Evening Notes

Evening is my time for books. It is also the time for music.

I’ve been making my way slowly through Requiem in Raga Janki. This is my first book by the author, Neelum Saran Gour, and while the occasional floweriness of the language is not to my taste, there are detailed passages on music that take my breath away. It is hard not to read twice, when the protagonist Janki Bai’s teacher, Hassu Khan, unravels the mysteries of music to her, or describes the deep devotion that was expected of a student of music.

‘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.’

Months singing only the seven notes, then years singing only a certain raga. What a privilege it must have been.

Getting to know ragas is an arduous pleasure. Some ragas connect with you immediately, others make you wait. When you connect with a raga, you approach it with patience and care. You listen to it for hours. When you practise it, the raga is your taskmaster. You make friends with it, tremble at its approach, plead for its approval.

Look at Kaafi, for instance. When I first heard it several years ago, and was told that it was a midnight raga, I associated it with a kind of foreboding. I know better now: for how lovely it is when Kaafi reveals to you its sombre, yearning, and playful moods. While lyrics don’t often play a large part in Hindustani music, how well they blend with the raga when they do. Sample Kaafi in its grave and its joyful colours.

Rahi hai kaise bijuri chamak chamak rahi / garaj garaj baadal barsan laage / Kadar karat mora jiya dhak dhak / rahi

Lightning flashes so, the thundering clouds have burst open, my heart beats fast (Kadar Piya being the pen-name of the composer, according to a source)

Aaj khelo Shyam sang Holi

Play Holi with Shyam (Krishna)

Then there is the joy of listening to a raga in a confluence of the Hindustani and the Carnatic styles — when an accomplished musician who is trained in the Hindustani form strives to learn a kriti in a Carnatic raga, then brings the two forms together without the slightest trepidation, or vice versa.

Last night I listened to a recording Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, the founder of the Kirana gharana, singing Rama Nee Samanamevaru in Raga Kharaharapriya (scalar equivalent of the Kaafi thaat). I stumbled upon it while looking for his rendition of Hari Om Tatsat in Malkauns, which Requiem mentions.

This recording has all the fuzz of an age that has long passed us; but hear the effortlessness, the tappa-like cascades in a Tyagaraja kriti, the endearing pronunciation of the unfamiliar Telugu words, the swaras which are so characteristic of Carnatic music. He is said to have learnt this and some other kritis from Veena Dhanammal, and was quite popular in the south.

I couldn’t stop listening to his music after that. I heard the short recordings, the 78 rpms that condensed his expansive talent into tantalising burts of ragas. Reading Requiem, I know those decades weren’t exactly the best (saving this for another post), but I do wish we could travel back in time for the music alone.

Reading about Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, I saw a word that gave me the shivers — ‘Chingleput’. As Chennai expands and new districts are carved out, Chengalpattu is where we are. He passed away at a small railway station here, Singaperumalkoil, from a heart attack; it is said that he sang prayers in Darbari as he left.

It is late now and Kaafi beckons, then Darbari as the evening lengthens. Night ragas for reading. Night ragas for music’s sake.

I’m closing this post with a raga for any time of the day and year and life — Bhairavi in Janki Bai Illahabadi’s voice.