Remembering Tushar
The Krishnarao Shanker Pandit Society for Traditional Music presented a memorial concert, Prerna, to mark the 12th death anniversary of Tushar Pandit, the grandson and disciple of the legendary doyen of Gwalior's Khayal idiom, Krishnarao Shanker Pandit. Tushar was also under the tutelage of his father Laxman Krishnarao Pandit.
The 27-year-old Tushar was on his way to attend his classes at the Delhi University's Faculty of Music and Fine Arts when a truck overloaded with heavy wooden slippers overturned near the ISBT and buried him. He was a highly proficient classical vocalist and a scholar as well. Geeta Paintel, the Dean and the Head of Delhi University's Faculty of Music and Fine Arts, remembered Tushar as a bright and diligent scholar whose untimely demise deprived the world of a talented young artiste.
The memorial commenced with a musical homage to Tushar by his sister Meeta Pandit who has been trained by both her grandfather and father. Meeta opened her recital with khayals in raga Kedar which she presented with scholastic handling and artistic insight. The slow Ek tala composition "Barkha ki rita aayee" was given a brilliant exposition with the salient features of the Gwalior's Pandit idiom deployed with intelligence and aesthetic approach. Her alap-badhat delighted for many a charmingly deployed melodic strain. The madhya Teental composition had scores of taans and variations released with utmost melodic charm. The concluding bhajan in Mishra Khamaj ("Maharaja-Guruji") was sung with intense devotional fervour and appropriate tunefulness. The sarangi virtuoso Pandit Bharat Bhushan Goswami provided Meeta commendable support while young Mithilesh Kumar Jha on the tabla was the sheet anchor on the rhythm.
Satvik veena
A guitar is just a guitar. It is either the Spanish or the Hawaiian guitar. There are some versions of it like the acoustic and the lead guitar. But to name a guitar as a veena does sound preposterous. With a few alterations and additional strings, the Hawaiian guitar has been named the Mohan veena by Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, while his son Salil V. Bhatt has named his re-modelled Hawaiian guitar as the Satvik veena. Incidentally, the renowned sarod maestro, the late Pandit Radhika Mohan Moitra, had more than half a century ago invented the `Mohan veena' by replacing the leather diaphragm of his sarod with the soundboard of a sitar. Interestingly, more than six decades ago the late pakhawaj maestro of Gwalior, Pandit Gopal Singh, was the first to add jhala strings to his Hawaiian guitar.
Satvik veena means the `spiritual' or `sacred' veena. However, its handling by Salil was nothing short of `tamasik', or the amorous veena, besides aggressive, thereby requiring frequent re-tuning.
There were frequently repeated phrasings in his renderings in raga Jog with alap-jod-jhala and gat-todas in the slow and fast Teen tala.
JITENDRA PRATAP
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