Raga on our mind

Pic courtesy/Amitchaudhuri.com

Time is everything to great art. The pauses in Dilip Kumar's dialogue delivery, the stillness of Sachin Tendulkar's head before a straight drive or the momentary silence before Kishori Amonkar would explode into another powerful solo; time can enhance the beauty of an experience that follows. Novelist Amit Chaudhuri calls it ‘the aesthetic of evasion'. This evening, the author will take stage at G5A Warehouse to showcase his insights about this aesthetic, his exploration of Hindustani classical music and its integral component - the raga.

Music has been embedded in Chaudhuri's life and literature. He grew up around the traditions of Rabindra Sangeet and Nazrul Geeti as practiced by his mother. While Western pop was his first love as a teenager, he soon learnt Hindustani classical under the tutelage of Pandit Govind Jaipurwale of the Kunwar Shyam gharana. It is here that his curiosity about authorship in Indian classical music was sparked.

These ideas were fuelled extensively when he started writing his book, Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music in 2019. Describing an observation, the Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novelist shares, "Many of the characteristics we hear in a vocal performance, that we associate with Indian classical music or khayal, we attribute to ancient tradition. It is not necessarily so. These are particular decisions taken by composers and singers and performers associated with certain kinds of development in thought, especially with the khayal, in the 20th century."

This approach, according to him, is key to understanding ragas in Indian classical music. Quoting the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, Chaudhuri says, "A raga is a shunya (nil) entity. It is not this or that. When you are singing Yaman, you are making sure it is not Bihag. To use Nagarjuna's definition, everything is co-dependent."

Sensing our confusion, the novelist breaks it down further. Ragas are not a foundational entity, he explains: "They are a slowing down and investigation of the clusters of notes that make up the melody which we are not particularly aware of while we are singing it." While he would not call it a deconstruction, the term comes close.

Chaudhuri has mulled over these ideas through his lectures with students at Ashoka University, where he conducted a course on khayal and modernism. "Take the O Sole Mio from Western Classical music, for instance. No one takes it seriously, so much so that it has also been used for an ice cream commercial. Now, let's say it was designed as a raga-driven melody by an Indian composer in the 6th century. A musician approaching it in terms of raga will slow it down to investigate. They will notice that on the way down, it becomes a Shuddha Dhaivat, while on the way up, it transforms into a Komal Dhaivat. The more you investigate the melody, it no longer remains a melody but rather a way of thinking about, and observing the relationships between those notes," he remarks.

How does a writer blend this instinctive love for music with literature, we ask? "Where I see a continuity now, between these two selves is that I am interested in deferral. Pleasure can only be experienced by postponing the obvious," he points out. It leads him to use yet another musical metaphor of alankar (ornamentation). "The aesthetic of evasion is synonymous with musical improvisation in raga, and with beauty as a writer and singer of khayal," he says.

These and more such remarkable insights will form the crux of his showcase at the venue this evening, where he will be accompanied on stage by Ashok Shinde on the tabla and Vinay Dalvi on the harmonium. It certainly promises to be a fascinating experiment in thought.

On Today; 8 pm
At G5A Warehouse, Shakti Mills Lane, Mahalaxmi West.
Log on to insider.in; g5afoundation.org
Entry Rs 499