Guest post by SIDDHARTHA GIGOO

It was on a nice summer evening in the year 1996 that I first got to attend Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s concert.

I was studying literature at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Those were terrible times for me. I struggled with my studies. Good grades evaded me. Failure stared at my face and the world mocked me. It was difficult to trudge through the endless days and the nights. Reading books became a cumbersome task because one had to present seminars and write the boring term papers at the end of the semesters. Some of us slept during the days and idled during the nights. There seemed to be no respite in sight. Life, what atrophy? I laboured somehow from one book to another, sometimes seeking enjoyment and sometimes to broaden my experience and understanding of life and the world. I had heard somewhere that one must not seek knowledge. Some said knowledge didn’t exist, while others argued that knowledge was a perilous trap from which there was no escape. I was perhaps frantically looking for a reprieve from my fears and imperfections.

I pitied myself and hated the fickle maniac in me for having given up music, which I had learnt during the previous years in a small village on the outskirts of the town I lived in.

In Delhi, my friends would coax me into playing upon my flute, which I had managed to snatch from Pandit Bhola Nath of Varanasi. And I would always recount how I had come to be in possession of this great treasure. Pandit Bhola Nath, the first guru of Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia, was very reluctant to part with the flute, despite my incessant pleading. The flute I wanted was one among the thousand flutes that decorated the room in which Pandit Bhola Nath stored his musical instruments.

Yet when, in my obdurate innocence, I played some notes from one of his favourite ragas, Multani, he paused for some moments and said, ‘Don’t stop. Continue playing.’ I resumed playing with more fervor as though this was my last chance on earth. I stopped, breathless. He looked at me partly with suspicion and partly with affection and said, ‘Son, which radio station do you play for?’ It was only after a few weeks when I narrated this anecdote to my guru Anil Raina, son of the illustrious sitarist Pandit Omkar Nath Raina, that I realized what a big compliment Pandit Bhola Nath had paid me. ‘You are a mad man,’ my guru said to me when I told him how I had barged into Pandit Bhola Nath’s house and mustered great courage to even play upon one of his flutes. ‘You should not do such a foolish thing. Never show off your talent when it is still far from where it should be. Don’t forget you don’t have my permission at all. But I am surprised that you were able to bring along one of his personal flutes. How did he part with it?’ my guru said in wonderment. After all I was a disciple and there were strict rules to follow, given the guru-shishya tradition, the significance and sanctity of which I was unaware of. Madness and passion were my companions and reason lay buried somewhere.

I never told my guru that I had dared to play some notes from Raga Multani, a raga I had not been taught and perhaps would never have been taught, not even if I had continued learning for 10 more years. I don’t know if my notes were true or false. But it was some music I had played.

The innocence and the passion I had in my heart those days are lost now. I still remember that all I wanted to do on that occasion was to meet Pandit Bhola Nath and seek his blessings. And I also wanted to buy a nice bamboo flute from him.

Back to the evening when Pandit Bhimsen Joshi was to arrive in the University lawns for the concert, I was reminded of the days when I used to walk a long distance to learn music. Sometimes I used to wait for hours together at my guru’s room for him to return from his school, take rest and then teach me new notes. His was a ‘one raga, one year’ teaching philosophy. And impatience almost killed me. ‘You know it could take a student of music even 40 years to play Raga Yaman and still be far from perfection. Satisfaction does not exist in the world of music,’ he said. I always enjoyed waiting for my guru. At the end of the riyaz, he would ask me to accompany him to the market and we would buy vegetables and grocery. How I longed he would talk about music during the walks and share with me some of his secrets – how to create lilting melodies instantly and how to play beautiful ragas. Time was my enemy. I wanted to learn everything in a day’s time. And I copied from my guru, stole his notes which were yet untaught. I listened to other musicians play on my tape recorder and imitated them too. I used to think that life is short and that stealing someone else’s melodies is perfectly okay.

My guru never shared those secrets with me. He, however, used to chide me for a bad habit of keeping my hand on the windowpane of a speeding bus. ‘Keep your hands in your pocket, always,’ he would say to me. ‘The fingers are precious and we live because of our fingers. Eyes, ears, heart and other things come last.’ I understood. How many times had I marveled at the way his nimble fingers moved magically, tremulously over the six holes of his bamboo flute. When he played raga Malkauns, I could see the lamps glow in the distant mountains. When he played the Lalit, the moon ebbed into a cave and the dawn gave birth to a new sun.

At the lawns of the University campus, people jostled around, waiting for Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s arrival. I occupied a corner, right in front of the dais. A strange evening chill engulfed us all. The hot day had made us weary. The organizers from SPICMACAY went back and forth. I had listened to Panditji’s ragas only on tapes. I had heard from my guru that Panditji’s aalaps would even make the Gods descend on this wretched earth.

We all waited for Panditji to arrive. Darkness had begun to crouch lazily in the vacant spaces. Some people lit earthen lamps. Others lit joss sticks and the incense wafted through the air and disappeared. Many other students in the audience stood at a distance, puffing greedily at cigarettes. An eerie calm blanketed the lawns, when suddenly a motorcade screeched to a halt nearby. It was impossible for me to see anything. Countless heads turned towards the motorcade. People spoke in hushed tones. ‘Panditji is here…’

I saw him walk slowly towards the podium, decorated with silken drapes and a host of yellow marigolds. He assumed his seat quickly, his eyes closed. He chewed a betel nut. I overheard a conversation of two friends nearby, ‘He is God.’

The tabla player hammered his fingers on his tabla to get the notes right. A beautiful woman with long tresses, the daughter of a famous vocalist, started plucking on the slender strings of the tanpura she deftly held in an embrace. She was lost in a reverie. Many other accompanying artistes and a few disciples sat mute at the back. One among them was a famous musician who I recognised. Time waited still. Panditji cleared his throat and began the aalap, drowning everyone in a vast ocean of beauty and harmony. Soon, a turbulence of the drut was to follow. I wondered what raga it was. The music maniac in me, long dead, shivered his way out of a deep sleep. ‘Bhairavi…Bhageshwari…,’ I lisped to my friends, trying to boast that I could recognize ragas easily. I got to know later that I was wrong. I wish the name of the raga had not mattered to me that time. Sometimes being a student is no good at all. One tends to know what one is subjected to. It is futile to know and understand. But it takes years to just listen in silence. And I listened to the profound rendition, not knowing what distant universe I found myself transported into. It was far away. All pain ceased to be. All happiness too! There was neither hope nor love. It was neither death, nor life. Something ineffable! Panditji did not open his eyes throughout the rendition which lasted forever and ever, through the aalap, the drut and the jhala. The notes and the tabla beats danced a mystical dance. Time stood imprisoned in Panditji’s breath. Nothing existed. Not even existence. What followed were divine tranquility and everlasting quietude!

I still carry that quietude within.

There was a deep learning in the experience that evening; a great education perhaps; that of Time and Music and how both were one. Panditji’s music had eroded a part of me, yet given birth to a new beginning. I was fortunate and blessed to be in presence of God who had taken birth that evening and who was godlier than all other Gods I had ever heard of.

(Siddhartha Gigoo is the author of The Garden of Solitude.)