Songs of Childhood: Bhimsen Joshi, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, and Others
What do cities mean to people? How do we associate with the old and new spaces we occupy in every stage of life? What, for instance, does the house I grew up in mean to me? And what space does this house in Delhi occupy in my head? What does Jabalpur, the city I grew up in mean to me? And what does Delhi, the city I chose to make my “next” home mean? A friend tells me that for him Delhi means freedom from the chaos that is his hometown. Delhi holds a mirror to him in which he can look at himself from different angles and discover the new, old, even, uneven patches of skin he has developed in the so many years of existence. For me Delhi and its “Clean and Green” streets too hold a mirror, Delhi with its rough, coarse edges, unpeels that dormant side of me, I think of putting back to sleep every day. In the dirty, claustrophobic lane that, without fail, gets clogged every monsoon, I have discovered my inner demons. In the acute angles that walls form in this small house where I am a tenant, I feel trapped in a way that I cannot get out of it and I don’t want to. And, in a strange way, Delhi, to me, is also the loss of music that came to me every Sunday morning in the voice of my father.
I grew up in a house where everyone wanted to be a singer. My mother, whose diabetes-destroyed vocal chords cannot take the burden of a single high pitched note, wanted to be a classical singer, but her father never let her learn music. My Baba, who in his teen years sold daris and carpets on his cycle because my grandfather had retired and his cataract infected eyes could see too little for him to able to find a job, wants to join Bhatkhande music school after he retires. For him it will be revisiting his past and reliving all the abandoned dreams of childhood. Such attempts of meeting the past self though, have been a constant for both my parents. Everyone, when I was growing up, told my parents that I had a lovely voice. I was put in classes where I was learning Hindustani Classical Sangeet. And like my parents, my Guru too had a lot of hopes from me. Though I never ended up learning music professionally, but that is a story for another day.
For someone who was growing up around music — -my parents had a great collection of classical music — -it seemed apparent that I take up music as a way of life rather than a hobby. Pt. Bhimsen Joshi, Kumar Gandharva, Ajay Pohankar, Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pt. Jasraj, Pt. Ravi Shankar, Ahmed Hussain, Mohammed Hussain, these were everyday names in my house. We had a twelve cassette collection of Rafi, categorized on the various “seasons” of man’s songs. We had an exhaustive collection of Ghazals; Mehdi Hassan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Chhote Ghulam Ali, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, you name it, and we had it. That house was music for me, and I was very fond of it.
I am one of those people who instinctively start singing a familiar song whenever it is played, a habit that I get from Baba. Whenever Baba and I find ourselves sitting alone, we don’t talk, we listen to songs the two of us like. Last month, when we bought one of those television sets that come with the facility to connect to the WiFi, both of us spent days just YouTube-ing old Hindi film songs, and joining the singers in their musical pursuits. It is because of this, perhaps, that Rafi sounds like my Baba to me. His songs come to me in Baba’s voice. It is Baba singing ‘Main Zindagi Ka Saath Nibhata Chala Gaya’, something that has truly been his life’s motto.
Music, therefore, is the city I grew up in. And every wall of my house has absorbed all the music that came out of both my parents. Every Sunday morning Baba would stand next to my bed, singing, loudly, one of his favourite songs, to wake me up. He was my personal Raga Bhairavi. So this Sunday morning when I woke up, I found myself missing the music that this particular day of the week meant for me. And I decided to revisit some of the songs Baba taught me to love. With the hopes of sending out these waves of music into the cosmos, and filling all the voids that the metropolitan existence has brought into the lives of many like me, here are a few pieces of memory that will keep you company in all your loneliness and all your chaos.
Bhimsen Joshi singing Majhe Maher Pandhari
2. Kumar Gandharava singing Dariya Kinare
3. Ahmed Hussain and Mohammed Singing Gayiye Ganpati Jagvandan
4. A recent find, Hari Haran and Ajay Pohankar in an unorthodox jugalbandhi where Haran sings Tu hi re and Pohankar sings a Meera Bai bhajan.
5. Bade Ghulam Ali Khan Sahab singing Ka Karu Sajani Aae Na Balam