Second Gear

With Nageshwar Lal Karan

Two sides of the Delhi music scene

After thirty-six days of emails, calls, zoom meetings, reading, note-taking and various other planning-phase activities, I sat for not one but two in-person interviews on Friday. The boundaries of what can be considered "research" are always a little blurry (I'll spare you my reflections on that for now) but in a tangible sense these interviews felt like the beginning of "Doing" the "Research" I came to India to do.

My new friend and collaborator Anirban Bhattacharya, a Bengali singer and scholar who lives here in Delhi, arranged both meetings. Anirban toured with the late great kathak maestro Pandit Birju Maharaj for over a decade and is well connected in the music and dance world. It turns out I actually saw him perform with Maharaj-ji and Zakir Hussain at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco back in June 2018. The concert, a celebration of Maharaj-ji's 80th birthday, was part of what ended up being his last U.S. tour. After years of deteriorating health, he passed away on January 16, 2022, a couple weeks shy of his 85th birthday. Without getting into the politics of kathak lineages, or nationalist cultural revivals for that matter, it's safe to say Birju Maharaj was the physical embodiment of kathak in India. As the premiere hereditary exponent of the Lucknow "Kalka-Bindadin" Gharana, Maharaj-ji did as much to bring kathak into its modern form as any other single individual. His name recognition is without equal in the Indian dance world, and his children and disciples continue to play prominent roles in shaping the space.

On June 8, 2018 a second tabla player shared the stage with Birju Maharaj-ji, Zakirbhai, and Anirban in San Francisco. His name was (is) Utpal Ghosal. Zakir Hussain, an international celebrity who has toured the globe since the early 1970s, draws crowds wherever he plays. He always has. Ghosal, by contrast, is not a celebrity. But whereas Zakir worked with Maharaj-ji on occasion as a guest accompanist, Utpal da was a regular member of his touring group. In fact, Maharaj-ji recruited Utpal during a chance encounter in Kolkata (Birju Maharaj was on the way to the washroom and overheard Utpal practicing), after which Utpal relocated to Delhi and built a new life around accompanying Maharaj-ji.

Anirban and Utpal are great friends--both are Bengalis and both worked with Birju Maharaj until the end of his days. As such, Anirban wanted me to interview Utpal first and arranged for me to do so at Kalashram, Birju Maharaj's kathak institute here in Delhi. As fate would have it, Kalashram is about a ten-minute walk from my front door in Hauz Khas, just the other side of Gulmohar Park. The institute, which has been closed since March 2020, is actually where Maharaj-ji passed away on the night of January 16th, having recently gone into covid isolation there. The building is beautiful, built in the classic Lucknow style with a central haveli (courtyard). The place is covered with pictures of Maharaj-ji at various stages of his career. In light of his recent passing, and the continued closure to students, the whole compound currently feels like a shrine.

I got a little turned around cutting through the park and arrived at Kalashram at 11:29 am, still technically early for the 11:30 meeting. One of the large glass doors on the front of the building was open, but the gate to the street remained shut. As I tried to figure out how to proceed, a stocky man on a motorbike pulled up alongside me with his daughter sitting on the front. They both took off their helmets, he introduced himself as Utpal, and we walked in together. We stopped to offer pranam to a picture of Marahaj-ji on the way into the compound, and by the time Anirban arrived fifteen minuted later we were old friends.

As a foreigner and a researcher, you never know how people will respond to you, but interviewing Utpal was a best-case scenario. He was as relaxed, forthcoming, and generous as he possibly could have been. When we moved upstairs to one of the practice studios, Utpal jumped up on the riser and started tuning the tabla that were sitting there. Anirban gestured for me to sit on the riser to Utpal's right, and he pulled up a chair in front of us. I asked for permission to start recording, given without a second thought, and we were off. Utpal needed minimal encouragement to share. For over an hour, he talked about his musical background, general thoughts on accompanying dancers, and specific experiences working with Maharaj-ji. On this last topic, Anirban also jumped into the mix at length. Anirban's occasional questions, as well as English summaries and interjections, added to the conversation, and in the end I probably only asked five or six of the fifteen questions on my meticulously translated script. Once, following a long, multi-pronged response from Utpal da, I looked down at my script, saw that he had just knocked off no fewer than three of my prepared questions, then looked up and said, "Yeh bekar hai" ("This is useless"). They both laughed.

While the entire conversation turned out to be interview gold, the highlights were Utpal's tabla demonstrations. It's one thing to hear people talk about their craft, but it's always better to see it in action. He showed a number of tihais and chakradars, complete with explanations of how working with Maharaj-ji had influenced his approach to playing these types of compositions in the context of dance accompaniment. We stopped after seventy-five minutes, said our goodbyes, and I left with Utpal's phone number to coordinate future meetings. It sounds as if Kalashram will remain closed into July, but until formal classes resume Utpal appears open to meeting again, perhaps with two sets of tabla next time.

Following a huge lunch of chole bhature at one of my regular spots along Gulmohar Park, Anirban and I set off for Kathak Kendra, the preeminent government-subsidized kathak training institute in Delhi. Anirban had arranged for me to meet Nageshwar Lal Karan, a tabla teacher there who has published a Hindi-language book on tabla accompaniment for kathak based on his dissertation. I had only just managed to procure a copy of the book and had read a grand total of one page, which given the register of the prose and my level of Hindi literacy took me roughly an hour. Needless to say, I felt underprepared for that interview, not to mention that it had been scheduled only the day before. When we entered the third-floor tabla studio, Nageshwar-ji had a class of six students (five Indian women and a man from Tanzania) in session. I immediately recognized the kayda they were playing (DhatiDhageNaDhaTirakita), a standard of the Delhi Gharana repertoire. From there, they proceeded through a series of simple tukras and chakradars. Not bad considering all the students were in their first or second year of learning tabla. Every dancer at Kathak Kendra is required to take drumming (tabla and/or pakhavaj), singing, and yoga courses as part of the ten-year preparatory curriculum. With the exception of Imraan, the Tanzanian, none of them had come explicitly to train as drummers.

The second interview lasted only thirty minutes, which was fine by me. By that time, the huge plate of chole bhature had me in an afternoon haze no amount of chai could penetrate. Even so, it felt good to get a foot in the door at Kathak Kendra, and Negeshwar-ji was generous to meet with me and offer his time and perspective. Perhaps we'll have a second session once I've had time to adequately work through his book, which at the rate I'm going could be months from now.

When we left Kathak Kendra, Anirban and I had one last chai across the street and I hopped an auto back to Hauz Khas. It being Friday night, and having just completed my first two formal interviews, I decided to accept a friend's invitation to see a DJ set at nearby Summer House Cafe, just the other side of Sri Aurobindo Marg from the Hauz Khas Market. I did a fair amount of dancing (fueled by a bit of drinking) and by the time I hit the pillow around 2 am it had undeniably been a long, eventful day. Saturday I rested until setting off in the afternoon for Music in the Park, a free two-day concert of preeminent Hindustani and Carnatic musicians held this weekend in Nehru Park for the first time since 2020. I'll return this evening for the finale, and promise to report back with more video clips and thoughts on that soon.