My favourite 15 RD songs (for today!)

Today was Pancham's ! I had half-written this post after reading my good friend's post on his favourite Pancham songs. What prompted finishing it today were two things - listening to a collection of songs from RD that one of my maternal uncles had recorded for me on one of my trips back to India. The way he recorded it had the Bengali song and the corresponding Hindi version next to each other. The other driving force was watching Pancham Unmixed that the same friend of mine had sent me as a gift, most likely, on the same trip to India.  Diptakirti, I owe you a big one for this.

I remember that there was a distinct phase lag in my humming Pancham's tunes in shower and the realization that they all were creations of one genius of a music director. Sometime in college, I bought one of the first Golden Collection 4 cassette series that HMV published. I was surprised how hard it is to find the cover image of that collection now, even with the help of the mighty Google but this may be it


 

In any case, this 4 cassette (yes, CD's were expensive those days) series introduced me to some of the gems of RD's compositions. It will be a fun exercise to repeat choosing 15 favourite songs some other day and see how many common ones pop up. The amazing thing about RD is that there are almost an infinite number of 15-tuples that can be chosen with complete mutual exclusivity.


kahin na jaa

 I first heard this song coming from the other side of the building in Hall 5 at IIT K and wondered where on earth had I been living that I had missed it till then. Although I have switched from my old two-in-one to listening to songs mostly on youtube these days, I still find it impossible to stop this song midway, ever.

katra katra

Mera Kuchh Saman was a close contender from Ijaazat but musically Katra Katra is completely engulfing including the musical interludes, in a way that is hard to even begin to describe.

rishte bante hain

It was hard, yet again, to pick a single song from Dil Padosi Hain but that was a constraint I made for myself - no more than one song per album or movie. 

dil dhoondta hai

I had a hard time deciding whether to chose the sad version or the happy one and ended up with the solo by Bhupinder. On second thoughts, isn't it completely amazing how the same song can be tuned so well, yet in two completely different moods ?

aanewala pal

The one song from Dipta's list that is here as well and will find its way to most RD favourite lists, I suspect. Kishore in completely sublime form - completely sublime !

roz roz aankhon tale

I often wonder how RD decided between Asha and Lata when it came to choose  his lead female vocalist. For this one, I often wonder what it would have been like if Kishore sang it. Nevertheless, the Amit-Asha combination worked wonders !

do lafzon ki hi dil ki kahani

Vintage Asha-RD cocktail. 

yeh sham mastani

This is, in some ways, a predictable choice but who is to say that it is not a worthwhile one ? I am equally in love with the Bengali version - "akaash kyano daake" by Kishore.

biti na bitai raina

A lot has been said about the Asha-RD combination and how it worked wonders. I think it is somewhat understated the many magical moments that RD created with the venerable elder sister, may be because she had created many other such magical moments with other music directors as well.  This song from Parichay has Bhupinder joining in the later parts, making for a stunning duet.

raina beeti jaaye

In the middle of this song, Sharmila Tagore stops in the movie and Rajesh Khanna urges, almost begs - "gaiye na, aap ruk kyon gaye ?" The pathos in that request does completely judgement to this song and what happens to the listener when it stops so abruptly !

naam gum jayega

I hope no one ever dares to make a remix of this. I will personally go pee on his/her head.

tu tu hai wahi

Once again, a personal favourite. This song seems to flow so easily, creating almost a web of notes around you that I always have to play it twice, at least.

rah pe rehte hain

Okay, I was trying to decide between this and Musafir Hoon Yaaron and this one won. I suspect the words have something to do with that choice. "jo guzar jaati hai bas, us pe guzar karte hain" - Gulzar, oh Gulzar, did I ever tell you I love you so ?

sawan ki jhole pade

Monsoon is such an integral part of life in the subcontinent and is central to so much music, including that of RD, that it was hard to choose only one "rain song". But this song, in my mind, completely evokes the mood of the first monsoon, that comes only after a long wait.

phir kisi shaakh ne

Silli Hawa was a close contender but then I asked myself that if someone held a gun to my head and asked me to choose only one before I died, which one I would choose and here is the answer !

Dil Dhoondta Hai

A very good friend reminded me of these lines -

Aao tumko utha loon kandhon par
Tum uchak kar shareer hothon se
Choom lena ye chand ka matha...

Aaj ki raat dekha na tumne
Kaise jhuk jhuk ke koniyon ke bal
Chand itna kareeb aaya hai...

Can you recognize which film these lines are from ?  I must say I was struck by how "shareer hothon" hits you in the middle of the poetry !! This is, but yet another example of the genius of Gulzar where he picks known words but weaves them together to create a completely unknown effect, at least to someone like me who is largely ignorant of the world of Hindi and Urdu poetry beyond Hindi film songs.

Me and my friend went back and forth as to whether it is "chand sa matha" or "chand ka matha". Both would make sense in isolation but in the context of the verse, "chand ka matha" made a little more sense. I had an audio cassette from the days of yore that had the songs of Aandhi with the dialogues interspersed and I know that I have it somewhere in our apartment. However, the fact that I couldn't find it or didn't even bother to try might tell you something about the high entropy content of our apartment, possibly not that uncommon in academic families living in Manhattan with a toddler ! In any case this was not easy to verify and none of the songs on youtube had the dialogue. So 1:10:50 into this, I could eventually verify that.

"koniyon ke bal" is another spot in the verse that hits your mind. Again, being literally ignorant in Hindi and Urdu, I first thought that it would be "koniyon ke pal". On reflection, that did not make much sense and listening to the lines again (thanks youtube !) and again confirmed that it was indeed "koniyon ke bal". What in the world does that mean ? Today, at a gathering of scientists, two good friends, Kamlesh and Simanshu clarified that "koniyon" meant elbow, i.e. "konui" in Bengali and "koniyon ke bal" likely implied struggling motion, akin to that of a handicapped person. What a beautiful analogy ! This is not the first time it has dawned on me that the poetry of Gulzar, like a vintage wine or an exotic perfume has multiple, yet richer layers of "under taste" that are revealed long after you have listened to the lines for the first time. But that being said, I couldn't help falling in love with this seventy-something year old man, one more time !

I got my friend's message in the morning and the lines stayed in my head till they turned into this by the end of the day, before I could be enlightened by Kamlesh and Simanshu. This is a bit too personalized to be considered a translation and it is a rather horrible one at that -

The kids have been to sleep,
Far and deep.

The night is young still,
For ours to keep.

None but the luscious moon in sight,
I'll hold you up, you hold me tight.

A kiss from your cherry lips, my love,
And one for the moon tonight.

I have always wondered whether a bit of ignorance can be bliss or a really bad thing when it comes to appreciating Hindi/Urdu poetry and I don't quite know yet.

My friend, who is on his way to becoming a hot property has written a few blog posts on Gulzar that are worth checking out if you have read thus far into this post. Although he has pampered me with my previous writings, I gather he did not like this translation at all because he was uncharacteristically silent.

SIDDHARTHA

Siddhartha's figure looked like a black silhouette in the window frame. "The difference between the views is abrupt", he thought. Although he had the other view from a few feet below, many times, he had never mustered the courage to step onto the window sill, till today. He thought it was curious that the vertigo didn't feel as bad as he had apprehended. Down below,  Manhattan seemed like a narrow gorge. It was a fairly windy night. He sensed the cold air brushing past his hair to meet the East River right next door, and it almost reached his spine. He shivered slightly although he didn't let go of his grip, yet. "How funny it is that Manhattan never sleeps", he thought. Even slightly past three, one could spot the occasional cab running by, almost jumping the red lights, that tried hard to choke their mad rush to reach their destinations. He wondered if he would be spotted from below if it were in broad daylight. "Nah, it is unlikely that anyone would look up", he softly uttered to himself. No one ever looks up in Manhattan - they are always moving forward or trying to convince themselves that they are. As he quickly stole a look behind him, his son and wife were still fast asleep, cuddling each other mildly as their bodies moved rhythmically with the rise and fall of their breath.

Siddhartha's mind drifted away to events in the recent and not so recent past. He met a few good friends the past weekend, after a long long time. A few others he longed to meet  but he knew that would be too late. The time wouldn't be right anymore. "Is there ever a right time, the perfect time ?", he thought.  His mind strayed yet farther in past to search for the answer. "Why not ?", he thought. He had, time and again, wondered if the academic pursuit was worthwhile but he had no doubts anymore. The wounds of long hours, fruitless months, toiling nights at the bench were all but "wounds of Love". But the fruits were, intense moments of joy, ones that he hardly imagined any other profession that he might have pursued, could ever present to him. He had finished his final experiments today and everything made perfect sense. He knew that he had all the data he needed to finish the manuscript that he had started working on. And merely a couple of months later, he was going to start his dream job. "Is this the end, my only friend ?", his voice sounded hoarse to himself, the tune barely recognizable in his own ears.

They had installed the child-lock on the living room window when his son was born. He had sometimes woken up from his sleep in deep shivers imagining his son falling through an open window from their apartment. Thankfully though, they left the bedroom window to itself. He had often wondered what the final moment would be like. Was it going to be over midway in the air ? Or was he going to land with a thud, with his skull bones breaking into pieces and jutting into the flesh ? Or was he going to land on his feet, merely breaking his knees and reduced to a laughing stock ? He could not dwell on it for too long - his mind was feverishly trying to weave a tapestry of the life that he had lived. He knew he had lived the best month of his life. He did not quite know if it would be all downhill from now, but he knew that if it did, he could not bear it. His limbs were starting to pain from standing still for so long - it was close to four now. He knew that it was getting close to the time when his son's sleep cycle would reach a nadir and he had to act fast. Siddhartha's hand started to sweat as he felt the window frame slipping away from his grip.

"Baaba, agua......", came a shrill, unmistakable cry. Siddhartha looked back. He had left the table lamp on. His son was up, awake on the bed, looking at him directly in the soft light with a somewhat agitated look. "Baaba, agua", he repeated, demanding action. "Agua" was the gift of a Hispanic teacher in his son's daycare. He could not remember if he had ever heard his son uttering the word "water". His wife moved slightly in her sleep, half irritated by the sudden jolt. A few moments of indecision and that would be the end of it all, he knew. Siddhartha closed his eyes and stepped forward. Two thousand five hundred years ago, another man by the same name stepped in the other direction. "What a fool", Siddhartha thought to himself !

Homeward bound on AI140 ... and a little drunk !

I started writing on my way from JFK to Mumbai on the night of the 12th December, 2007. I finished it on the night of 30th June, 2008 sitting in a cottage in a godforsaken part of New York State, in the middle of a state park where people go mostly for their vacations in summer. See if you can make out the disjoint! - Anirban


As I break the barrier across the thin invisible line on the masses of water that divide Asia and Europe forever, dawn breaks through and time becomes a discontinuous jutted function and so does everything else. The time on my laptop reads 3:03 am. On any other night, I would be sitting in the lab in front of the bilayer waiting for the channels to appear, not tonight however. A few minutes ago, I was happily listening to a late night raga collection – I become a little unsure what to do now. Not that I am not used to seeing the night break into dawn but never this fast! Earlier I had fallen into the spell of Vidushi N. Rajam's violin, for the first time in my life. Unbelievable, isn’t it? Thousands of miles away from the culture that gave birth to the music and the musician, I hear her for the first time – in spite of growing up amidst it for tens of years. Moulded in the cast of Hindustani Classical Music, violin, the quintessential western instrument, takes on such a lonesome form. It almost sounds like the longing moan of a forlorn soul sitting by the sea shore, yet so deliciously sweet. She plays a 14:30 minute rendition of Darbari but in it she packs an eternity. I look all around me – there is a stealthy silence all around except the necessary background noise that accompanies the mechanics of a midair transatlantic flight. The air hostess has switched off all the overhead lights and the aircraft is but dimly lit now. Almost everyone is asleep; strewn around here and there in the darkish interior of the aircraft are a few compulsive nocturnals like me staying awake and catching up with the latest bollywood release, or even tollywood release, for that matter. With only the occasional laptop or entertainment unit lighting up the few faces, the aircraft seems like a ghost town.

I hesitate somewhat before playing the Darbari for the sixth time. Because thousands of miles above the ground, with the billowing clouds passing below me, the first ray of dawn breaks through. Unsure, I switch to a morning raga collection. We are flying back home after a long two and a half year break and at the worst possible time in terms of ticket pricing - the second week of December. However my wife’s strict annual allotment of vacation days coupled with my own post-doctoral obligations in lab meant that this was the only option left to us. Consequently we had to settle for an Air India flight, at a price higher than either of us had ever paid for a trip back home. In spite of numerous warnings against flying with Air India and almost the mythical rumours about their ugly service, we decided to give their JFK-Mumbai flight a go. Till now, I have not regretted – the food has been fabulous, service quite good and the seating way more comfortable than other airlines I have flown by. But above all, I have discovered something today. Every time I have boarded a transatlantic flight, be it British Airways, Al Italia or KLM, I have always sensed discriminatory attitudes from the in-flight service personnel. Over the years my complaints have wearied even some of my more patient friends and they have warned me that I am becoming overly sensitive and to speak the language of the experimental scientist, am picking up signal where one cannot distinguish it from noise. Well, today my friends, I have done the control experiment, as the biologists say. Cause not for a single time, did I feel any racy attitude from any of the air-hostesses. Not that I was not looking out for it. As a matter of fact, I was ever more ready to catch an untoward comment or even a nasty glance at the request for the odd drink. To my relief, the ladies have been supremely gracious, well-behaved and kind - in an almost, at the risk of sounding clichéd, Indian way.

The sunlight slowly begins filling in the space around me and HPC's Basant Mukhari falls perfectly into place. I look at the screen of my entertainment unit. Outside, the temperature is -68°C. Inside the flight, it is a motley crew. Most look like expats returning home for the perennial imperceptibly short visit. But life hasn’t yet made the complete switchover yet to the other side. Just for the sake of example, my last dinner consisted of Gosht Hyderabadi accompanied by bread rolls, unsalted butter and a salad that had, amongst other things, black olives! My entertainment unit offers an interesting blend where Chinese films are ranked as part of the “western film collection" and there is a BBC world documentary on the Saptak festival. We all are, or at least most of us are eagerly awaiting the end of the journey when all of the discontinuities will come to an end –where butter will be salted and gosht will be served with paratha and where dawn will not break out in the middle of a Darbari. However, specks of doubt loom large - it has been a long time in exile. And at least as far as anything about home is concerned, time had stopped for us since we left for the last time. So as we wait in unison, the question hovers around – what lies at the end of the road?

An Ode to New York - My Trip to Calcutta part 2

Dear reader, I am surprised if you have returned to this blog – but pleasantly so. This is the second of my posts about my Calcutta trip. This one was inspired while trudging along the streets of New York City right before I left but the writing was finished in the flight from JFK to Mumbai.
I must admit upfront that although this looks like a poem, you will soon realize that it is nothing close to that. My linguistic skills would not permit me to write a poem even if a gun was held to my head. However these are fragmented thoughts and it occurred to me that it might be worthwhile to arrange it the way I have done here rather than make it into a long paragraph. Your comments, criticisms, and of course warnings against attempting any such thing in the future in the blog are very very welcome.

An Ode to New York

If I ever fell in love with you
‘Tis cause you remind me of the wrinkled, aged face
I once had in my mind, sharp and clear.

She begged me to go away
And never come back in a long long time.
I wonder if she ever wept secretly
She always seemed such a deceiver.

On an autumn evening I descend on Greenwich Village
And I get her smell here and there
Amongst hookah joints and cheap Mexican jewelry shops,
They beat her, molested her, raped her, disfigured her
But in a rustic long dimly lit Tibetan shop
I found the ring that once adorned her fingers
It cost only fifteen dollars !

In the deep still of the night
The Christmas lit trees on streets and alleys
Are all but a soft murmur
And the odd late-night couple walks along York Avenue hand in hand
I see her with barren pandals and empty cartons on Dashami night
After all had gone to the ghats.

Standing in the middle of Times Square ,
The all familiar feeling of emptiness returns to me
Like it once did at Gariahat Mor,
Drowned in the chaos all around me -
Cold, lonely and starkly alien - like the Boston winter

On a still slate grey Sunday morning,
As I jump out of the twenty-fifth floor window
Flying low on the East River,
The grey engulfs everything around me -
The dull metallic cluster of Queensboro Bridge, the tall towers, the steel colored water
It could almost be her waiting for the first rain of the monsoon,
The wind carries me away like the first leaves blown away before the first storm of the year

Yet right before my head crashes thud against the cold cement of the pavement,
And the bones of my neck jut out like an irregular sculpture
I sense a drop of tear against my cheeks
Is it you crying, or is it her ?

It All happened One Night

This is one of a few (if I get time) posts that I wanted to write about my oncoming India trip. Living away from home for almost a decade now, the 2.5 years sinusoidal reappearance of homecoming is something I haven't exactly gotten used to. So every time, the frenzy builds up from almost a year ago when the nostalgia starts kicking in and the mild queries from friends and relatives turn to emphatic assertion that I have all but forgotten them. Then comes the mad search for the impossible ticket at the lowest price, with the least number of stops and at the most convenient hours - so that you could work in lab, leave in the evening for the flight to exclude the day of departure from your leave, and finally come back by the last flight on Sunday and get out of the terminal right before the airport shuts down for the night. Alas ! the best thing about going home is the anticipation, the expectation and the thoughts about being there. Time shrinks to a mathematical point between the times I land at and leave Kolkata and no matter how hard I try to do a careful accounting later on as to how and where I spent my vacation, I can never successfully do so. So here goes, in anticipation .........

I lay my cheeks on the square-inch of area at Gariahat Mor that none had touched since Job Charnok fell into the lures of three nondescript villages by the side of the Ganges. It was lying await for me all this while and today I impregnated her. The night was cold from the continuous drizzle that had kept the air heavy since mid-evening. The busy junction was almost quiet now, except the scarce last buses dashing by and lifting up the odd passengers, while in motion. Of course, the auto rickshaws were always there, hovering here and there around nooks and corners like flies around dead meat - waiting in wait lest a late-nocturnal showed up. It was a cold night by Kolkata standards and the wet pavement felt stone-cold against my cheeks. Surprisingly, I didn't smell anything particularly putrid. Instead, there was a choking smell of burnt diesel combined with that unmistakable smell of raindrops hanging in the dust of my beloved city. I looked up - my high-school and college skies were now molested by a purposeful, necessary construction of a monstrous over-bridge that seemed to eat up everything around it by its metallic, clustural structure - I have been on it several times in the past three weeks, and thanking for the relief from the horrible, dusty, smoky automobile jungle below. But now, all was quiet; its job being done for the day, the bridge slept tired like a half-dead coal-miner trying to get some respite after the day's work. At any other time of the day, I would have created a stir around me - in spite of being entropically one of the highest points in the metropolis, its not often that a well-fed guy in jeans, t-shirt and sneakers is seen lying flat on the pavements of Gariahat. But now it did not matter much. My raised hip-pocket did draw the attention of a not-so-innocent passer by who attempted closer inspections but on seeing that I was quite aware of my surroundings, fled. Some others must have thought that I was drunk to my lips and still some, a mere possibility of a lot of potential harassment, walked quickly by.

Tonight was the last night. Tomorrow, at exactly the same hour, I will be miles away, sitting inside a flight at Mumbai International Airport that would take me, in a moment, miles away from being actually physically connected to this piece of land that I was lying on now - I would no more be on the sovereign piece of land known as India but dangling in free space ! In spite of being a member of the generation X, or X' for that matter, it still betrays my perception, how we can disconnect ourselves from things so fast - or can we really ? The past three weeks had been exactly what I had imagined it would be like - my coming back to Calcutta (not Kolkata, mind you generation Y's !), thinking I would revive my last days before I left the city and realising that everyone and everything in the meantime had moved on - so that was not practically possible anymore - to the extent that even the room that I had lived in as a college student has been renovated and has gotten a new look since!

I raised my head a little bit - within a mile of radius around me were the houses of friends to whom I had bidden good-bye in the past one hour - I would not see them for years again even if I wanted to, even if I physically felt like being choked without seeing them, life would have to go on - functionally, physically, effectively and it would not matter much to anyone, not even to me after I would have been done with the journey looming large in front of my eyes. All of my college life, I had fantasized about being drunk and all alone in the middle of the streets right in front of Jadavpur P.S., controlling the streets all by myself. However,thanks to the supreme vigilance of my boRomamu, that never happened. And on every occasion I wanted to enact that in the past three weeks, I had failed. Friends who had once seemed very keen on the idea had families now and gave out wry smiles when I proposed the same to them. "Have you gone crazy ?" - is what they would say and dismiss my carefully constructed imageries in a second.

So here I was, all by myself, doing what I had fantasized all my life - lying flat on the pavements of Calcutta on a rainy night. I know that this piece of land was lying virgin all along. Of the billions of footsteps that had marched the faces of the city over the past two hundred years, not a single footstep had ever fallen on this little piece of land and now I was all upon her. But what would you do if you were in the embraces of your lover for the last time in your life ? It somehow felt like I would never come back again ! Would you make violent physical love to her ? Or would you just lie silently side by side trying to pick up the notes that you have failed to, all this while? Bengalees, being lifelong romantics, would probably do the latter and I was no exception. So I planted a kiss upon her wet cheeks - I could taste the salty mud on my tongue and the slimy love in my throat. At that moment, my cellphone rang ad I instantly knew that the old man was still awake with probably my wife by his side worrying about what had befell me . I quickly took a look at my watch - it was way beyond the old man's waking hours - I should have known better, he always had done this all my life I was living in Calcutta. I quickly shook my boozed emotions off - I had to move on, to more serious human emotions and to greener pastures after that - my clothes were all muddy and myself all dirty. I would have to do a good job of explaining myself to the old man and my young lady :-) As I got off, I took a last look at the square inch of land that I was making love to, around the closed shutters of the shops around me, around the rain-wet, brightly lit streets around Gariahat Mor and quickly boarded the next auto that was heading towards Deshapriya Park.

Piloo aka "A Friday Evening in New York City"

Piloo is but a magically haunting raag. It has the feel of casting a longing look around for something that you know you have lost and that can never come back - yet you go on yearning for the lost times in the vain hope that you will catch a scent or two. As Ustadji makes the odd initial contacts with the strings, I travel back in time centuries ago, in the minds of an aged and forlorn Krishna who has come back to Gokul looking for his ladylove but cannot find her. Gokul has become a ghostly forsaken town; all that remains are the ruins of its past self and no one lives there anymore but the lord wouldn't accept it. As he goes to and fro between the couple's favourite old haunts, his eyes roam over dilapidated buildings, deserted cow-huts and broken "jhulas" lest he might catch a glance of some material remnants of "the times of love".

Or I become a middle-aged nawab walking in the middle of the day through the dense "music-alleyways" of old Lucknow thick with the smell of stale garlands, in search of a prostitute that I fell in love with before the lures of the throne took over everything. All that is in sight are a few stray street-dogs and the odd beggar or two; and all that can be heard are a few notes let loose through the crevices of the windows where the ladies are practicing for the oncoming night. Piloo might well be a night raag but I have a feeling that if you listened to it sitting all by yourself in a mid-summer Indian afternoon with nothing but the scorched landscape around, you might like it equally well.

And all this happens in the auditorium of a small school right in the middle of the Friday night frenzy of the "hippy"iest part of New York City, moistened by a daylong drizzle. People speak of the power of music being able to break barriers all the time but here I witness it all around me. I am part of a small audience gathered at a concert organized by Virsa Pakistan, a cultural foundation dedicated to promote the art and culture of Pakistan in the US. Right beside us is an Italian couple - the guy sporting a rudraksh garland and the lady primly dressed like you would expect any "proper" Manhattaner to. In front of us are a Pakistani couple and their friend and to their right is an obvious American. But he is no "hippy on a high"; rather, from his erudite nods and properly placed "wah"'s, even with my seasoned ignorance I can tell that he has more than merely a superficial interest in Hindustani Classical Music - he seems to be a trained musician. The center of our attention are the duo, the two pairs of hands to be more precise, who without doubt, are two of the most accomplished living practitioners of music.

I have left home for more than eight years now and as the hope of an imminent end to the journey that began on a September evening in 1999 recedes farther and farther, I find myself grabbing every occasion to replenish the once brimming glass of colours and sounds of India, now partially faded away, with a few drops from here and there. Living in even the most cosmopolitan city of the world, it is quite a treat to be attending a concert of Shahid Parvez. When one adds Anindo Chatterjee to that, it surely adds a few more notches to the levels of expectation and boy, do they adequately make it up !

Earlier, after what seemed to be a long tuning process, Ustadji took a deep breath, a musical breath, before he started the alaap in Rageshwari. It was right at that very moment, sitting there seeing him bringing all of his focus to almost a mathematical point that I realised the immense barrier that an artiste faces before he takes the first stroke of a composition - it almost seems unsurmountable. In Hindustani Classical Music, a raga only provides a framework, a few descriptors for an ambience - the rest is all left to the artist for improvisation. It occurred to me that the situation has close parallels to the kinetic theory of gases. A raga only defines the mean property of an ensemble of molecules, well .... compositions in case of music. However, the individual path taken by a molecule is random and can fall within a spectrum of possibilities. Same is the case with every individual composition that comes out from a true artiste - each is different in its own merit.

I have not heard Rageshwari too many times before but was spellbound nevertheless. Shahidji's control over the pace of his fingers moving almost imperceptibly fast over his strings is all too well known. But what continues to amaze me is his ability to bend the string, the "meend" as it is called, and sustain variations therefrom in almost any way he chooses to. Anindo Chatterjee and he looked and sounded like old pals on stage - naturally comfortable with each other but aptly respectful and duly lowering the tone of the instrument when the other took the leading role in the composition. The concert had started with an introductory piece by Shagird Parvez and Anubrato Chatterjee. Their rendition of Yaman was more than I had anticipated - Anubrato is indeed quite astounding and Shagird though has some ways to go, has all the promise of a talented and skillful young artist. The host, Ishrat Ansari is a wonderfully amicable person and is a gracious host. In spite of being the owner of a very successful venture, Caffe Vivaldi, it is quite gratifying that he and his family find time to organize these delicious nuggets of musical events for us.

However the pinnacle of the evening was the Piloo in the second half. It was close to 11 in the night when Ustadji started and right before he did, someone boldly announced to her friend next to her - " no matter what, I am leaving this place at 12" ! It is quite an irony that Ustadji finished right around midnight but I wonder if the lady could have stuck to her word had he continued to elaborate the composition a little more. As I have mentioned in the beginning, Piloo is a poignant but immensely sweet raga, probably best described by these words from "Ode to a Skylark" -

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

I have always admired Shahidji's fast playing and immense precision but listening to the Piloo that evening, I'd dare say that he has transcended through the final layers of maturity as an artist where speed does not dazzle alone, something else does ! The Piloo that he played had remnants of Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar's legendary live performance and of course part of it was borrowed from Vilayat Khan's composition dediacted to Inayat Khan. However, in true reflection of the whole being greater than the parts, Shahidji's Piloo that evening was a masterpiece in its own right.

One of my friends once mentioned to me about the two different musical philosophies of the two main gharanas of Sitar in Hindustani Classical Music. "Baba" Alauddin Khan's words of advice were "jontro dhorbe ondhe r josthi r moton" - hold thy instrument as a beggar holds his stick dear to him. Ustad Inayaat Khan had very different words altogether, "jontro dhorbe joddha r osthi r moton" - hold it like a warrior lays his hands firm on his sword. While listening to musicians from these two gharanas, many a times I have found myself pondering over these two philosophies which have probably been "mythicized" to some extent anyway ! However I always ended up with the realisation that in the end, these two philosophies are not so different at all. That is exactly what music, in its purest and unadulterated form can make happen - when the warrior becomes the beggar and the beggar becomes the warrior. Sitting amongst a group of friends who I met for the first time that evening that was what Shahid Parvez and Anindo Chatterjee did to me - the divides between New York and Kolkata, India and Pakistan, here and there, then and now, reality and imagination all became blurred - what kept coming though were the poignant notes from the sitar riding on the waves of strokes from the tabla.