Meeting the Lucknow Boy...

I am not a person who may be called a Gossiper’s Delight. If someone came to me with a ‘juicy’ story, he’d mostly be disappointed with the unenthusiastic response he received. When Flipkart filled my order for Vinod Mehta’s autobiography: Lucknow Boy, it came with one of those little Flipkart bookmarks which have a humorous reason mentioned on them for using the bookmark. A smile kindled in my eyes when I saw the reason this one provided: “Your friend has real life gossip”. Having just finished the book, I think it sums the book up beautifully. Only, I had to put the bookmark aside and delve into the book for the gossip instead of using it.

For the past couple of years, all the books that I’d come across were lacking in the style of writing that attracts me. More than anything, I look forward to the kind of writing in which the writer is able to make a connection with the reader right from the page one. I compare it to meeting someone in real life. You have been living in this world unaware of the existence of this person. One fine day you meet him and get to know him slowly, layer by layer through his recounting of stories of his life. You read stuff written by him, listen to stories recounted by his friends and these help you paint a picture of him. Of all the writers I have read, I feel R K Narayan was a master at this form of writing. All of his stories would have a central character. Through telling of numerous stories, mostly innocuous and apparently inconsequential, Narayan was able to paint a detailed sketch of his Rajus, Swamis and Sampaths. Vinod Mehta has recounted most of the tales in his autobiography with the same flair. Alas he, as I do, can only admire the class that Orwell possessed.

The only other autobiography I had read thus far was the one of Jawaharlal Nehru. If nothing, it is a wonderful insight to India’s freedom movement, recounted by one of the key players. In the telling of one’s life story, one is expected to bare some juicy titbits and regale the reader with some embarrassing anecdotes – for the sole purpose of justifying it as an autobiography, if for nothing else. But, in my opinion, there are two types of such stories. The first are the ones that are playing too heavily on one’s conscience. This, again in my opinion, is the primary reason for writing the story of one’s own life. One simply has to get them off the chest. The stories of the second type are too sacred / secret to even recall by oneself unless one is treated to truth serum or under hypnosis. These are usually the ones that come up in the independent biographies and random reminiscences elsewhere, as we have seen in the case of Nehru. Even Mehta has taken his jab at it with disdain: Nehru, Meena Kumari, Firaq and many such. I am very positive that Vinod Mehta will never have his independent biography written, and may escape most of the stinging stories regarding him unless, of-course, if he features in the stories of his friends and foes. But this too I doubt because he has meticulously avoided digging up stories about people who may come back to him. Of course, I am far removed from saying anything conclusively and am just putting to words the feeling that I had in my gut as I read the book.

My acquaintance with ‘Outlook’ began when I first purchased the attractive magazine at Gaya railway station. I forget the exact month, but that was the edition in which they’d broken the Manoj Prabhakar story. Though I was merely in high school then, I was awed by the power of investigative journalism as also the beautiful magazine that was so unlike India Today and Frontline. Another point that I noted was that even though I have pushed away the temptation of being drawn into being updated with news round the clock by simply not having a TV, I have not missed much of consequence over the past few years. I was glad to note that most of the inferences I’d drawn on my own about politics have been substantiated. Coming from a place where Maoism is not something you just read in news, the lengthy discussion was a moot point without any suggestion of a workable solution. The ringside view stories about the goings on in the seat of power confirms just what it is, something that the average voter understands deep down in his heart – pure hogwash.

The book taught me some nice words like Toff, Panjandrum and Meretricious. But the long chapter on the collected wisdom, though given in good faith, I will file as just another reference material with the lot doled out by all my well-meaning elders. Maybe when I grow old, I too will quote from all of those crumbling pages, add a line or two of my own and pass it to the next generation, expecting them to follow my wise musings.

All in all, I am really glad to have met the Boy from Lucknow. He confirms my view of the world that random good things happen even to random people who have a conviction, a faith in their heart. A faith that guides all their actions focused towards attaining a fulfilling life. I once read a joke which went:

“A writer dies and reaches the portal to God’s kingdom. His sins and good deeds are weighed and by a queer chance they balance out in number. God ponders it over and offers the writer a chance to visit both hell and heaven before deciding where he is to be sent. First off he’s taken to writers’ hell: a long dark room with rows upon rows of wooden benches and oil lanterns dimly lighting the pages upon which the writers wrote furiously, their sweat mixing with the ink. The Satan’s servants hollered as soon as one of the writers would so much as look up. Our man was terrified and begged to be taken away. So they guided him out of there to a beautiful looking building which they said was writer’s heaven. He stepped in with a lot of expectations, but was appalled at what he saw inside: the same long wooden benches, oil lanterns, sweat and hollering repeated all over. Confused, he looked at God and asked what the difference was. God winked knowingly and said, “Here their work gets published”.

The Lucknow boy hopes he’d find a place in heaven for his service to the written word. From Debonair to Outlook, I think he has already been living in a veritable heaven all along.

Ears of music...

I wish I had the gift of musical ears. Now, I am very thankful for all the gifts I have been blessed with in life and even consider my quirks to be things that make me stand apart in this world. But everyone wants to have powers that one notices they do not have, while others flaunt it with disdain. Of course I have wished I could be Superman, one of the nephew ducks (Huey-Dewey or Louie), be in the shoes of the star of most of the movies I saw as a kid and so on, ad nauseam. But these wishes have invariably been fleeting, lasting till I encountered the next ‘blessed’ guy.

Not so for music. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with music, songs and musical instruments. My earliest memories regarding this are from my early childhood when one of my neighbours brought a Banjo along on the annual family picnic we used to have. I was thrilled and fascinated. But despite my best wishes, I could never acquire the skill. My singing is best constrained to the arena of my bathroom – a place that I truly unleash and hone my skills. I like the way my voice sounds to me in my head. But the few times I have recorded it, I have always wondered if my head is playing tricks with me or the recorder is. I guess it is the same as when someone tries to chorus a song with headphones on at full volume.

Bhaiya got me a Hero Diatonic Harmonica from his school trip to the North East sometime when I must have been in class 4 or 5. That is when my love for the instrument began. I could not play it but was fascinated by the effortlessness that I could get some sound out of it, unlike the Banjos and the Harmoniums that I had tried before that. I used to talk and sing into it and the funny sound it made was all the music that I could make. Any song that had a mouth-organ piece in it had my instant attention. And the one at the top amongst them was the anthem “Hai apna dil to aawara…”. The trivia that the piece was played by none other than RD Burman, endeared it even more. With time I was able to play the Harmonica piece of the song on my Diatonic. I played it over and over since that was the only recognizable piece I could play. To this day, the few friends who have heard me play it feel that it comes out very nice.

But the next leap happened only during my MSc, even though the ‘Hero’, reeds bent and badly out of tune (as I realize now), accompanied me to Ranchi for my plus two and back home all through BSc. Over time, I’ve developed a temperament that I can attempt anything: like learning a new language, painting or some such skill by breaking it into very small, easily workable parts. And I take delight in sharing whatever I am good at, by breaking it into similar easily digestible chunks. It makes me sad to see when the gifted people seem to think that their gift is something that comes just by birth and should not even be attempted by lesser mortals. It was some trivial incident in which a good singer friend said something to the effect that learning music was not everyone’s cup of tea. I took it as a challenge and joined Harmonica lessons. I really must thank my teacher for introducing me very gently to the theory of music and the right way to handling the mouth organ. Though the classes were never very successful due to frequent new inductions and poor attendance, I got what I wanted… a platform from where I could do my experiments and learn at my own pace- a journey that I know will continue for the rest of my life.

But that is not all that I wanted to post today. Over years, I kept thinking I could never ever understand the intricacies of music. But out of the blue, some recent incidents have had me by surprize. That many of our songs are based on classic Raagas is no secret. Many websites abound in categorizing the famous songs according to their Raagaa. Vividh Bharati has an evening program (once a week I guess) that plays 3 songs one after the other belonging to the same Raaga. Anyway, on a car trip a couple of months ago, we had enqueued a long list of oldies and were enjoying the scenes passing by the window when the song changed and the introductory music of the song “Hum tere pyar mein saara aalam, kho baithe hain…” played in sitar began. From some corner of my mind the tune of “Baje sargam…”, the nostalgic Doordarshan song, leaped forth. I wondered if there was some connection. I looked online after I returned and sure enough, the two belonged to the same Raaga: Des. I was stunned. Next, a few weeks ago I was listening to the songs from the old Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar starrer Andaaz when I came across the song “Uthaye ja unke sitam…” and was suddenly reminded of the song “Bekas pe karam kijiye, sarkar-e-Madina…”. Again the song came from the same root, Raaga Kedar, thus spake Wikipedia. Then, last month I had the fortune to attend the live performance of the Bangesh brothers Amaan and Ayaan Ali at the Town Hall, Jodhpur. At the very end of their performance, they played a piece based on Raaga Pahadi, a favorite of their father Ustaad Amjad Ali Khan. The tune stayed in my head and last night as I was listening to “Neela aasman so gaya…” from the Amitabh starrer ‘Silsila’ (the movie for whose music the great maestros Hari Prasad Chaurasia and Shiv Kumar Sharma came together for the first time as Shiv-Hari), the interlude reminded me of tune that emanated from the Sarod many nights ago. My conviction was right again. That it made me glad ought to be clear from the fact that it pushed me to write this post… something that I had begun to procrastinate again.