It is not usual to expect a clipped British accent with a fondness for P.G. Wodehouse’s writing from an Indian classical musician. Pt Rajeev Taranath belongs to the rarefied club. He is amongst the few Indian classical musicians who have been honoured with the Padma awards this year. He is today the senior-most disciple of Padma Vibhushan Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. While the story of his life is fascinating, his wry sense of humour and self-analysis is striking.
Edited excerpts:
How did you, a professor of English, take to music?
My being an English professor was perhaps inevitable; my mother Sumati was a good English writer, and a school teacher.
She was a feminist, a very strong woman. She studied at Queen Mary’s in Madras. Amazingly, she wrote a book, “Why Not Divorce” as early as in the 1920s. She was selling copies of another book, she wrote, “Towards womanhood”, on a train platform when Jawaharlal Nehru spotted her in her khadi clothes, and a hat, and they interacted, for quite a few years actually. My grandfather was a freedom fighter, a highly intelligent, unorthodox man, who wanted to learn Sanskrit, but couldn't. He introduced my mother to the literature of Bertrand Russell and the like.
Tell us more about your parents.
Well, my mother’s roommate at Queen Mary’s was my father’s sister, so that is how my parents met. In fact, it was quite funny; my father came to meet his sister Leela, and my mother lambasted him in Shakespeare’s English, as she had heard that he was unable to continue paying his sister’s fees. She chastised him, ‘You are trying to get freedom for the country, yet you are curtailing your sister’s freedom!’ I believe my father had quietly left without a word.
My mother had been married off to her uncle when she was just 11. While studying, my mother grew up, realised she could not acquiesce to a marriage like this, and fought with her father. After her studies, she was homeless, but filled with a passionate desire to do good; my father was running an ashram in Tungabhadra, helping unwed mothers, so she joined him. They got married in 1931. My father’s mother was called Rajivi, I was named after her.
I am very proud of my father; I remember hearing an incident of a young widow coming to my father asking him to help her abort her child as she had conceived after the death of her husband, and did not know how to name the child’s father. My father offered his own name, requesting her to not kill the child. I think that required enormous generosity; this was way back in the 1920s. Even today, it’s a kind act. He really walked tall.
So how did music come into your life?
Perhaps, the music in me came from my father – he was a good singer. He was also quite a lovely tabla player. As a child, I was built like a tadpole; when I tried to play with other kids I would invariably fall over and howl. Once, my father picked me up and introduced me to records of Ustad Abdul Karim Khan. I was about three. He taught me to play the records myself, to be careful with the needle. I then was taught vocal music, and became a graded artiste at the AIR. After my voice broke, I got disenchanted, and gave up on classical music. After I turned 18, I developed an interest in instrumental music. I used to religiously listen to every concert of Pt Ravi Shankar. Before that I had heard sarod records of Ustad Shekhawat Hussain Khan, but I found his sarod stroke work quite raucous.
I remember the first time I heard my guru Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. I had taken a girl, and of course her father as a chaperone, to a concert of Pt Ravi Shankar. There, I discovered that the concert included a sarod player. I reassured her, ‘Just listen to the sitar, he’s really good. Ignore the sarod.’ That’s when Khan sahib “happened” to me. My God, that tone, that imagination – I had never heard anything like it! I waited near the toilet, to meet him. He walked near me, with a cigarette dangling. I stammered, ‘Where do you live?’ He said, ‘Khar Bombay,’ and walked away. That was that! Anyway, I was studying, my mother was dying, I had responsibilities.
Later, I managed to connect with him through director Chetan Anand. (Khan sahib had just done the music for Anand’s “Aandhiyan.”) By then, I had a job as a lecturer of English, and my mother had passed away. When I went to meet Khan sahib, he told me, ‘You’re mad! Why do you want to leave your good life to start learning from me? Go back, think and decide, and come back only if you still want to. So I did that. And in 1955, I started.
Tell us about your early years of learning under him
I was just 21, and learning the sarod – you know, the nails bleeding, the “pus” under the nails, all of that. I was in Bombay first, and later when he moved to Calcutta, I followed too, though I had just gotten a job in Bombay.
I had a very fine sarod made by the finest sarod maker; I remember I could not afford to pay the ₹500 he wanted, and gave him only ₹350. Incidentally, one of my disciples later stole that sarod from me, so I no longer have it.
Khan sahib was the busiest musician those days.I remember once, whilst playing the tamboora behind him – we used to sit very close as the tamboora did not have a separate mic – I just fell asleep behind him, mid-concert! It was our third consecutive concert in 24 hours. My head sagged on to his shoulder, and I dribbled onto to his silk kurta.
He was so kind, he just said, “utho utho”. He should have slapped me!
How did you come in touch with Annapurna Devi?
That time was tough. I had no money. A family took me in – Prabhat Kumar Das, who is no more, also used to learn from Khan sahib. I started living with his family. I used to eat only puffed rice, once a day. I got amoebic dysentery and had no money to pay for medicines. I was very emaciated.
In desperation, I decided to sell my sarod to a famous sarod player then, who offered me ₹700. He told me, ‘Even if you get well and continue playing, what will you achieve? There is your Ustad, there is me, and also Ashish Khan. How will you survive? I was very disheartened, and discussed the matter with Nikhil da (Pt Nikhil Banerji) who just laughed it off.
Later that night, he went and told Annapurna ji (Annapurna Devi), who was with her brother in Calcutta too.
When I went the next day to Khan sahib’s, she took me aside, told me to get treatment and paid for it. She said I was not to sell my sarod. Thank God for that. In my mind, she was like a mother. She saved my life like a mother would have.
Tell us about learning from Annapurna Devi?
She was five years older than me. After Khan sahib left for the US, I remember writing her an angry letter: ‘Who am I supposed to learn from now.?’
So I went to her in Bombay, and what I remember learning from her was the raga Kaunsi Kanhra.
What would you say was the greatest aspect of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan’s music?
Khan sahib was very kind. He was not a strict teacher, one to one. He loved to open teaching institutions, but he didn’t get the kind of support he should have. When he taught In his schools, both in Calcutta and in the US, he was very exacting; you had to get the passage and the tone absolutely right.
Also, about the many ragas he made: I don’t think making a raga is a big deal. It is how you develop it and what you do with those notes. That was his brilliance.
Did you ever meet Ustad Allaudin Khan?
I met Baba once too; he was very affable with us students. We never saw his fiery side, though, of course, I had heard about it.
Do you still go to hear concerts?
I don’t hear live music now – only if there is Khan sahib!