Music and literature combine to provide ‘Sukun’ to audience

Nagpur: In a programme aptly titled ‘Sukun’, music and literature come together to provide to create a soothing effect on audience present at Mimosa hall, Chitnavis Centre, on Saturday evening. Organized by Mudra, the event featured classical vocalist Minal Natu and theatre person Dinkar Bedekar.
Though the presentations began nearly an hour late as artists were caught in Saturday evening traffic jam, but once Natu tuned her taanpura and began with raag Yaman, the audience was totally with her. She began at a leisurely pace with ‘Tose naina lagaye’ in vilambit teen taal and followed it with ‘Jiya re main varoon’ in drut lay. She followed up with a short bandish in raag Bageshwari set to addha taal, ‘Aaj meri kahe roko bat’. Natu also presented a Dadra, ‘Jamuna kinare mera gaon’ and concluded with a ‘Meera bhajan’ in Bhairvi ‘Mere toh Girdhar Gopal’ much to the delight of the audience.

A disciple of Vidushi Kishori Amonkar, Natu began learning music from Usha Parakhi in Nagpur. Now settled in Mumbai, the vocalist has also learnt from various other gurus and incorporates styles of Agra, Jaipur-Atruli and Delhi gharanas. Natu possess a very soothing voice and the fact that she has a training of two decades from maestros shows in the manner in which she expands the raag with complicated taans and alaaps. Accompanying Natu on tabla was Ravi Satfale and Pravin Deshpande played the harmonium.

The musical recital was followed by dramatized reading of two short stories of Harishankar Parsai by Dinkar Bedekar. Parsai is known for his satirical and humorous writings. Bedekar picked up ‘Bholaram Ka Jeev’ and ‘Premchand ke phate joote’ for the audience and held them in thrall with his narration. ‘Bholaram ka jeev deals’ with the problems of pensioners and follows the travails of a man who is dead but hides his soul in his pension files, refusing to leave this world. While in ‘Premchand ke phatey jootey’, the writer delves into the psychology of the renowned author Munshi Premchand when he spots him wearing torn shoes in a photograph.

Both the stories brought out the richness of Hindi literature and the brilliance of Parsai’s writings.