REVIEWS
FILM
BOOK
Scaling Heights
The Beholder and the Beheld
The musical history captures the multiple facets of classical vocalist Kishori Amonkar’s persona and genius
Life sketches of individuals who defined the epoch they lived in
BHINNA SHADJA
OF A CERTAIN AGE
Documentary on Ganasaraswati Padma Vibhushan Kishori Amonkar
By Gopalkrishna Gandhi Published by Penguin Price: `499 Pages: 234
Directed by Amol Palekar and Sandhya Gokhale Supported by Public Diplomacy Division, National Culture Fund, ONGC and and Tata Capital
I
f any vocalist in modern India qualifies as an example of what T. S. Eliot would have called, ‘the play of Individual Talent’ within the Indian classical music tradition it would undoubtedly be Kishori Amonkar. A legend in her own lifetime, Kishoritai, as she is known to her close admirers, has brought a unique dimension to Hindustani music that combines the highest cannons of khayal singing with a personal flair for innovation and a razor-sharp intellect. Passionate, sublime and blissful, her singing is also innovative, dazzlingly crystal in tonal clarity and deeply moving. Ever youthful in voice and spirit, it is difficult to believe that this musical genius has completed 80 years. As the daughter and disciple of the purist Ganatapaswini Moghubai Kurdikar, Kishoritai inherited the hoary tradition of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana (school) with its many codes and restrictions of style and grammar. However, as she blossomed into her own, she applied her keen mind to expand its scope and increase its emotional appeal that has not only won her a legion of
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devoted admirers but also a fair share of critics and controversies. She has been accused of deviating from the well-trodden path, of being musically whimsical and temperamentally hotheaded. Actor and director Amol Palekar has now made an immense contribution to Indian musical history by capturing multiple facets of Kishori Amonkar’s persona and genius on celluloid for which posterity will be ever grateful. With extensive one-to-one interviews on a range of subjects — from musical structure to the aesthetics of voice as indicated in the rasa shastra — and interspersed with shots of her ancestral home in the lush, green vale of Kurdi in Goa, the film is a musicologist’s delight. It is also enriched by comments and tributes by many other musicians of our time, including tabla maestro Zakir Hussain, flautist Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, santoor wizard Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and sarod player Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. The film is bound to become a definitive document of musical history. —S. Kalidas
W
hen putting together a book of profiles, what makes the author choose a particular set of people? Should there be a thread that binds the collection? Gopalkrishna Gandhi, author Of A Certain Age, thinks so. In the introduction to the book, he goes to great lengths to explain why he has chosen the twenty individuals that feature in his compilation. Among the life sketches in the book are those of Mahatma Gandhi, his son Harilal, ornithologist Salim Ali, former Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Sirimavo Bhandaranaike, the Dalai Lama and sculptor and printmaker, Somnath Hore. Their ages on 15 August, 1947, the author informs us, would have ranged from 11 (J.N. Dixit) to 59 (Acharya Kriplani) and then he painstakingly links them to Mahatma Gandhi. Finally, he says, ‘‘No one knows why one fascinates another. It could just be the chemistry of the beholder and the beheld. It could be neither being no more than a need on the part of the writer to spot some qualities lacking in himself. It could be plain sentimentalism.
(clockwise from above) Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru; Jayaprakash Narayan and his wife Prabhavati; and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
It could also be that incohate bonding, which like a slow log fire in a hill station, warms those who are of a certain age.’’ With the need to find a reason for the compilation put to rest, one can enjoy the profiles that benefit from Gopalkrishna’s personal knowledge that gives the portrayals a certain vividity. Gopalkrishna’s paternal grandfather was Mahatma Gandhi and maternal grandfather C. Rajagopalachari, scholar, statesman and the last Governor General of India — a legacy that makes him a privileged spectator of the country’s history. A former bureaucrat-turned-diplomat, Gopalkrishna is a regular columnist for major national dalies, he has written three books — Refuge, on the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, a play in verse, Dara Shikoh and The Essential Gandhi. The essays in Of a Certain Age have been written over the last thirty years and most of them have been published before, yet they retain a freshness and Gopalkrishna’s effortless writing style makes them worth reading. —Maneesha Dube
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