BIOGRAPHY
Memories of Akhtar
PARTHA CHATTERJEE
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The narrative does not follow a chronology and relies on a free association of recollections.
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Begum Akhtar: The Story Of My Ammi, Shanti Hiranand, Viva Books Pvt. Ltd., 2005, p. 168, price not stated.
BEGUM AKHTAR (1914 - 1974), who shot to fame in her late teens as Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, was the last of the tawaifs or singing courtesans who had captured the imagination of the public since Mirza Haadi Ruswa published Umrao Jaan Adaa, said to be the first Urdu novel, in the late 1890s. Umrao Jaan, the eponymous heroine, was a rebel in a calcified society and Begum Akhtar, a reluctant victim in an essentially feudal one, which retained its character despite the two World Wars and the Partition of India in 1947.
Full of praise
Shanti Hiranand, her senior-most pupil, has written her biography, which is full of panegyrics. It is a matter of no small surprise that she, a staid, Gandhian daughter of a Lucknow businessman, was at all allowed to learn vocal music from the mercurial, sensual Akhtari who had only a few years ago married the barrister Ishtiaq Ahmed Abbasi, a widower and a Nawab from Kakori, Uttar Pradesh. The marriage no doubt gave her the respectability she craved for and access to high society as the wife of an aristocrat and not a paid entertainer. She had made with aplomb the transition from the mujra, patronised exclusively by the moneyed male aristocracy and the business class, to the democratic concert stage. The private soirees she graced post-marriage were attended by listeners from both the sexes.
She became the most successful Hindustani light classical singer of her times, leaving behind Badi Moti Bai and Rasoolan Bai who lacked the necessary resources to escape from the sapping feudal milieu of Benares. Siddheswari (Bai) Devi was the one who did but had not the guile to flourish in the hypocritical middle class India that claimed to be at one with the modern world.
Magnetic personality
Those who had known or even seen and heard Begum Akhtar would vouch for her magnetic personality. She was not conventionally beautiful and in middle age looked ravaged. But her smile and the tantalising, changing light in her eyes made her desirable to every discerning male. She retained this quality of sensuousness till her last breath, as she did in her singing.
The author's own temperament veers towards stodgy middle class respectability, which prevents her from being a really perceptive biographer. However, her sincerity is beyond question. The narrative does not follow a chronology and relies on a free association of memories. Dates do not figure with any degree of consistency in it. Shantiji has relied on the skills of her pupil Neeta Gupta to tell her story. But that does not in any way diminish her effort; to be sure, every incident, every idea in print is Shantiji's.
There are, however, a few acts of omission in the book. Reading it, one would believe that she was the only pupil of Begum Akhtar's who stuck with her through thick and thin and that the others came and went. She is gracious enough to acknowledge Anjali Banerjee who became Begum Akhtar's pupil in 1954 and was the only other Gandabandh Shagird. There is no mention of Rita Ganguly (Kothari) who had learned for three years and featured on camera with Begum Akhtar as did Anjali Banerjee when Sudesh Issar made a documentary on the great vocalist for the Films Division of India. Also forgotten is Deepti Bose, the most gifted of all the pupils, of whom Begum Akhtar said, "yeh tum sab se aage nikal jayegi" (she will surpass all of you). What a pity she had to give up singing due to purely material reasons!
Errors of perception
Shantiji's craving for respectability often leads her into error. She thinks that certain incidents which occurred in her teacher's life are detrimental to her posthumous reputation. Taking a long view of events and people, it is quite unimportant really to know whether Shammo was Begum Akhtar's niece or daughter by a Maharashtrian Raja. Similarly, does it really matter if her protégé Madan Mohan, brilliant music director of Hindi films in the 1950s and 60s was her lover? Influence his music she did. Listen to his ghazal compositions, particularly those sung by Lata Mangeshkar or Talat Mahmood, and you will hear Begum Akhtar's echo. Just as her renderings have clearly discernable traces of K.L. Saigal, peerless creator of the modern raga-based ghazal.
There is regrettably too little about Begum Akhtar's music in the text though there is mention of her singing style and what constituted it. Highly talented younger contemporaries like Shoba Gurtu and Nirmala Aroon could have been mentioned to give some idea of the light classical music scene in India in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when connoisseurs were still in existence and corporate sponsorship and its attendant vice, philistinism, not swamped the Hindustani music scene.
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