On Guru-Shishya Parampara In Indian Classical Music

After the recent demise of the legendary Dhrupad singer Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar of the Dagar Gharana, the following article, by his senior disciples and one of the foremost light-bearers of this ancient style of singing, Gundecha brothers appeared in the Sruti magazine.

"Our Guru - End of an era in Dhrupad", Sruti, August 2013

This article is an excellent summary of the life of Ustad Fariduddin Dagar and a humble account of the authors' cherished memories of their beloved Ustad through their musical journey. Though I find it even more interesting since it has a very strong flavor (likely added without an explicit effort of the authors) of one of the most important ingredients of the Hindustani classical music - its unique Guru-Shishya relationship where the teacher, like a potter, with his disciplined yet soft hands carefully removes the rough edges off his students on the slowly rotating wheel of time. This wheel though seemingly stagnant, suspended in the silence of the beautiful notes of the Ragas, is vibrant and energetic and helps the Guru create his vessels with infinite depth filled with overflowing humility. Quoting the Kabir couplet from this article:

                   The Guru's words are absurd                   

                   They cannot be written fast

                   Those words that are written fast

                   Are words that are easily lost...

My Earth

Sometimes I feel that I am inside a big hotel
There are so many rooms here that there is no room for windows
And in each room there is a party, a meeting or an interview going on
I see that I am invited to some of them
I keep rushing between these rooms
These rooms with these thick doors
That cut out the noises from other rooms
And as I rush back and forth into different rooms
Closing the thick doors behind me
I notice that there are different people in every room
And same people in different rooms
Familiar and unfamiliar faces
With familiar and unfamiliar looks
I carefully optimize the time
Quickly changing clothes as I navigate from one room to the next
Still, I find that I am late for every single party, meeting or interview
No matter how hard I try, I am always late
It is not a problem, at least not always
Its just that these thick doors are rusty
And they squeak every time I close them
(Or probably they were designed like that)
There is a brief pause every time I enter
But then the show goes on
As I stand alone in the corners of these rooms
Holding my non-alcoholic beverage in my hand
I start wondering if I even know these people
I know them because I have seen them in other rooms
I feel disconnected, only to realize that I had always been that way
I was always off the grid
The grid of similar looking bricks making similar looking patterns
I don't remember when I entered this hotel
When I got projected onto this two-dimensional wallpaper of patterns
I come out of the rooms and look around
And I see a very long corridor
At the other end I see
That you are standing
In 3D
Like you have always been
I start walking towards you
Then running
My skin burning off as I run
Like a meteor burns as it enters earth's atmosphere
And like a meteor I hope to fall on you
By then, all the dust around me would have disintegrated
And I will again be this shiny little object
That you used to wear
And that had fallen off your ear just a little while ago
And thought that it got lost

Careful Effortlessness

[DISCLAIMER: The following ramblings are from the distorted point of view of a recent PhD victim and should not be taken seriously!]

There are two kinds of scientific research (says I) - 1. boring and often useless research and 2. interesting but (mostly) useless research. I am a careful seeker of the second kind. Individuals of the first kind can be seen sitting stooped down, working continuously on their laptops in their dark, little, damp offices. As opposed to that, individuals of my kind can be found sitting in their chairs with their feet resting on the desk while they are "thinking", in their well... dark, little, damp offices. Both the species believe in hard work - the first kind works hard to reach an actual physical state of being successful while the other works hard to reach a certain mental/metaphysical state of effortlessness. It consumes so much energy to reach this state that sometimes it feels imbecilic to miss on the success part. Nevertheless, once we strike that sweet saddle point of not working while working, we tend to stay in the suspended state indefinitely, unless kicked by an external source. Often, there is a constant or at least a sporadic source of noise that keeps disrupting that balance. But sometimes we find a crack, almost like a split through the space-time continuum where we can at least simulate and practice and taste the sweet blandness of "know-all" state. In some way it is like a stage of introversive depression, so mild that it actually keeps you high - a morphed reality that is always unchanging yet pretty. I think that is the reason we resist sudden changes, hate surprises, despise most pop-music, don't mind waiting or failing, like unfinished pieces of art, travel light through life - without mindless weights but with weightless minds.

The Great Master

In its classical form, the relationship between a musician and his music is very symbiotic. Music offers him an abode where he can feel the flux of its power, explore its subtle nuances and immerse in the immense abundance of its various forms. Often, during the process, the musician creates new compositions and renditions of some particular genre of music, thus contributing to its enrichment. One could surely agree that up to this point, the relationship between the two sounds being more scientific rather than artistic. However, very rarely, a musician crosses the boundaries of tradition and develops a new form, a new school of thought, a new amalgamation of different genres, transforming smoothly from one style of singing to another, carving new masterpieces and scaling new heights. It is here when he becomes indistinguishable and inseparable from his music. This is what I call the romantic form of music.


Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was one such musician. He had successfully blended the free-flowing, prodigious energy of the Qawwali style of singing and the spine-tingling magnificence of the Sufi lyrics with his deep understanding of the Hindustani classical music to create a continuous fabric of beautiful, captivating music. Being a master of Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Persian, he composed countless masterpieces in all these languages. His songs cover a wide spectrum of moods - from humble devotion all the way to the immense pain of separation. Even after listening to a song numerous times, it is very hard not to feel stirred inside and motionless outside. I like to think of his music as air - sometimes flowing gently like a breeze, creating torrents and causing shivers in the next instance and embracing warmly in the next. Its absence causes vacuum and its presence - sound... life.

preliminaries...

After some deliberation, I have decided that like many others, I would start giving some space to my thoughts in the form of a blog... well at least a few kilobytes, peacefully resting somewhere on a Google server. This blog is going to be about my experiments/observations in life, research and music. Although it is not supposed to be very factual on any of those. The entries penned here are more like  musings on my way through life, searching to consummate the understanding from partial observations, contradictions and half meanings.

सृजन का आरंभ, विध्वंस का सारांश
अन्ध्कार का संग्रह, प्रकाश का आग्रह
संघर्ष के परिवार में आसक्ति ग्रस्त सदस्य
अनंत के शून्य में एक अचंभित नाद
सम्पूर्णता के भाव से लिप्त अधूरापन
शब्द परिभाषित, परिभाषा पराजित
स्वयं के अभाव में, स्वयं के समक्ष
स्वयं को समर्पित एकांत का यथार्थ - अर्धार्थ