The
Accompanist – Anita Desai
It
was only on the night of the concert, when we assembled on stage behind drawn
curtains, that he gave me the notes to be played. I always hoped he would bring
himself to do this earlier and I hovered around him all evening, tuning his sitar
and preparing his betel leaves, but he would not speak to me at all. There were
always many others around him — his hosts and the organizers of the
concert, his friends and well-wishers and disciples — and he spoke
and laughed with all of them, but always turned his head away when I came near.
I was not hurt: this was his way with me, I was used to it. Only I wished he
would tell me what he planned to play before the concert began so that I could
prepare myself. I found it difficult to
plunge immediately, like lightning, without pause or preparation, into the
music, as he did. But I had to learn how to make myself do this, and did. In
everything, he led me, I followed.
For
fifteen years now, this has been our way of life. It began the day when I was
fifteen years old and took a new tanpura, made by my father who was a
maker of musical instruments and also played several of them with talent and
distinction, to a concert hall where Ustad Rahim Khan was to play that night. He
had ordered a new tanpura from father who was known to all musicians for the
quality of the instrument she made for them, with love as well as a deep
knowledge of music. When I arrived at the hall, I looked around for someone to
give the tanpura to, but the hall was in darkness as the management
would not allow the musicians to use the lights before the show and only on
stage was a single bulb lit, lighting up the little knot of musicians and surrounding them with
elongated, restless and, somehow, ominous shadows. The Ustad was tuning his sitar,
pausing to laugh and talk to his companions every now and then. They were all
talking and no one saw me. I stood for a long time in the doorway, gazing at
the famous Ustad of whom my father had spoken with such reverence. ‘Do not mention
the matter of payment,’ he had warned me. ‘He is doing us an honour by ordering
a tanpura
from us.’ This had impressed me and, as I gazed at him, I knew my father had
been right in what he had said about him. He was only tuning his sitar,
casually and haphazardly, but his fingers were the fingers of the god,
absolutely in control of his instrument and I knew nothing but perfection could
come of such a relationship between a musician and his instrument.
So
I slowly walked up the aisle, bearing the new tanpura in my arms and
all the time gazing at the man in the centre of that restless, chattering
group, himself absolutely in repose, controlled and purposeful. As I came
closer to the stage, I could see his face beneath the long locks of hair, and
the face, too, was that of a god: it was large, perhaps heavy about the jaws,
but balanced by a wide forehead and with blazing black eyes that were widely
spaced. His nostrils and his mouth, too, were large, royal, but intelligent,
controlled. And as I looked into his face, telling myself of all the impressive
points it contained, he looked down at me. I do not know what he saw, what he
could see in the darkness and shadows of the unlit hall, but he smiled with
sweet gentleness and beckoned to me. ‘What do you have there?’ he called.
Then
I had the courage to run up the steps at the side of the stage and straight to
him. I did not look at anyone else. I did not even notice the others or care
for their reaction to me. I went straight to him who was the centre of the
gathering, of the stage and thereafter of my entire life, and presented the tanpura
to him.
‘Ah,
the new tanpura. From Mishraji in the music lane? You have come from
Misharaji?’
‘He
is my father,’ I whispered, kneeling before him and still looking into his
face, unable to look away from it, it drew me so to him, close to him.
‘Mishraji’s
son?’ he said, with a deep, friendly laugh. After running his fingers over the tanpura
strings, he put it down on the carpet and suddenly stretched out his hand so
that the fine white muslin sleeve of his kurta fell back and bared his arm,
strong and muscular as an athlete has, with veins finely marked upon the taut skin, and fondled my chin. ‘Do you play?’ he
asked. ‘My tanpura player has not arrived. Where is he?’ he called over
his shoulder. ‘Why isn’t he here?’
All
his friends and followers began to babble.
Some said he was ill, in the hotel, some that he had met friends and gone with
them. No one really knew. The Ustad shook his head thoughtfully, then said. ‘He
is probably in his cups again, the old drunkard, I won’t have him play for me
anymore, let the child play,’ and immediately he picked up his sitar
and began to play, bowing his head over the instrument, a kind of veil of thoughtfulness and concentration falling
across his face so that I knew I could not interrupt with the questions I
wished to ask. He glanced at me, once, briefly, and beckoned to me to pick up
the tanpura
and play. ‘Raga Dipak,’ he said, and told me the notes to be played in
such a quick undertone that I would not have heard him had I not been so
acutely attentive to him. And I sat down
behind him, on the bare floor, picked up the new tanpura my father had
made, and began to play the three notes he gave me — the central one, its octave and quintet — over and over again, creating the discreet background web of
sound upon which would be improvised and embroidered his raga.
And
so I became the tanpura player for Ustad Rahim Khan’s group. I have played for
him since then, for no one else. I have done nothing else. It is my entire
life. I am thirty years old now and Ustad has begun to turn grey, and often he
interrupts a concert with that hacking cough that troubles him, and he takes
more opium than he should to quieten it — I give it to him myself for he always asks
me to prepare it. We have travelled all over India and played in every city, at
every season. It is his life, and mine. We share this life, this music, this
following. What else can there possible be for me in this world? Some have tried
to tempt me from his side, but I have stayed with him, not wishing for anything
else, anything more.
Ours
is a world formed and defined and enclosed not so much by music, however, as by
a human relationship on solid ground level — the
relationship of love. Not an abstract quality, like music, or an intellectual
one, like art, but a common human quality lived on an everyday level of reality
— the quality of love. So I believe. What
else is in it that weaves us together as we play, so that I know every movement
he will make before he himself does, and then can count on me to be always
where he wants me? We never diverge: we leave and we arrive together. Is this
not love? No marriage was closer.
When
I was a boy many other things existed on earth for me. Of course music was
always important, the chief household deity of a family musical by tradition.
The central hall of our house was given over to the making of musical
instruments for which my father, and his father before him, were famous. From
it rose sounds not only of the craft involved — the
knocking, tapping, planning and tuning — but also of music. Music vibrated there
constantly, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes discordantly, a quality of the
very air of our house: dense, shaped and infinite variation and never still. I
was only a child, perhaps four years old, when father began waking me at four
o’clock every morning to do down to the hall with him and take lessons from him
on the tanpura, the harmonium, the sitar and even the tabala.
He could play them all and wished to see which one I had an aptitude for. Music
being literally the air we breathed in that tall, narrow house in the lane that
had belonged for generations to the makers of musical instruments in that city,
that I would display an aptitude was never in question. I sat cross-lagged on
the mat before him and played gradually stirring to life as I did so, and
finally sleep would lift from me like a covering, a smothering that had
belonged to the night, till the inner core of my being stood forth and my
father could see it clearly — I was a musician, not a maker, but a
performer of music, that is what he saw. He taught me all the ragas,
and raginis,
and tested my knowledge with rapid, persistent questioning in his unmusical,
grating voice. He was unlike my Ustad in every way, for he spat betel juice all
down his ragged white beard, he seemed to be aware of everything I did and
frequently his hand shot out to grab my ears and pull till I yelped. From such lessons I had a need to escape and,
being a small, wily boy, managed this several times a day, slipping through my
elders’ fingers and hurtling down the
steep stairs into the lane where I playd qulli-danda and kho and marbles with the luckier, more idle and less
supervised boys of the mohalla.
There
was a time when I cared more passionately for marbles than for music,
particularly a dark crimson, almost black one in which white lines writhed like
weeds, or roots, that helped me to win every match I played till the pockets of
my kurta
bulged and tore with the weight of the marbles I won.
How
I loved my mother’s sweetmeats, too — rather more, I’m sure, than I did the
nondescript, mumbling, bald woman who made them. She never came to life for me,
she lived some obscure, indoor life, unhealthy and curtained, undemanding and
uninviting. But what halwa she made, what jalebis!
I ate them so hot that I burnt the skin off my tongue. I stole my brothers’ and
sisters’ share and was beaten and cursed by the whole family.
Then,
when I was older, there was a time when only the cinema mattered. I saw four,
five, as many as six cinema shows a week, creeping out of room at night
barefoot, for silence, with money stolen from my father or mother, or anyone,
clutched in my hand, then racing through the night-wild bazaar in time for the
last show. Meena Kumari and Nargis were to me the queens of heaven. I put
myself in the place of their screen lovers and felt myself grow great, hirsute,
active and aggressive as I sat on the straw-stuffed seat, my feet tucked up
under me, a cone of salted gram in my hand, uneaten, as I stared at these
glistening sequinned queens with my mouth open. Their attractions, their graces
filled up the empty spaces of my life and gave it new colours, new rhythms. So
then I became aware of the women of our mohalla as women: ripe matrons who
stood in their doorways, hands on hips, in that hour of the afternoon when life
paused and presented possibilities before evening duties chocked them off, and
the younger girls, always moving, never still, eluding touch. They were like
reeds in dirty water for however shabby they were, however unlike the screen
heroines, they never quite lacked the enticements of subtle smiles, sly glances
and bits of gold braid and lace. Some answered the look in my eyes, promised me
what I wanted, later perhaps, after late show, not now.
But
all fell away from me, all disappeared in the shadows, on the other side, when
I met my Ustad and began to play for him. He took the place of my mother’s
sweet halwa, the cinema heroines, the street beauties, marbles and
stolen money, all the pleasures and riches I had so far contrived to extract
from the hard stones of existence in my father’s house in the music lane. I did
not need such toys and more, such toys any more, such toys and dreams. I had
found my purpose in life and, by following it without hesitation and without
holding back any part of myself, I found such satisfaction that I no longer
wished for anything else.
It
is true I made a little money on these concert tours of ours, enough to take
care of my father during his last years and his illness. I even married. That
is, my mother managed to marry me off to some neighbours’s daughter of whom she
was fond. The girl lived with her. I seldom visited her. I can barely remember
her name, her face. She is safe with my mother and does not bother me. I remain
free to follow my Ustad and play for him.
I
believe he has the same attitude to his family and the rest of the world. At
all events I have not seen him show the faintest interest in anything but our
music, our concerts. Perhaps he is married. I have heard something of the sort
but not seen his wife or known him to visit her. Perhaps he has children and
one day a son will appear on stage and be taught to accompany his father. So
far it has not happened. It is true that in between tours we do occasionally go
home for a few days of rest. Inevitably the Ustad and I both cut short these
‘holidays’ and return to his house in the city for practice. When I return, he
does not question or even talk to me. But when he hears my step, he recognizes
it. I Know, for the smiles a half smile, as if mocking himself and me, then he
rolls back his muslin sleeve, lifts his sitar and nods in my direction. ‘The
Raga Desh’, he may announce, or ‘Malhar’ or ‘Megha’ and sit down
behind him, on the bare floor, and play for him the notes he needs for the
construction of the raga.
You
may think I exaggerate our relationship, his need of me, his reliance on my tanpura. You may point
out that there are other members of his band who play more important roles. And
I confess you may be right, but only in a very superficial way. I is quite obvious that the tabala
player who accompanies him plays an ‘important’ role — a very loud and aggressive, at times thunderous one. But what
is this ‘importance’ of his? It is not indispensable. As even the foremost
critics agree, my Ustad is at his best when he is playing the introductory
passage, the unaccompanied alap. This he plays slowly, thoughtfully, with such
purity and sensibility that I can never hear it without tears coming to my
eyes.But once Ram Nath has joined in with a tap and a run if his fingers on the
tablas,
the music becomes quick, bold and competitive and, not only in my opinion but
also in that of many critics, of diminished value. The audience certainly
enjoys the gat more that the quiet alap, and it pays more attention to
Ram Nath than to me. At times, he even draws applause for his performance,
during a particularly brilliant passage when he manages to match or even
outshine my Ustad. Then my Ustad will turn to him and smile, faintly, in
approval, or even nod silently for he is so great-hearted and generous, my
Ustad. He never does this to me. I sit at the back, almost concealed behind my
master and his accompanist. I have no solo passage to play. I neither follow my
Ustad’s raga nor enter into any kind of competition. Throughout the
playing of the raga I run my fingers over the three strings of my tanpura,
again and again, merely producing a kind of drone to fill up any interval in
sound, to form a kind of road, or track, for my Ustad to keep to so that he may
not stray from the basic notes of the raga by which I hold him. Since I
never compete, never ask for attention to be diverted from him to me, never try
to rival him in his play, I maintain I am his true accompanist, certainly his
truer friend. He may never smile and nod in approval of me. But he cannot do
without me. This is all the regard I need to keep me with him like a shadow. It
does not bother me at all when Ram Nath, who is coarse and hairy and scratches
his big stomach under his shirt and wears gold rings in his ears like a
washerman, puts out his foot and trips me as I am getting on to the stage, or
when I see him helping himself to all pulao on the table and leave me only
some cold, unleavened bread. I know his true worth, or lack of it, and merely
give him a look that will convey this to him.
Only
once was I shaken out of my contentment, my complacency. I am ashamed to reveal
it to you, it was so foolish of me. It only lasted a very little while but I
still feel embarrassed and stupid when I think of it. It was of course those empty-headed,
marble-playing friends of my childhood, who led me into it. Once I had put them
behind me, I should never have looked back. But they came up to me, after a
rehearsal in our home city, a few hours before the concert. They had stolen
into the dark hall and sat in the back row, smoking and cracking jokes and
laughing in a secret, muffled way, which nevertheless drifted up to the stage,
distracting those who were not sufficiently immersed in the music to be unaware
of the outside world. Of course the Ustad and I never allowed our attention to
stray and continued to attend to the music. Our ability to simply shut out all
distraction from our minds when we play is a similarity between us of which I
am very proud.
As I was leaving the hall I saw they were
still standing in the doorway, a jumbled stack of coloured shirts and oiled
locks and garish shoes. They clustered around me and it was only because of the
things they said, referring to our boyhood games in the alley, that I recognized
them. In every other matter they differed totally from me, it was plain to see
we had travelled in opposite directions. The colours of their cheap bush-shirts
and their loud voices immediately gave me a headache and I found it hard to
keep smiling although I knew I ought to be modest and affectionate to them as
my art and my position called for such behaviour from me. I let them take me to
the tea-shop adjoining the concert hall and order tea for me. For a while we
spoke of home, of games, of our families and friends. Then one of them — Ajit, I think —said, ‘Bhai, you to play so well. Your
father was proud of you. He thought you would be a great Ustad. He used to tell
us what a great musician you would be one day. What are you doing, sitting at
the back of the stage, and playing the tanpura for Rahim Khan?’
No one had ever spoken to me in this
manner, in this voice, since my father died. I split tea down my lap. My head
gave an uncontrolled jerk, I was so shocked. I half-stood up and thought I
would catch him by his throat and press it till all those ugly words and ugly
thoughts of his were choked, bled white, and incapable of moving again. Only I
am not that sort of a man. I know myself to be weak, very weak. I only brushed
the tea from my clothes and stood there starting at my feet. I stared at my
broken old sandals, streaked with tea, at my loose clothes of white homespun. I
told myself I lived so differently from them, my aim and purpose in life were
so different from anything those gaudy street vagabonds could comprehend that I
should not be surprised or take it ill if there were such a lack of
understanding between us.
‘What sort of instrument is the tanpura?’
Ajit was saying still loudly. ‘Not even accompaniment. It is nothing. Anyone
could play it. Just three notes, over and over again. Even I could play it,’ he
ended with a shout making the others clap his back and lean forward in laughter
at his wit.
Then Bhola leaned towards me. He was the
quietest of them, although he wore a shirt of purple and white flowers and had
dyed his mustache ginger, I knew he had been to jail twice already for
house-breaking and theft. Yet he dared to lean close to me, almost touching me,
and to say ‘Bhai, go back to the sitar. You even know how to play the
sarod
and the veena. You could be great Ustad yourself, with some practice.
We are telling you this for your own good. When you become famous and go to
America, you will thank us for this advice. Why do you spend your life sitting
at the back of the stage and playing that idiotic tanpura while someone
else takes all the fame and all the money from you?’
It was as if they had decided to assault
me. I felt as if they were climbing on top of me, choking me, grabbing me by my
hair and dragging me down. Their words were blows, the idea they were throwing
at me an assault. I felt beaten, destroyed, and with my last bit of strength
shook them off, threw them off and, pushing aside the table and cups and plates
ran out of the teashop. I think they followed me because I could hear voices
calling me as I went running down the street, pushing against people and only
just escaping from coming under the rickshaws, tongas and buses. It was
afternoon, there were crowds on the street, dust and smoke blotted out the
natural light of day. I saw everything as vile, as debased, as something amoral
and ugly, and pushed it aside, pushed through as I ran.
And all the time I thought, Are they right?
Could I have I played the sitar myself? Or the sarod,
or the veena? And become an Ustad myself? This had never before
occurred to me. My father had taught me to play all these instruments and
disciplined me severely, but he had never praised me or suggested I could
become a front-rank musician. I had learnt to play instruments, as the son of
carpenter would naturally have learnt to make beds and tables and shelves, or
the son of a shopkeeper learnt to weigh grain and sell and make money. But I
had practised on these instruments and played the ragas he taught me to
play without thinking of it as an art or of myself as an artist. Perhaps I was
a stupid, backward boy. My father always said so. Now these boys who had heard
me play in the dark hall of our house in the music lane, told me I could have
been an Ustad myself, sat in the centre of the stage, played for great
audiences and been applauded for my performance. Were they right? Was this
true? Had I wasted my life?
As I ran pushed, half-crying, I thought of
these things for the first time in my life, and they were frightening thoughts — large, heavy, dark ones that threatened to crush and destroy
me. I found myself pushed up against an iron railing. Holding on to its bars,
looking through tears at the beds of flowering cannas and rows of imperial
palms of a dusty city park, I hung
against those railings, sobbing, till I heard someone address me — possibly a policeman, or a beggar, or perhaps just a kindly
passerby. ‘In trouble?’ he asked me. ‘Go into trouble, boy?’ I did not want to speak
to anyone and shook him off without looking at him and found the gate and went into
the park, trying to control myself and order my thoughts.
I found a path between some tall bushes,
and walked up and down here, alone, trying to think. Having cried, I felt
calmer now. I had a bad headache but I was calmer. I talked to myself.
When I first met my Ustad, I was a boy of
fifteen— a stupid, backward boy as my father had
often told me I was. When I walked up to the stage to give him the tanpura
he had ordered from my father, I saw greatness in his face, the calm and wisdom
and kindness of a true leader. Immediately I wished to deliver not only my tanpura
but my whole life into his hands. Take me, I wanted to say, take me and lead
me. Show me how to live. Let me live with you, by you, and help me, be kind to
me. Of course, I did not say these words. He took the tanpura from me and asked
me to play if for him. This was his answer to the words I had not spoken but
which he nevertheless heard. ‘Play for me,’ and with these words he created me,
created my life, gave it form and distinction and purpose. It was the moment of
my birth and he was both my father and my mother to me. He gave birth to me — Bhaiyya, the tanpura player.
Before that I had no life. I was nothing: a
dirty, hungry street urchin, knocking about in the lane with other idlers and
vagrants. I had played music only because my father made me, teaching me by
striking me across the knuckles and pulling my ears for every mistake I made. I
had stolen money and sweets from my mother. I was nothing. And no one cared
that I was nothing. It was Ustad Rahim Khan who saw me, hiding awkwardly in the
shadows of an empty hall with a tanpura in my hands and called me
to come to him and showed me what to do with my life. I owe everything to him,
my very life to him.
Yes, it was destiny to play the tanpura
for a great Ustad, to sit behind him where he cannot even see me, and play the
notes he needs so that he may not stray from the bounds of his composition when
gripped by inspiration. I give him, quietly and unobtrusively, the materials
upon which he works, with which he constructs the great music for which the whole
world loves him. Yes, anyone could play the tanpura for him, do what I do. But
he did not take anyone else, he chose me. He gave me my destiny, my life. Could
I have refused him? Does a mortal refuse God? It made
me smile to think anyone could be such a fool. Even I, Bhaiyya, had known when
the hour of my destiny had struck. Even a backward, feckless boy from the
streets had recognized his god when he met him. I could not have refused. I
took up the tanpura and played for my Ustad, and I have played for him
since. I could not have wished for a finer destiny.
Leaving the park, I hailed a tonga
and ordered the driver to take me to my Ustad. Never in my life had I spoken so
loudly, as surely as I did then. You should have heard me. I wish my Ustad had
heard me.
Glossary:
Concert: a musical performance
Ominous: an evil omen, threatening
Haphazard: characterized by mere chance
Aisle: passage between two rows of seats
Repose: relaxed, calm
Octave: a note coming after eight tones in music
Quintet: a group of five musicians or instruments
Obscure: not clear
Sequined: covered with small shining spangles
Complacency: a feeling of satisfaction
Vagrant: wanderer or tramp
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courtesy: Contemporary Indian-English Stories
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