sweet plucked and pulled notes of the sitar, the liquid rush of sound and excitement the tabla created: all these were already familiar to him – like a line from a poem taught in school that’s all but lost its meaning through study and repetition – from bucolic scenes in Hindi films, from government documentaries about road- and dam-building, even from close-up pictures of Mrs Gandhi cutting ribbons or welcoming foreign dignitaries. These images never quite left him, even when he thought he was wholly absorbed, attentive, listening.
The hall itself – whichever it happened to be – was a strange place; a part of the city, yet with its own weather, seasons, and an eternal daylight in which the audience, once the doors opened, trooped in and took their seats. It was this, perhaps, that made it possible, one day, for Ali Akbar Khan to play Lalit in the evening. The ageing ustad on the stage, struggling with his instrument, his bald pate almost like a sitar’s gourd, perfect; producing the notes of Lalit at six o’clock in the evening. A few people stirred uneasily. Nirmalya wasn’t unduly troubled; he knew, in an academic way, that Lalit was a morning raga, but he still couldn’t quite recognise it, and certainly hadn’t internalised it; he still didn’t associate Lalit with the first rays of daylight and a certain birdsong. Anyway, he couldn’t recall when he’d seen the first rays of daylight, and he didn’t care. A few people in the audience leaned over to each other and murmured, ‘Has the Ustad gone senile?’ The morning raga unfolded. The ustad’s face was calm like a Buddha’s, and stubborn as a child’s.
For two days afterwards, he carried this experience of Lalit in the evening inside him like something undigested. Is anything possible in 1980? he asked himself. After a few days, he told Shyamji what Ali Akbar Khan had done. Shyamji shook his head.
‘How could he do that?’ he said, very grave. ‘It cannot be done.’
But Nirmalya could see from the exaggerated solemnity of Shyamji’s expression that his mind was elsewhere.
* * *
N IRMALYA, unobtrusively but firmly rejecting his father’s Mercedes, stood at a bus stop with The Story of Philosophy in his hand. He didn’t know where he was going. Sometimes he’d go to the college to attend a lecture; to meet a few friends. Sometimes, as if there was an invisible ban on him, he’d just hang about one of the entrances, or roam the environs thoughtfully. If the Mercedes came to pick him up, he ignored it; sometimes it followed him, twenty paces behind him, discreet, trying absurdly to merge with the background, while he walked on, apparently nonchalant, in his khadi kurta and churidar, past peanut vendors and hurrying peons, at one with Mahatma Gandhi Road’s disorganised street-life.
He sat in a bus, reading The Story of Philosophy ; he had trouble subduing his long hair when the bus moved and the breeze came in through the window; he sometimes had to pin it down with one hand. But he read adamantly; and reread the chapter on Croce several times. The work of art precedes actual composition, Croce said; it must be realised in the artist’s head, in the brain, before he actually commits it to paper or to canvas. This seemed irrefutable from Nirmalya’s own experiences of trying to write poetry; that there was an ideal in his head that he tried his best to incarnate on the page. Meanwhile, people kept coming in and getting off, young Goan women in dresses, college students, Gujarati accountants, men who might be mechanics or drivers, chattering couples. When he arrived at his stop, he’d get off and walk to the tall building with the enormous flat.
‘He wants to learn from me? Shastriya sangeet?’ Shyamji didn’t seem particularly pleased; he was disoriented by the demand. There was puzzlement on his face. No one wanted to learn classical music from him; in fact, he had no disciple in classical music. His son, Sanjay, wanted
The hall itself – whichever it happened to be – was a strange place; a part of the city, yet with its own weather, seasons, and an eternal daylight in which the audience, once the doors opened, trooped in and took their seats. It was this, perhaps, that made it possible, one day, for Ali Akbar Khan to play Lalit in the evening. The ageing ustad on the stage, struggling with his instrument, his bald pate almost like a sitar’s gourd, perfect; producing the notes of Lalit at six o’clock in the evening. A few people stirred uneasily. Nirmalya wasn’t unduly troubled; he knew, in an academic way, that Lalit was a morning raga, but he still couldn’t quite recognise it, and certainly hadn’t internalised it; he still didn’t associate Lalit with the first rays of daylight and a certain birdsong. Anyway, he couldn’t recall when he’d seen the first rays of daylight, and he didn’t care. A few people in the audience leaned over to each other and murmured, ‘Has the Ustad gone senile?’ The morning raga unfolded. The ustad’s face was calm like a Buddha’s, and stubborn as a child’s.
For two days afterwards, he carried this experience of Lalit in the evening inside him like something undigested. Is anything possible in 1980? he asked himself. After a few days, he told Shyamji what Ali Akbar Khan had done. Shyamji shook his head.
‘How could he do that?’ he said, very grave. ‘It cannot be done.’
But Nirmalya could see from the exaggerated solemnity of Shyamji’s expression that his mind was elsewhere.
* * *
N IRMALYA, unobtrusively but firmly rejecting his father’s Mercedes, stood at a bus stop with The Story of Philosophy in his hand. He didn’t know where he was going. Sometimes he’d go to the college to attend a lecture; to meet a few friends. Sometimes, as if there was an invisible ban on him, he’d just hang about one of the entrances, or roam the environs thoughtfully. If the Mercedes came to pick him up, he ignored it; sometimes it followed him, twenty paces behind him, discreet, trying absurdly to merge with the background, while he walked on, apparently nonchalant, in his khadi kurta and churidar, past peanut vendors and hurrying peons, at one with Mahatma Gandhi Road’s disorganised street-life.
He sat in a bus, reading The Story of Philosophy ; he had trouble subduing his long hair when the bus moved and the breeze came in through the window; he sometimes had to pin it down with one hand. But he read adamantly; and reread the chapter on Croce several times. The work of art precedes actual composition, Croce said; it must be realised in the artist’s head, in the brain, before he actually commits it to paper or to canvas. This seemed irrefutable from Nirmalya’s own experiences of trying to write poetry; that there was an ideal in his head that he tried his best to incarnate on the page. Meanwhile, people kept coming in and getting off, young Goan women in dresses, college students, Gujarati accountants, men who might be mechanics or drivers, chattering couples. When he arrived at his stop, he’d get off and walk to the tall building with the enormous flat.
‘He wants to learn from me? Shastriya sangeet?’ Shyamji didn’t seem particularly pleased; he was disoriented by the demand. There was puzzlement on his face. No one wanted to learn classical music from him; in fact, he had no disciple in classical music. His son, Sanjay, wanted
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