Inseparable music and life
GAUTAM CHATTERJEE
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Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, the mystic of the sarod, speaks about the space between notes, the eternity between life's temporal moments.
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THE MAESTRO The grand old man of the music world, the sarod wizard Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.
It was amazing to see Ustad Ali Akbar Khan recently at the Doberlane Music Festival, Kolkata. He has been on dialysis for one year, living in California. His has been a regular presence at this annual classical music festival. Exponent and legend of the sarod with three prominent ragas - Medhavi, Chandra Nandan and Bairagi - Khan Saheb played here for almost three hours, along with Jaijaiwanti, Durgeshwari and Piloo.
He delivers a few words with a long pause today, allegorically commenting on his life and tiresome presence, "Medhavi is there, Bairagi is here."
The intuitive son and disciple of Ustad Allauddin Khan of the Maihar gharana, this Medhavi legend does not want to recapitulate the entire experience of his music-dominated life except the last performance in Varanasi, in 1997. "It was a function organised by Panditji (Pandit Kishan Maharaj) that flows still in my memory like the Ganga," recalls the Michelangelo of laya.
For him, the guru is an object of eternal reverence. Admittedly, the changes in times and values have considerably undermined the sentiment of guru bhakti, but some vestiges still remain. His son Ashish Khan feels the same. For Ali Akbar Khan, life is like a raga and one has to live one's life as Bairagi.
Self-luminous ragas
This he tries to explain with difficulty. "Bairagi is a self-luminous raga as Shree, Bhairava and Bhairavi. One can find the joy of any of these ragas when one dies for it. Otherwise one will feel gloomy while playing with its swaras. Death is a must for happiness. For the bliss of a raga, we die as we live. This is the only mystery one has to face in every era of the guru-shishya parampara."
Music is what he was born with. "My remaining days are numbered now," whispers Khan Saheb. "But my sarod is still young. And you might notice that if I play on its strings a delightful raga like Sohni, if reflects its tone in Bairagi today."
Now 80, he still stands unique among instrumentalists in as much as he has a vision according to which he develops his raga, be it Bairagi or Medhavi or Jaijaiwanti. The sustained and stable Shadja, the first note, alive with diverse modulation by itself is so soul filling. Swapan Choudhary is there to accompany him on the tabla. Now his disciples are ready to follow his well-structured path, as Tejendra Narain Mazumdar does so. "His capacity to permute at will seems limitless till today," says Tejendra.
To move on swaras and strings is still an amazing experience when we look at his fingers. Artistry is now his slave. Peruse the infinitesimal first Dhaivat he uses. It seems to be there and yet not there. A little later, the undue importance he bestows on the same note, appears so unusual and yet so intriguing. There are so many sequences without Pancham that it could be difficult for a newcomer to his style to recognise the raga.
Giving the lie to his age he soars to Tar Pancham and stays there. There is little trace of infirmity or loss of stamina in his fingers.
`Death is necessary'
He clarifies, "To stay on a note is called nyaas, grammatically, but to stay on a note musically is something different. It defends on how a sadhak of the sarod stays on a moment to deepen his breathing and to recognise the space between the middle of the two notes as inhalation and exhalation. To move is difficult, but to move with pause is next to impossible, which a sadhak achieves by devoting whole of his life. And I have achieved very little."
He continues after a bit, "Life is so little that one moves long to stay in a short scale. Only in this sense, music and life are inseparable. Only light exists. It exists neither in music nor in life, but in the middle of these two. Light appears unknowingly and contingently. Artistes grow with fear in music. For them, it becomes more difficult to catch the light. Death is necessary. It is essential for this light or bliss. Only a raga can make the final deliverance."
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