Rao cites as the hallmark of a khayal, the Jafferkhani baz…. To us a recital by the affable Ustad sometimes is like a ghazal from Mirza Ghalib and on another occasion, a well-crafted short-story, having a beginning and an ending, like this pictorial illustration they use for the genre.

Somerset Maugham was supposedly the greatest raconteur amongst modern English fiction writers, and this house believes Ustad Halim Jaffer Khan possesses the same felicity with the Sitar. Of course we always felt that Ravi Shankar was economical and played to-the-point, while Halimbhai loves playing a bit about the bush...and boy does IK loves thaaaat... 

More on Ustad Halim Jaffer Khan and the art of story-telling on the other side of the break..

BEAUTY OF THE SITAR:

IF THE SITAR WERE A WOMAN:

After much research and introspection, we made the startling discovery that upon the face of this earth, only one woman can be likened to the Sitar (apart from Missus, that is):

 30 seconds..

Ustad Mehmood Dholpuri: Nobody on Harmonium..?

Our posts on lesser known geniuses who made our Music- Ustad Shaik Dawood, Ustad Nizamuddin Khan, Pt. Khaprumama, Pt. Nana Muley, Pt, Walwalkar, Pt. Sebastian d’Silva..not to forget Ashok Razdan, seem to draw the most eye-ball from our readership, and that is really heartening…

You remember the impish gentleman on the harmonium who for decades enriched vocal recitals to the entire satisfaction the greats of Indian Classical singing for All India Radio and Doordarshan, or is it Door Darshan…? Who can forget the sharp, if indulgent eyes with which he surveyed the scene…Ustad Mehmood Dholpuri…His performance was a feast not only for the ears, but also for the eyes…

A picture is worth a thousand words I sayyyy…

THE HINDU: NEW DELHI: 25 May 2011

Music lovers had barely overcome their grief over renowned classical vocalist Pandit Bhimsen Joshi's death a few months ago. And now comes the news of the demise of the country's most acclaimed harmonium player Mehmood Dholpuri.

The article by Rana Siddiqui Zaman goes on to report tributes by eminent vocalists:

Classical vocalist Shubha Mudgal said: “I first sang with him in 1981 at Gandharv Mahavidyalaya in Delhi where I was participating in a programme called Navodit Kalakar. Since then I have been associated with him. The most admirable thing about him was that apart from his own gharana and its musicians, he used to give equal importance to other musicians of other disciplines and gharanas. He had a very big heart. I am very close to his family. All his sons have grown in front of me. He was the lovable ‘Mehmood Bhai' for me. His passing away is a personal loss.”

But there is something more to the story. Ustad Mehmood was the first Harmonium Player to receive the Padma Shri in the year 2006. This landmark Padma Shri spells belated victory for the endearing instrument on which Indian students first intone sa-re-ga-ma…be it Pta. Lata, or Pta. Asha, or Pt. Dinanath, or Pt. Robida, or Ustad Amir Khan or Ustad Allauddin Khan …or Missus and Carl von ‘Bailiff…

We have earlier referred to that ‘sordid saga ofAll India Radio’, where Pt. Keskar continued with the wayward Raj ban on this soft-spoken instrument called the Harmonium…why should the Pundits of Classical be so paternalistic we had asked…why can’t the listening be left to the listener…?

Here is the Ustad himself on the instrument, quoted by Anjana Rajan in The Hindu dated the 3^rd February 2006:

“…Dholpuri, who teaches music besides continuing an active performing career and whose children play both the sarangi and the harmonium, takes a balanced view. "If the sarangi can produce meends and gamaks, which we cannot, the harmonium can produce chords, which they cannot, so there is no point in comparing the two."

This is what the well-known AIR artiste Pt. Naresh Kapuria said on the occasion:

"Main is award ko choomta hoon," he declares with enthusiasm. "I would like to congratulate the person whose idea this was. This is a great recognition for an accompanying artiste."

We again quote in support of the Harmonium Ms. Mudgal, incidentally, a senior of Missus at Allahabad University, a disciple of Pt. Ramashray Jha:

“The harmonium is a keyboard instrument brought to India by missionaries in the second half of the 19th century. Today, virtually every Hindustani classical vocalist specializing in khayal and thumri-dadra is accompanied by the harmonium, despite it being considered inappropriate for Indian music by many, including a certain John Foulds, who headed the Western music section of All India Radio (AIR) in the 1930s.

Foulds stated in an article that the inability of the harmonium to produce microtones or shrutis rendered it inappropriate for Indian music. His opinion led Lionel Fielden, controller of broadcasting for AIR (earlier known as the Indian Broadcasting Company), to ban the harmonium on AIR broadcasts in March 1940. This indictment by the British has continued to shadow the journey of the harmonium in India long after the nation became independent (till 1971)… If this isn’t a classic case of a colonial hangover, what is?

http://shubhamudgal.com/mint-column-on-the-status-of-harmonium/”

For an interesting ru-ba-ru with Ustad Dholpuri, accompanying one of our top Vocalists:

Kirwani by Dr. Ashwini Bhide Deshpande:

PLAY IT AGAIN SAM

To hoist or not to hoist? That’s not the question. We have to. Nobody in the North East aside of Tripura (Shhh….Wren and Martin- so jao..don’t turn in your graves) celebrates the same with conviction so why should we hoist Der Flag tomorrow in the face of HNLC sanctions? Three firing incidents in Shillong on the 13^th, no kidding maan…! Do in Rome as.. wagairah wagairah!  But No- Rules are Rules and the responsibility for their enforcement in the territory falls squarely on YF. And remember-, Major S., Hoister-in-Chief,  Green is below haan..not Saffron,..else..Taziraate Hind dafaa falana falana ke tahat..! Ultimately, Major S, hawk-eyed, watching out for Kalashnikov-toting cadres, we do it.

NIKE SAYS: JUST DO IT

Some things we discovered in this Circle- The Republic Day and the Independence Day are celebrated in Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur more in Omission than by Commission, thanks to the UG, that’s what they call ‘em here, for there are in all nⁿ: n=3 or 4 permutations of the outfit names in each State. Like NSML, NLMS, MLSN etc. etc., no one can remember all.  Of course they are less numerous than the acronyms introduced by the Consultants of Chabiwala Bank, though. Billing: only $ 1 mn. per acronym, he, he, he! No vehicles allowed, we have to trudge a few miles on foot with our trusted bodyguard, that is Missus. Common wisdom says if you are in female company, the militants will normally not bother you or her or their Kalashnikovs.

Under the gathering clouds of an HNLC threat, on ID eve, we revisit some old discoveries (what a good boy was I…) and stumble upon some more as we listen to Marwa and Malkauns, in that order, in vocal, courtesy Pt. Jasraj, and in gayaki sitar from Ustad Vilayat Khan and Ustad Shahid Parvez. On the eve of Independence Day on 14.08.2012.

Missus is about to whistle time-out, while we are on the verge of some really major musical discoveries::

(i)            As is widely held, vocal is the REAL music. Which is why a recital by Ustad Vilayat Khan is partly sitar. Flute, Sitar and Violin are surrogates in that order. For technical ragas like Nayaki Kanada or Jog Kauns instrumental is better, but for emotional connect, ones like Marwa, Todi, Lalit, Bhimpalasi or Shivranjani, Rx , Voice in the Wilderness. Emotions are ‘Voiced’ naaa…? Not :’Trumpeted’…? Ergo saas, nanadiya..panghat..kanhai..birahan…If you want a marriage between technique and emotion, there is always the sargam or taan..

The twain also meet- in the form of the harmonium wadak or the sarangi wadak..but then there is also a world of the abstract boss…and what about precision of the sur…?? In case of instrumental an accurate swara can be created even by the dea..sorry, auditorily challenged, but the genius is one like Pt. Bhimsen or Pt. Jasraj or Pt. Kadkade, who, in addition to emotion, can deliver the saa scalpel-cut..

(ii)       Lesson number two: Komal swaras are the ones that create emotion. Cases in point: Re and Dha in Puriya Dhanashri, Bhairav, Shivranjani, Todi wagairah wagairah, …wagairah…strike you with a feather.. We are working on another original concept we tentatively call “the jeevanta swara’’, that is ‘the living swara’’, about which more, later, inshallah!

(iii)        When sam strikes, the main artiste scurries for compleation, and that is a major source of improvisation. Lost the URL- due raha.

(iv)         There are sitarists and sitarists and sitarists, but Shahid Parvez is only one who you'll meet at the chariali of Sitar and the Omkar!. Chodo sab Robida-Nikhilda. Only, Bhai does not and never aspires to, having Barkhaas and Rajdeeps and Virjees in tow.  Ashtasiddhi nustya raabtat tyachya annganat! Just you listen to how he coaxes, draws out a lon...nng taan from a single stroke of the strings! Others either don’t know or don’t care.

Look at his Kirwani - the sawal jawab in jod alaap @ 13.40 and 22.40 is extraordinary, so is jhala. This is the best Shahid in our vast collection.

Kirwani: Kirwani is a Sampoorna raga, Seven swaras lined up in the aaroha as well as awaroha. Gandhar and Dhaiwat komal. To us it’s a female raga. There’s a certain compleation to it. One goes to bed satiated after listening to a Kirwani. It’s as if Kirwani possesses the terminal bracket ‘}’ which other may not have, and as she winds up, she cleans up the kitchen platform (‘ota bi mhantyet tyale’)  and the dining table for you before joining you in bed.

Shahidbhai: Bhai, not Ustad. That sounds like the person he is. Shahid Bhai is the inveterate, brotherly, compulsive teacher, mentor. He was the grand guru of Aarti, our niece,herself a fine artiste. “Those who can, do, those who cannot, teach.” That, hopefully, was the lowest George Bernard Shaw stooped to. W.W.Sawyer, our Statistics mentor went livid with rage when he recalled that one. Bhai blows away the flippant philosophy as one would poof away the dust on a garden bench before settling down thereon.

It’s raining music. Shahid Bhai is playing with the seven swaras in a heavy downpour. Ga and Dha are the youngest. Sukomal.  Bhai indulges them particularly, makes out paper boats patiently. They then launch the boats. Can anyone do so in the pelting rain? Bhai does it casually. He places the Shadja gently on the surface of the turbulent stream. It floats away gracefully like Queen Elizabeth! Gandhar and Dhaiwat clap in glee! Paper boat sailing awayyyy..gracefully in the turbulence- that’s what Ustad's gayaki meends feel like!

We have the authority of Gwalior Gharana for the above….Mince…hi ho mhanali! “Jhopa aata…!”

TAILPIECE:

Hans Eysenck, the German-American Psychologist stuck out his neck stating that genes were a major determinant of intellectual prowess in the case of homo sapiens. We, being among the dregs of humanity cannot offer a dispassionate comment on that one, but can quote with approval another belief of his: that the abnormal person is ‘normal’ and vice-versa. Consider the (hypothetical) height readings of 100 fauji jawans. Twenty-one (say), the highest frequency, has a height 5’8”. So that is the Norm, no? Ergo a huge majority, that is 79 out of 100 is abnormal..! Touche…!

Bertrand Russell is sort of our intellectual umbilical cord. Uncharacteristically, he was guilty of writing some fiction. He lived in a formative era when the fires of many ideologies, such as Atheism, anti-Semitism, Semitism, Nazism, Communism, Church-ism, Scientificism, Relativity, Imperialism… wagairah, wagairah raged…were available off-the-shelf so to say. Whewww…! That would have launched a thousand T-sharts wani saiiinnn…kya bijnis apartunity tha…!

Well, annnything could be a prescription for passion, Lord Russell held, giving illustrations to veer bigots from following the course of insanity.

“[Pythagoras] founded a religion in which the main tenets were the transmigration of souls and the sinfulness of eating beans. His religion was embodied in a religious order, which, here and there, acquired rule of the state … But the unregenerate hankered after beans, and sooner or later rebelled.” (History of Western Philosophy)

Russell then went on to extrapolate the absurdities of human tendencies in his “Faith and Mountains”. The World, somehypotheticaltime, is severely divided into two camps, the worshippers of Aurora Borealis and worshippers of the metal Molybdenum, called the ‘Molybdenes’. Predictably, Zachary, the heir of Molybdenes falls in love with Leah, the Princess of the Borelians, who, for a difference, lived happily hereafter. The tale ends in the following paras, centered on Zachary, the scion of Molybdenes :

"…One winter evening, returning weary through drizzle and fog, Zachary found himself outside a tin tabernacle where a remnant of the Molybdenes still worshipped. To the accompaniment of the harmonium, they were singing those well-known words:

Molybdenum of metals best, Is good for high and low,

It cures diseases of the chest, And makes our muscles grow.

He sighed, and muttered to himself, "Could I but return to the old Sublimities! Ah, how hard is the Life of Reason!"”

Anything can inflame passion you see- the hair of a pig, a mound of snow…or for that matter a ritual in which a 'player', with a stick, hinders a small wooden sphere from hitting three other sticks, trying to despatch the hapless sphere 60 yards away, and becomes the richest Indian or Pakistani. Can precipitate a War or a Peace, Amen!

PS: we wrote about the water peace in Meghalaya/ Mizoram. If the water is drawn thus from the Municipal mains, and not in series, why would there be this Kauveri- Kolaveri di?

'Play it Again Sam': Said by Ingrid Bergman to the ace singer Sam at 'Rick's' in Casablanca nostalgically. There is some controversy on who said what said..