After humming to himself for a few seconds the Ustad paused, cleared his throat and said, almost to himself: 'It is becoming unlivable in our area. Apart from Marh's madness, there is the whole insane business of Misri Mandi. It's amazing,' he went on : 'the whole place is on strike, no one ever works, and all they do is yell slogans and threats at each other. The small shoemakers starve and scream, the traders tighten their belts and bluster, and there are no shoes in the stores, no employment in the whole Mandi. Everyone's interests are harmed, yet no one will compromise. And this is Man whom God has made out of a clot of blood, and to whom he has given reason and discrimination.'
The Ustad finished his comment with a dismissive wave of his hand, a wave that implied that everything he had ever thought about human nature had been confirmed.
Seeing Veena look even more upset, an expression of concern passed over Majeed Khan's face. 'Why am I telling you this?' he said, almost in self-reproach. 'Your husband knows all this better than I do. So that's why you are distracted - of course, of course.'
Veena, moved though she was by this expression of sympathy from the normally unsympathetic Ustad, was silent, and continued to strum the tanpura. They resumed where they had left off, but it must have been obvious that her mind was not on the composition or the rhythmic patterns - the 'taans' - which followed. At one point, the Ustad said to her: 'You're singing the word “ga”, “ga”, “ga”, but is that really the note “ga” you are singing? I think you have too much on your mind. You should leave such things with your shoes outside this room when you come in.'
He began to sing a complex series of taans, and Motu Chand, carried away by the pleasure of the music, started
401to improvise a pleasant filigree of rhythmic accompaniment on the tabla. The Ustad abruptly stopped.
He turned to Motu Chand with sarcastic deference. 'Please go on, Guruji,' he said.
The tabla player smiled embarrassedly.
'No, do go on, we were enjoying your solo,' continued Ustad Majeed Khan.
Motu Chand's smile became unhappier still.
'Do you know how to play a simple theka - the plain unornamented rhythmic cycle ? Or are you in too high a circle of Paradise for that ?'
Motu Chand looked pleadingly at Ustad Majeed Khan and said, 'It was the beauty of your singing that carried me away, Ustad Sahib. But I won't let it happen again.'
Ustad Majeed Khan looked sharply at him, but he had intended no impertinence.
After her lesson was over, Veena got up to leave. Normally she stayed as long as she could, but this was not possible today. Bhaskar had a fever and wanted her attention ; Kedarnath needed cheering up ; and her mother-inlaw had just that morning made a hurtful comment on the amount of time she spent at the Haridas College of Music.
The Ustad glanced at his watch. There was still an hour before the noon prayer. He thought of the call to prayer which he heard every morning first from his local mosque and then at slightly staggered intervals from other mosques across the city. What he particularly liked in the morning call to prayer was the twice-repeated line that did not appear in the azaan later in the day : 'Prayer is better than sleep.'
Music too was prayer to him, and some mornings he would be up long before dawn to sing Lalit or some other early morning raag. Then the first words of the azaan, 'Allah-u-Akbar' - God is Great - would vibrate across the rooftops in the cool air and his ears would lie in wait for the sentence that admonished those who attempted to sleep on. When he heard it, he would smile. It was one of the pleasures of his day.
If the new Shiva Temple was built, the sound of the
402muezzin's early cry would be challenged by that of the conch. The thought was unbearable. Surely something must be done to prevent it. Surely the powerful Minister Mahesh Kapoor - who was taunted by some in his party for being, like the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, almost an honorary Muslim - could do something about it. The Ustad began meditatively to hum the words of the composition that he had just been teaching the Minister's daughter - Jaago Mohan Pyaare. Humming it, he forgot himself. He forgot the room he was in and the students still waiting for their lessons. It was very far from his mind that the words were addressed to the dark god Krishna, asking him to wake up with the arrival of morning, or that 'Bhairava' the name of the raag he was singing - was an epithet of the great god Shiva himself.
6.2
ISHAQ KHAN, Saeeda Bai's sarangi player, had been trying for several days to help his sister's husband - who was also a sarangi player - to get transferred from All India Radio Lucknow, where he was a 'staff artist', to All India Radio Brahmpur.
This morning too, Ishaq Khan had gone down to the AIR offices and tried his luck by talking to an assistant producer of music, but to no avail. It was a bitter business for the young man to realize that he could not even get to state his case properly to the Station Director. He did, however, state his case vociferously to a couple of musician friends he met there. The sun was warm, and they sat under a large and shady neem tree on the lawn outside the buildings. They looked at the cannas and talked of this and that. One of them had a radio - of a newfangled kind that could be operated by batteries - and they switched it on to the only station they could receive clearly, which was their own.
The unmistakable voice of Ustad Majeed Khan singing Raag Miya-ki-Todi filled their ears. He had just begun
403singing and was accompanied only by the tabla and his own tanpura.
It was glorious music : grand, stately, sad, full of a deep sense of calm. They stopped gossiping and listened. Even an orange-crested hoopoe stopped pecking around the flowerbed for a minute.
As always with Ustad Majeed Khan, the clean unfolding of the raag occurred through a very slow rhythmic section rather than a rhythmless alaap. After about fifteen minutes he turned to a faster composition in the raag, and then, far, far too soon, Raag Todi was over, and a children's programme was on the air.
Ishaq Khan turned off the radio and sat still, deep more in trance than in thought.
After a while they got up and went to the AIR staff canteen. Ishaq Khan's friends, like his brother-in-law, were staff artists, with fixed hours and assured salaries. Ishaq Khan, who had only accompanied other musicians a few times on the air, fell into the category of 'casual artist'.
The small canteen was crowded with musicians, writers of programmes, administrators, and waiters. A couple of peons lounged against the wall. The entire scene was messy, noisy and cosy. The canteen was famous for its strong tea and delicious samosas. A board facing the entrance proclaimed that no credit would be given ; but as the musicians were perennially short of cash, it always was.
Every table except one was crowded. Ustad Majeed Khan sat alone at the head of the table by the far wall, musing and stirring his tea. Perhaps out of deference to him, because he was considered something better than even an A-grade artist, no one presumed to sit near him. For all the apparent camaraderie and democracy of the canteen, there were distinctions. B-grade artists for instance would not normally sit with those of superior classifications such as B-plus or A - unless, of course, they happened to be their disciples - and would usually defer to them even in speech.
Ishaq Khan looked around the room and, seeing five
404empty chairs ranged down the oblong length of Ustad Majeed Khan's table, moved towards it. His two friends followed a little hesitantly.
As they approached, a few people from another table got up, perhaps because they were performing next on the air. But Ishaq Khan chose to ignore this, and walked up to Ustad Majeed Khan's table. 'May we?' he asked politely. As the great musician was lost in some other world, Ishaq and his friends sat down at the three chairs at the opposite J end. There were still two empty chairs, one on either side of Majeed Khan. He did not seem to register the presence of the new arrivals, and was now drinking his tea with both hands on the cup, though the weather was warm.
Ishaq sat at the other end facing Majeed Khan, and looked at that noble and arrogant face, softened as it appeared to be by some transient memory or thought rather than by the permanent impress of late middle age.
So profound had the effect of his brief performance of Raag Todi been on Ishaq that he wanted desperately to convey his appreciation. Ustad Majeed Khan was not a tall man, but seated either on the stage in his long black achkan - so tightly buttoned at the neck that one would have thought it would constrict his voice - or even at a table drinking tea, he conveyed, through his upright, rigid stance, a commanding presence; indeed, even an illusion of height. At the moment he seemed almost unapproachable.
If only he would say something to me, thought Ishaq, I would tell him what I felt about his performance. He must know we are sitting here. And he used to know my father. There were many things that the younger man did not like about the elder, but the music he and his friends had just listened to placed them in their trivial perspective.
They ordered their tea. The service in the canteen, despite the fact that it was part of a government organization, was prompt. The three friends began to talk among themselves. Ustad Majeed Khan continued to sip his tea in silence and abstraction.
Ishaq was quite popular in spite of his slightly sarcastic nature, and had a number of good friends. He was always
405willing to take the errands and burdens of others upon himself. After his father's death he and his sister had had to support their three young brothers. This was one reason why it was important that his sister's family move from Lucknow to Brahmpur.
One of Ishaq's two friends, a tabla player, now made the suggestion that Ishaq's brother-in-law change places with another sarangi player, Rafiq, who was keen to move to Lucknow.
'But Rafiq is a B-plus artist. What's your brother-inlaw's grade ?' asked Ishaq's other friend.
'B.'
'The Station Director won't want to lose a B-plus for a B. Still, you can try.'
Ishaq picked up his cup, wincing slightly as he did so, and sipped his tea.
'Unless he can upgrade himself,' continued his friend. 'I agree, it's a silly system, to grade someone in Delhi on the basis of a single tape of a performance, but that's the system we have.'
'Well,' said Ishaq, remembering his father who, in the last years of his life, had made it to A, 'it's not a bad system. It's impartial - and ensures a certain level of competence.'
'“Competence'!' 'it was*ÙstaàMà]eeà”R!han spea'kmg. The three friends looked at him in amazement. The word was spoken with a contempt that seemed to come from the deepest level of his being. 'Mere pleasing competence is not worth having.'
Ishaq looked at Ustad Majeed Khan, deeply disquieted. The memory of his father made him bold enough to speak.
'Khan Sahib, for someone like you, competence is not
even a question. But for the rest of us ' His voice trailed
off.
Ustad Majeed Khan, displeased at being even mildly contradicted, sat tight-lipped and silent. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts. After a while he spoke.
'You should not have a problem,' he said. 'For a sarangi-wallah no great musicianship is required. You don't
406need to be a master of a style. Whatever style the soloist has, you simply follow it. In musical terms it's actually a distraction.' He continued in an indifferent voice : 'If you want my help I'll speak to the Station Director. He knows I'm impartial - I don't need or use sarangi-wallahs. Rafiq or your sister's husband - it hardly matters who is where.'
Ishaq's face had gone white. Without thinking of what he was doing or where he was, he looked straight at Majeed Khan and said in a bitter and cutting voice :
'I have no objection to being called a mere sarangiwallah rather than a sarangiya by a great man. I consider myself blessed that he has deigned to notice me. But these are matters about which Khan Sahib has personal knowledge. Perhaps he can elaborate on the uselessness of the instrument.'
It was no secret that Ustad Majeed Khan himself came from a family of hereditary sarangi players. His artistic strivings as a vocalist were bound up painfully with another endeavour: the attempt to dissociate himself from the demeaning sarangi tradition and its historical connection with courtesans and prostitutes - and to associate himself and his son and daughter with the so-called 'kalawant' families of higher-caste musicians.
But the taint of the sarangi was too strong, and no kalawant family wanted to marry into Majeed Khan's. This was one of the searing disappointments of his life. Another was that his music would end with himself, for he had never found a disciple whom he considered worthy of his art. His own son had the voice and musicianship of a frog. As for his daughter, she was musical all right, but the last thing that Ustad Majeed Khan wanted for her was that she should develop her voice and become a singer.
Ustad Majeed Khan cleared his throat but said nothing.