Monday, January 24, 2011

To my granpa...of sorts...

It used to be that time in the morning when my mother used to hand me over the big glass of milk. I used to go and sit by my granpa in the living room, always complaining in my head that the glass felt so heavy. Others in the family running around for morning chores used to coax me to hurry up.. "School le liye taiyyar hona hai.. bus choot jayegi.. hurry up Pinkeee.. " Yet something, something always transfixed me there...

It was this rendition that played on DD. I heard it every morning as I sipped my milk. I never realized till today, how much, it had seeped into me.
..

As I entered my workplace, a lil' earlier than usual today, and switched on the TV set for my regular diet of morning news, I saw the news flashing.. 
Pt. BHIMSEN JOSHI NO MORE.
I stared, trying to comprehend what it meant. 
At 88, breathed his last in a Pune hospital. 

What were you thinking Shalini? People would never die? Ofcourse people grow old and then they die..

I watched them play the most recent visuals we had of the man.. and then I turned around. To face my computer. My day at work. 

Get dissolved in my world.

But just before I could.. I heard something familiar. This rendition.. sth struck me.. and hard. I looked around to face the TV set again. And I saw the grandest memory I had of this man.

His face always used to 'dissolve'...from a jharna... looking skywards.. lost in rendering the notes...

Suddenly, I was that 7yr old kid, sipping milk from a heavy glass, watching the TV set from the tip of its rim..
...
Maybe it was the 'granpa' effect. Since I used to sit beside mine.. and somehow since both of them looked old... I came to consider him as my TV granpa..

Mile sur mera, tumhara...tooo...soor bane..hammaaaraa...

Why does he pronounce 'sur' as 'soor'...!!!

I suspected if my friends watched it. Or enjoyed it. Like the way my granpa and my momma did. Followed by me.

My lil' brain couldn't process so much then. Couldn't have thought through these words or phrases. But the music was a dictionary of sorts for me. Those swaras...defined for me, the word pious, touching. I saw that the old man's expressions touched the divine. His voice just flowed through him. Touched the very soul.

'Momma, I really like this tune.'
'Its the 'desh raag' pinkee. That's why it is so powerful. Now finish your milk quickly...cmmonnn.'

I never paid heed to the last line. I just went back to watching my real-life granpa adoring the TV-granpa. And watch the lines being repeated in every bhasha that Hindustan speaks. Loved mimicking the lines in my head. Ironically, I couldn't for the longest, comprehend those lines in my mother tongue, Telugu... Naa swaramu, nee swaramu...lost it after that, duh! But it didn't matter. I used to love the Goa bit too. And I used to wonder at that tanned jet black on a huge elephant. How could someone so starved look so happy? And I used to sip that milk. Ufff!! When will I grow up??
...

20 years later.

I hear the rendition again. But as a rendition to mark the death day of this music maestro. Pt.Bhimsen Joshi. I wonder why I never even found out his name as a child. I wonder when did I stop listening to him daily? And why..some 20 yrs later, I feel a sort of...grief?

Inexplicable.

Nevertheless, the lil' child in me feels the pain. Maybe she never imagined her TV-granpa dying. That was never a concern. But the 25 year-old-sth-me today has to face the reality. I am clearly mourning. There's no sound to it, but there is a truth to it. I am laughing as usual with the others around. But every time one news channel after the other plays that rendition...my heart beats a lil' faster. Trying to take in, what's lost.

As I said, maybe I shall never be able to explain why. Too subtle. Or too sensitive. But unmistakable. Maybe one of those things in life...

But I felt the urge to write. That just like my writing, his voice is etched in my memory. That he...is etched in my memory. And while I can't promise immortality myself, his old figure and his voice promises to live on in my subtle world. 

This one's for the great maestro. For my granpa..of sorts.

Lots of love & music..

Sur ki nadiyaan, har disha se... beh ke saagar mein mile...
baadalon ka roop leke.. barse.. halake.. halake...