Kalashram Vasantotsava 2022

Subhankar Banerjee (left), Birju Maharaj (center), Rajan Mishra (right)

As I mentioned in a recent post, Kalashram--the kathak institute founded by late maestro Pt. Birju Maharaj--held its spring festival last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at Kamani Auditorium in Delhi. The event commemorated the legacy of Maharaj-ji, who passed away in January, and honored two of his close friends and collaborators who also died during the pandemic: Hindustani vocalist Rajan Mishra and tabla player Subhankar Banerjee. The festival marked the first major kathak event since I arrived in Delhi (at least that I'm aware of), and given that my Fulbright project focuses on drum accompaniment for this particular North Indian dance form, I took numerous videos to use as performance analysis examples. All told, I probably recorded more than three hours over the course of three nights. Akin to my late-March post on Music in the Park, I will share selected clips along with explanations and observations. In the process, I'll do a bit of preliminary analysis that may help down the road. Two birds one stone and all. The following is likely a more in-depth look at kathak performance practice than most of you are seeking here. If you're interested, read on. If not, no hard feelings. Or just watch a couple vids and call in a day. More food and animal pics to come, I promise.

Each night opened with a musical performance before proceeding to a series of dance recitals. Night one, a tabla ensemble featuring disciples of Subhankar Banerjee, including his son, kicked off the festivities. The piece, composed by Banerjee himself, took some interesting creative liberties and contained moments of brilliance as individual players showcased their skills. Maybe it's just my inner purest talking, but I find group tabla playing less and less moving these days. With some instruments--in an orchestra or drum line for instance--the density and power of the sound increases along with the number of players, at least within reason. Tabla is not such an instrument. More than two tabla players playing simultaneously rarely sounds clean, even if the musicians are outstanding, and there is no gain in sound quality over what you could get from one competent player on set set of well-tuned, well-miked drums. It usually just sounds like a bunch of shoes in the dryer. 

Night two began with a vocal presentation of Raag Madhuvanti by Dr. Nabanita Chowdhury, a disciple of Pt. Rajan Mishra, accompanied by Mithilesh Jha on tabla. Truly spellbinding stuff. Dr. Chowdhury began in ati vilambit (very slow) ek taal (12 beats) before moving to tin tal (16 beats) for the culmination of her recital. I was so enthralled, I never even pulled my phone out to take a video. Night three kicked off with a performance by Amjad Ali Khan, the preeminent living sarod maestro, who still brought his fastball at 76. Satyajit Talwalkar accompanied on tabla. 

Now on to the dancing.

April 20: Night One

Yashaswani and Ragini Maharaj

Yashaswani and Ragini Maharaj, granddaughters of Birju Maharaj, gave the first kathak performance of the festival. They represent the ninth generation of the Kalka-Bindadin Gharana of Lucknow. Here we see Ragini, the more experienced of the two dancers, speaking padhant (recitation) into the microphone as she introduces a parmelu, which the duo proceeds to dance together. In addition to pakhawaj bols, parmelu incorporates bols based on nature sounds, which have no direct equivalent on North Indian drums. Parmelu can be tricky for drummers (me) to translate, but mostly as a byproduct of inexperience. Tabla accompanist Utpal Ghoshal, who I've been sitting with for lessons since our interview in March, takes this one in stride. He's a pro and I'm sure he'd heard the composition plenty of times before, being a veteran accompanist of the Maharajs. After a little chatting and explanation, Yashaswani and Ragini then show a tihai to display their rhythmic footwork. In Hindustani music, a tihai can be defined as any phrase that repeats three times and lands on the sum, or first beat of the rhythmic cycle. In kathak, as in tabla solo, tihais become complex mathematical exercises that manipulate time cycles in all sorts of clever and unexpected ways. Ragini again introduces the composition on the microphone. As the duo dances, a family member recites padhant along with their performance of the tihai. The proliferation of ginti tihais such as this one, which use Hindi numbers in addition to dance bols, is attributed to Birju Maharaj. While they are now ubiquitous in kathak performance practice, they are considered a specialty of the Kalka-Bindadin Gharana.

Aditi Mangaldas Group

Aditi Mangaldas, a disciple of Birju Maharaj, then presented a group dance with several of her own advanced students. While the stage production and choreography were undeniably impressive, the percussion drew my attention above all. I admit, that is not unusual. Two younger members of the Gangani family, Mohit on tabla and Ashish on pakhawaj, accompanied the group. It is not uncommon to see tabla and pakhawaj side by side on the kathak stage, but in my experience it is unusual to see pakhawaj take the leading role in this pairing. Usually tabla comprises the primary accompaniment for contemporary kathak presentations. If pakhawaj is present, it usually serves to reinforce the sound and accentuate the structure of the taal. In this instance, it quickly became apparent that Ashish was leading the accompanying ensemble on pakhawaj. He played forcefully and confidently, and the pakhawaj stood out prominently in the mix rather than blending into the background in support of the tabla. The combination of the two drums--played by young, energetic accompanists--brought an excitement to this dance that some of the other group choreography staged throughout the festival lacked. Ashish's performance here convinced me to seek him out last week, and we met Wednesday for our first pakhawaj lesson. While I've been learning from Mohan Sharma for a month now, and will continue to study with him, Ashish specializes in accompanying dance. Mohan-ji trained at Kathak Kendra in the 80s, but has since established himself exclusively as a soloist and accompanist for dhrupad, the older, more austere genre of Hindustani vocal and instrumental music. From where I'm sitting, it can't hurt to learn from both of them.

Rani Khanum

Rani Khanum is a senior exponent of Lucknow Gharana kathak who also trained under Birju Maharaj. She is the founder and director of her own dance center here in Delhi and is known for using kathak to address social issues, such as the rights of Indian Muslim women. Nothing about this performance spoke overtly to social justice issues, but it is worth noting that a group of primarily Muslim accompanists supported Khanum, including Amaan Ali Khan on tabla. The first thing that struck me about the performance was the clarity of her padhant. The second, the clarity of her footwork. The belief that "you have to say it to play it" pervades Hindustani music and dance, and Rani Khanum supported this thesis with crisp, articulate recitation that translated into crisp, articulate footwork (tatkar). Aside from the all-around high quality of her performance, the other thing that stood out was her relationship with the accompanying musicians. She checked in with them regularly, speeding them up and slowly them down as needed, and didn't hesitate to start an item over if she became displeased with the tempo or lack of rhythmic cohesion. To some extent, this is the norm in kathak presentation. Nonetheless, her authority was palpable. The second clip starts with Khanum setting the tempo for her musicians before approaching the microphone for padhant. When things get a little out of whack during her recitation, she beckons for her accompanists to hold it together, then recites a second time with Amaan Ali Khan playing the composition on tabla. Perhaps she was out of breath and simply wanted to recite again before proceeding to dance, or perhaps she wasn't confident with the cohesion of the ensemble and wanted to reinforce the composition before performing it. In any case, those types of recoveries rely on strong communication between the dancer and accompanists. Khanum projected a clear authority over everything that transpired on her stage.

April 21: Night Two

Shinjini Kulkarni

Another grandchild of Birju Maharaj, Shinjini Kulkarni gave a solo performance, accompanied by Yogesh Gangani on tabla, to kick off the dance portion of night two. The clip above is taken from a segment in the 13-beat raas taal, which I did not recognize at the time but learned the name of the following morning when I chatted with Yogesh-ji at Kathak Kendra prior to meeting with Rajendra Gangani. After speaking the theka and checking in with her accompanists to establish a slightly faster tempo, Kulkarni recites and dances a Krishna bandish. Gangani attentively accentuates her movements on the tabla, playing with power, spontaneity, and expression. After taking the mic and commenting on the 13-matra cycle, he then plays a short solo to show some of the contours of the unusual taal while the dancer watches. Kulkarni returns to the mic with an approving "kyaa baat hai" (lit. "what a thing")--a common interjection heard during North Indian performances--before asking the audio technician to turn down the sarangi and sitar and boost the level of the stage monitors. She then introduces a short tihai, which she recites and dances. In contrast to the bandish, which allowed for more upper body movement and interpretive expression, the tihai provides an opportunity to showcase her footwork and rhythmic dexterity. While I found Kulkarni's performance impressive, particularly her command of repertoire in the 13-matra cycle, Yogesh Gangani's tabla accompaniment provided the real thrill here. You'd have trouble finding a more engaged performer, and his attention to the dancer and overall stage presence enhanced Kulkarni's recital by keeping it energetic and exciting.

Mamta Maharaj

Mamta Maharaj, daughter of Birju Maharaj and the first female kathak professional from the Kalka-Bindadin lineage of Lucknow, was a clear fan-favorite at Vasantotsava 2022. Over the course of three nights, no one garnered more applause from the full auditorium. In this clip, Maharaj works in dhamar, a 14-matra cycle most commonly associated with the dhrupad genre of Hindustani music as well as kathak dance. Utpal Ghoshal, who supported Ragini and Yashaswani on night one, accompanies on tabla and Ragini Maharaj provides padhant from the riser. Mamta and Ragini recite the first composition together, then Ragini continues to recite as Mamta dances. The composition, which manipulates rhythm within dhamar in surprising ways before landing on the final sum, proves such a hit that a small, vocal contingent of the audience implores her to show it again. She obliges, and the second rendering elicits even more applause than the first. It goes to show you don't have to be young and shapely to impress on the kathak stage. True mastery supersedes appearance. Following the second iteration, Utpal da recites and performs a solo tabla composition to give Mamta a breather. The clip ends with an item she introduces as one of Maharaj-ji's very old compositions, saying she will try to do it justice. Based on the crowd's reaction, it's safe to say she succeeded.

Krishan Mohan and Ram Mohan Maharaj

Krishan Mohan and Ram Mohan are brothers, both sons of Pt. Shambu Maharaj, uncle of Birju Maharaj. As I understand the lineage, that places them, along with Birju Maharaj, in the seventh generation of the Kalka-Bindadin Gharana. Both dancers learned from their father, and Ram Mohan went on to study with Birju Maharaj as well. In this clip, the brothers show off a juganbandi (duet) in the sawaal-jawaab (lit. question-answer) style with their footwork. Krishan Mohan leads the exchange and appears the sharper of the two dancers, at least in terms of clarity of footwork and rhythmic precision. It's possible his floor mic was just dialed in better than Ram Mohan's, but regardless he seems more confident and his confidence translates into more articulate tatkar. Following the jugalbandi, a short pakhawaj solo ends the clip.

One of the noteworthy aspects of this performance was the absence of tabla. As I mentioned earlier, it's not unusual to see tabla and pakhawaj together on the kathak stage, but this was the first time I've seen pakhawaj used without tabla. If one drum is used for accompaniment it will generally be tabla, with the frequent addition of pakhawaj as desired by individual performers. Maybe I'm just biased towards pakhawaj at the moment because of my recent dive into learning the instrument, but I thought the dancers' decision to showcase it here proved effective. Tabla and pakhawaj have complementary sounds and comparable uses in dance accompaniment, but too often the pakhawaj gets lost behind the tabla when both play simultaneously. Without diving too deep into the history of the two drums in relation to kathak performance practice, the pakhawaj is often cited as the source of many kathak bols and repertoire items while the tabla has more recently become the favored drum for dance accompaniment in North India owing to its versatility and clarity of articulation. It strikes me as somewhat contradictory, however, that even when presenting dance repertoire based on pakhawaj strokes and vocabulary, the pakhawaj will often play a subservient role to the tabla even as the tabla approximates the language of the pakhawaj. This performance provided a glimpse into the pakhawaj's strengths as an accompanying instrument free of any sonic dueling with the tabla. I wish I'd had caught the name of the player, but alas it flew by in an undocumented moment.

Shovana Narayan

At 71 years old, Shovana Narayan closed out night two. By the time Narayan took the stage around 10:30, the crowd had thinned considerably from its peak during Mamta Maharaj's recital. Those who remained were rewarded with a memorable performance from one of kathak's premier practitioners. Narayan studied under Birju Maharaj and emerged as a world-class performer and teacher by the 1980s. This longer clip showcases her expressive dance (abhinaya) as she interprets the lyrics of a song text. In contrast to the tihais and various short compositions that showcase rhythmic virtuosity, abhinaya highlights a dancer's ability to express emotional subtlety using the face and upper body. Abhinaya is storytelling through dance, usually with the intention to embody and illicit specific bhava (moods or emotions), whereas the abstract rhythmic dance repertoire (nritta) has no true narrative function. Generally a performer will present both types of repertoire in a recital. The art of abhinaya, which is central to multiple Indian dance forms, can--in the case of kathak--be considered a vestige of past courtesan dance practices that inform contemporary performance practice. In kathak, the material used for expressive abhinaya frequently derives from songs and poetry related to the deity Krishna and his divine love with Radha, his consort. Historically, dancers' interpretations of this love blur lines between the devotional and the erotic, though as kathak has moved from the courts and salons to stages and recital halls, the devotional aspects tend to be emphasized and the erotic elements downplayed.

My final note here is percussive in nature. After all my talk about how pakhawaj generally gets overshadowed by tabla in accompanying kathak, the balance between Shakeel Ahmed Khan (tabla) and Mahaveer Gangani (pakhawaj) is commendable. Both instruments are audibly present in the mix, and each is given its moments to shine. Together they support the arc of the song and the ebbing and flowing of the dancer's physical intensity. I'm realizing I haven't provided any examples of the trend to which I keep referring, but they're out there. As of late, I've been watching a bunch of footage from the 1980s and the pakhawaj is barely audible in most of the recordings. Let's go ahead and consider these counterexamples.

April 22: Night Three

Tribhuwan Maharaj

Tribhuwan Maharaj, another grandchild of Birju Maharaj, opened the dancing on the final night of the festival. In these clips, one of his two tabla accompanists (on the right as we look at the stage) was his father, Jai Kishan Maharaj. As I'm sure you're noticing by now, Vasantotsava was a family affair for the Maharajs. And why not when hereditary professional dancers comprise the majority of your family? The second tabla player in the clips is Ram Vishwakarma. It is relatively uncommon to see two tabla accompanists playing simultaneously, though it happened several times throughout the festival, and twice on night three. The way they orchestrate it here, with Jai Kishan's tabla tuned lower, works well. The two drummers aren't stepping all over each other in frequency space. To that end, they also adopt different roles in the performance. Ram Vishwakarma holds the theka during the padhant and assumes the role of primary accompanist. Then when they play simultaneously, the low tabla sits in the mix more like a pakhawaj, reinforcing the tabla without interfering. In addition to playing tabla, Jai Kishan recites padhant to introduce the first composition and continues to recite while playing accompaniment on subsequent compositions. The second clip ends with a jugalbandi between Ram Vishwakarma and Tribhuwan. The dancer leads the sawaal-jawaab and the tabla follows. Jai Kishan claps the taal to keep the melodic accompanists locked in before joining on tabla for the climactic tihai. Like his father, Birju Maharaj, Jai Kishan is primarily a dancer but also trained as a percussionist. In the world of kathak, the two skills reinforce one another. 

Saswati Sen

Saswati Sen, who spent most of the weekend running the show, closed out the festival on Friday night. One of Birju Maharaj's most senior disciples, Sen has toured the world extensively and is a renowned figure in the international kathak community. At 68, she still actively teaches and performs in addition to handling a good deal of Kalashram's day-to-day affairs. Word has it, she and Birju Maharaj-ji were once lovers, though it's really none of my business either way. This clip shows Sen's expressive dance to yet another song about Krishna. The singer is Anirban Bhattacharya, who has been instrumental in helping me make connections in Delhi, including introducing me to Utpal Ghoshal, the tabla player on our right. Ghoshal, who is on staff at Kalashram as an accompanist, performed each night of the festival. This recording got cut short be several seconds by an unexpected slip on the finger. Forgive me. You didn't miss much.

I'll leave you with a clip of Saswati Sen playing a courtesan in the Lucknow court of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, taken from Satyajit Ray's 1977 classic film, Shatranj ke Khilari (The Chess Players). Sen dances to music composed by Birju Maharaj, himself a descendant of the courtly milieu the film depicts. I have no grand conclusion to tie up the loose ends, but somehow this scene puts it all in perspective for me.

The Day the Chilla Died

Well I gave it an honest try, but after three weeks of my forty-day practice pledge I'm waving the white flag in acknowledgement that present circumstances are not conducive to an arbitrarily rigid schedule. There's simply too much going on at irregular times these days to maintain a two-hour practice block each day. Having completed such a pledge twice before, I'm not viewing this concession as a defeat but rather as an acceptance of reality. The three weeks of ritualized practice helped me dig deeper into my riyaz, building momentum on tabla and getting off the ground with pakhawaj. I still intend to work towards the goals I set for myself at the beginning of April, and I plan to share some videos from the practice room in the coming weeks. Orienting my days around a fixed practice schedule while darting around Delhi for a range of engagements is simply not productive at this juncture. 

Between lessons and shows, there have been plenty of engagements as of late. I'm taking three lessons a week on average (one on tabla and two on pakhawaj) and that number looks set to increase this week when I start meeting with Ashish Gangani, a young pakhawaj player and dance accompanist. Wednesday night I saw him perform with a group of dancers at Kamani Auditorium and came away so impressed I decided I should contact him. The next morning during my tabla lesson, I told Utpal I hoped to meet Ashish sometime soon. Within five minutes he had dialed him up, told him about me, and handed me the phone. I introduced myself, we chatted briefly, and have since agreed to meet Tuesday evening. Sometimes it just works out like that.

In addition to attending Kalashram's music and dance festival, in hindsight last week was largely about making contact with the Ganganis. Tracing their ancestry to rural Rajasthan, the Ganganis are the central family of the Jaipur kathak gharana and come from a long lineage of hereditary dancers and percussionists. Kathak, tabla, and pakhawaj continue to be the professional inheritance of most male members of the family, and just recently a female Gangani took the stage in Delhi for the first time--the first time a woman from the lineage has performed kathak in public. After chatting with Ashish on Thursday, I went to Kathak Kendra Friday morning to meet with Rajendra Gangani, the presiding patriarch of the Gangani lineage and the leading exponent of Jaipur gharana kathak. Upon arriving, I was a little nervous given his stature in the dance world and the intimidation when approaching Kathak Kendra as a lone American for a meeting with one of the preeminent figures in Indian dance. Loren's guru, Pt. Divyang Vakil, had contacted Rajendra bhai on my behalf a couple weeks prior, and early last week I reached out to schedule the meeting.

While I was obtaining security clearance from the guards out front, a couple middle-aged Indian men entered the gate behind me. They turned out to be the musical accompanists for Rajendra's morning class, one of whom--Yogesh Gangani--I had seen perform at Kamani Auditorium just the previous night. Yogesh, Rajendra's younger brother, is an exceptional tabla accompanist. While I waited for Rajendra, I sat in a rehearsal studio across the hall and watched him warm up. I told him I'd enjoyed his performance at Kamani and asked him the name of thirteen-matra taal they'd presented (raas taal), which had been unfamiliar to me.

Once Rajendra was ready, a student came to fetch me and offered coffee or chai. I entered the room where Rajendra sat in the corner in arm armchair with a disciple bent down touching his feet in pranam. He warmly beckoned for me sit on the riser next to him, introduced me to the kneeling student (who soon left), and we began chatting in Hindi. Any apprehension or nerves dissolved in a matter of seconds and we settled into a calm, comfortable conversation over our coffee. As someone who is generally a little skeptical of guru culture, I must say that Rajendra's demeanor is contagious. The guru vibes are strong with him in the best sort of way. It's rare to meet someone who can make you feel like a better, more capable version of yourself just through the sheer nature of their presence. That was exactly how it felt sitting next to Rajendra Gangani. We spoke mostly in Hindi, with a little English peppered in here and there, and when it was time to end the meeting he invited me to sit in on the morning rehearsal. 

As we shifted back to the studio across the hall, Rajendra took a similar position in the armchair next to the accompanists' riser and motioned for me to sit on the riser next to the musicians. The singing, paan-chewing harmonium player sat directly to my left, so close I could look over his notes for each item. To his left sat Yogesh on tabla and the sarangi player sat at the far end of the riser. For an hour I just sat there soaking it all in. The senior students at Kathak Kendra are in the process of polishing twenty-minute solo performances for their exams in May. I saw one male dancer and one female dancer presenting their repertoire to the assembled company, and between items Rajendra would offer corrections or suggestions as needed. Sitting that close to Yogesh during the rehearsal was a treat, as he is truly the epitome of a hereditary dance accompanist. Once the second dancer finished, everyone took a break. I saw that as my moment to leave. I thanked Rajendra in Hindi, bent down to touch his feet in pranam, took the elevator down to the ground floor, and walked out front to find an auto waiting. We parted with plans to talk next week once he returns from a weekend performance in Uttar Pradesh. The takeaway was that I now have the green light to learn from the drummers in the family, of whom there are many. I'll start with Ashish and then see about meeting up with Fateh Singh, one of Rajendra's brothers who is also an accompaniment specialist on both tabla and pakhawaj.

Sometime this week I'll post my recap of Vasantotsava. First I need to consolidate several hours of video. Stay tuned.

Relief

The good: 

Today the high will remain below 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time in weeks. With a pleasant breeze blowing, 97 might as well be 77. Amidst an endless string of unbearable days, we'll take whatever we can get.

The bad: 

The pleasant breeze is full of dust. Air quality in Delhi remains "Poor," verging on "Very Poor," with little hope of improvement anytime soon. Today's cooling is but temporary respite on the road to even hotter temps. By late next week, we'll see highs well over 110. This pattern of increasing heat and dust will continue until monsoon arrives, which even by optimistic estimates remains some two months away. Til then, the air will grow hotter, dirtier, and progressively more humid.

Other news:

The domestic labor situation I described last week did not resolve as intended, but it did resolve. Pushpa now comes daily unless we arrange otherwise. In the course of becoming a regular fixture at Z-23A she has opened up considerably. We chat on and off when she's around--far more than I ever did with Reshma--and despite my struggles to maintain fluent conversational comprehension, she is patient with me. Chatting with her is quickly becoming the best language practice I get, and despite first impressions she is talkative and quite funny. The Jains, who are pure vegetarians, instructed Pushpa not to cook meat in the house. Upon learning that I love biryani, Pushpa (who also eats meat, though she told the Jains otherwise) offered to cook a mutton biryani at her home and bring it over for us. She has reiterated at least three times that the Jains can never know--it's our little secret. I've been eating biryani since last night and there's still plenty left for day three. She took my request to make it "bahut masaledar" (very spicy) at face value. Poor Kyle can barely handle it.

Reshma, alas, is no longer coming to clean. She showed up Monday afternoon, aware of the situation, but I explained anyway and offered her an apology. She didn't seem upset in the slightest and gave me a big smile--possibly just because I sounded like a fool. All she wanted in the end was compensation for her last two weeks of cleaning. As is her habit, she asked me to give whatever amount I thought appropriate. I reiterated that by my estimation I'd already given enough to cover her work to date, but in the end I offered another thousand rupees. Somehow that small gesture helped restore karmic balance to my universe, though I'm still sore with our landlords over how the affair transpired.

Tonight is the second of Kalashram's "Vasantotsava," a three-night music and dance festival at Kamani Auditorium. The event is held every spring (covid aside), but this year there is a certain gravity in commemorating Pt. Birju Maharaj, Kalashram's founder, as well as tabla great Subhankar Banerjee and legendary Hindustani vocalist Rajan Mishra. All three maestros died of covid, and disciples of all three will perform throughout the festival. The emphasis is on kathak dance, Kalashram being a dance institute first and foremost, and it comes as no surprise that Birju Maharaj-ji's descendants and disciples are the primary focus. Although the past month has been quite active on the research and lesson front, Vasantotsava is actually the first professional kathak program I've seen since arriving in February. Not a moment too soon. The lineup is loaded with heavy hitters, and with the help of my iPhone 13 I'm taking lots of quality video that should prove useful down the line. Full recap with clips to come.

Now for something completely different...

I ended up on the guest list for Norwegian DJ-Producer Alan Walker's Sunday night concert in Gurgaon through a friend of a woman my roommate met on a dating app here in Delhi. If it sounds random, it absolutely was. I had never even heard of Alan Walker, but apparently he's a bit of a YouTube sensation with a couple breakthrough hits over the past few years. Plenty of young Indians knew him and flocked to Sunburn Arena by the thousands to lose their minds during his ninety-minute set. I'm not one of these people who dislikes electronic dance music (EDM) on principle, but most of the music didn't really do it for me. Lord knows I've enjoyed my share of EDM over the years and almost certainly will again--it just wasn't my preferred flavor. Some of the remixes were admittedly pretty slick, but the general aesthetic was a touch too slick, sterile, and Northern European for my palate. I prefer my EDM raw, dirty, and unpredictable. Maybe I'm just showing my age. It wouldn't be the first time. The stage production, however, dwarfed anything I've seen in years. Regardless of how out of place I felt in a sea of Indian twenty-somethings dancing to music that didn't make me want to dance, I'm glad I witnessed the spectacle. As general practice, never say no to free concert tickets.

Qawwali for Easter

If Jesus did travel to India, it's historically impossible he could have listened to qawwali. The Sufi devotional song form, credited to Amir Khusrau, did not coalesce on the subcontinent until the late 13th century. That said, I have a hard time believing he wouldn't approve.

Happy Easter, Everybody.

 

Housework

A domestic situation bubbled to the surface this week that presents a unique opportunity for considering certain Indian social conventions, issues related to class and religion, and where we as foreigners of relative means fit into the equation. When Kyle and I moved into our third floor flat in Hauz Khas almost two months ago, our landlord, Anil, introduced us to Reshma, who he said would be available to clean our apartment as often as we wanted. Being American graduate students, and therefore quite unaccustomed to hiring domestic workers, we told him once a week should suffice. He looked horrified. Following minimal deliberation, he convinced us Reshma should come a minimum of twice per week. In no mood to protest, and given the relatively paltry expense, we agreed. After all, most middle- and upper-class Indian families have someone--likely a low-caste worker--wash dishes and clean the house five days a week. Twice weekly seemed reasonable enough, though the thought of staying home Monday and Thursday afternoons to sit around watching someone clean my living space on hands and knees rubbed me the wrong way. I accepted that this feeling was one that as a foreigner living in India I would probably just have to get over. Regardless of my own imported sense of social justice, Reshma needed employment. As official cultural ambassadors, we could at least pay her to clean our flat twice a week.

It didn't take long to get into a rhythm with Reshma. She reliably arrived around 12:30 pm, except when she didn't, and we slowly warmed to one another, particularly once Kyle departed for three weeks in Rajasthan. I'd move my drums and practice rug up onto the bed, allowing her to clean the floor in my bedroom, and she'd spend 45 minutes to an hour sweeping, dusting, and mopping all the floors in the apartment with a wet rag. I'll admit, with all the dust in the Delhi air, twice a week turned out to be a solid arrangement. Each time she returned, surfaces inevitably needed dusting and floors needed cleaning.

The first stirrings of an issue emerged one day when Anil-ji stopped by the apartment and ran his finger over a shelf only to find a displeasing amount of dust upon it. I defended Reshma's work and told him she'd be coming by that same afternoon. The dust on the shelf was no fault of hers, merely a consequence of passing time. A couple days later, he called me and tried to convince me to fire Reshma and hire someone he knew and liked to cook and clean for us, someone he insisted was trustworthy and would certainly do a better job. I resisted, explaining that I really didn't need a cook and that I was perfectly happy with Reshma's work. It wasn't what he wanted to hear, but he relented.

Reshma continued to come like clockwork every Monday and Thursday. At the end of March, I handed her a stack of 500-rupee notes for her efforts. Judging by her response, it was more than she expected to receive from us, as it was close to the monthly rate she would charge for coming every day. She thanked me and explained that her daughter would be getting married in December and that she needed the extra help. I told her per my calculations the sum should get us more than a month of cleaning, and asked her to just tell me when she expected to be paid again. We left it at that.

This Monday evening, Anil, who has been living elsewhere in Delhi while working on a building project, stopped by his second-floor apartment and called me on the phone to let me know he was downstairs. I invited him up and offered him a glass of cold water once he sat down in the living room. We chatted about the AC units (all running fine), various plumbing issues (mostly resolved), and the quality of our TV and internet connections (I asked him to please add more Hindi movie channels and a Hindi cricket channel to our existing package). Then, right on cue, he ran his forefinger over another surface--this time the wooden stand holding the glass table in the living room--and showed me the dust. He again brought up the cook, who he now referred to as "a good Hindu girl."

And there it was. In plain sight. It wasn't about the dust at all. Reshma, he explained, is a Muslim, and his wife is not too fond of her. I sensed they had been looking for a reason to dismiss her and bring Pushpa, the good Hindu girl, into our lives. I agreed to meet Pushpa, who conveniently was downstairs at that moment, and Anil called her up. He had her list all the types of food she could make, including shopping for ingredients, and I couldn't deny that having home-cooked meals a few times a week sounded like an upgrade from eating street food when it's 107 degrees outside. We arranged for her to come by the following morning to whip up a batch of paratha, which she did. Filled with potato, onion, green chili, and cilantro and served with the mango pickle I had purchased in the market that morning. They were delicious.

But what of Reshma? Anil assured me they would keep her on to do general cleaning on the property, which had been her role prior to our arrival. That made me feel incrementally better, and I agreed to the new arrangement on the condition that I wouldn't have to tell Reshma to stop coming. If that was what Anil wanted, he could handle it himself.

And so this morning, Thursday, I woke up with the vision of Pushpa and Reshma arriving here at the same time to do the same task. Pushpa planned to come around noon to clean and cook dal tadka, bhindi masala, and rice as requested. Reshma, as I mentioned, usually arrives by around 12:30. Had Anil delivered the news or would she continue to come per usual? Pushpa, it seems, has a habit of arriving earlier than expected. Today she rang the bell around 11:15 and left shortly after 12 with pots of food steaming on the table. Again, they were delicious. But having watched Reshma clean for weeks now, nothing about Pushpa's cleaning struck me as more thorough and meticulous. Reshma, running later than usual and thus sparing me from my nightmare scenario, arrived around 1:20 pm and has been working for most of the past hour. She clearly didn't receive the news.

So what to do now? I may have just written myself into a solution. While I feel strongly that it is not my place to actively defy the will of my landlords or upend indigenous social norms by playing "white savior," I do have some agency in this matter. Perhaps the answer is to keep Pushpa on to cook several meals a week, relieving her of any non-kitchen cleaning duties (which it doesn't appear she wants to do anyway), and continue the current housekeeping arrangement with Reshma. Maybe all it will take is doing nothing beyond continuing to pay them both and asking Anil-ji not to dismiss Reshma. Sure it's more domestic service than I need, or ever expected to have, but then again I didn't really choose any of this to begin with. Maybe my role in this seemingly sticky situation is merely to sit back, enjoy the home-cooked meals and sparkling clean apartment, and provide both of these women with reasonable income given my current means. Perhaps this is the way of the cultural ambassador. Who the hell knows.

Delhi Weather Report

 

It's the second week of April and daytime highs in Delhi are already approaching 110 F (43 C). Even native Delhiites are saying extreme heat has arrived earlier and more forcefully than usual this year. Mornings in Hauz Khas remain pleasant, but my routine of sipping coffee or chai on the front balcony, watching the birds, and soaking up sunlight before the heat bears down has lost its appeal. The heat comes earlier and earlier. I try to resist AC until the afternoon, typically cranking the window unit in my bedroom when I sit down to practice, but at this rate that ritual too may change. Moving around during the midday hours has become purely strategic. Surgical strikes to the market have replaced casual roaming, and errands (with the exception of lunch) are best run earlier or later in the day. There's no good reason to be outside between 11 am and 5 pm if you have any say in the matter.

On the days I must travel, the Delhi Metro has become my preferred means of conveyance. I started using the trains out of necessity, as my pakhawaj lessons with Mohan Shyam Sharma are held twice a week at his house in Badarpur, a section of southeast Delhi more accessible by metro than other forms of ground transportation. I've also started meeting Utpal da for tabla lessons at his house in Mehrauli, near Qutub Minar, several stops south from Hauz Khas on the yellow line. The stations--particularly those above ground--get rather warm, but the trains themselves tend to be magnificently air-conditioned. The Delhi Metro is only 27 years old and most of the trains are a good deal newer than that. They are far cleaner are more sophisticated than those I'm accustomed to in the United States, namely in San Francisco and New York. In New York you stumble upon a new train every once in awhile, but I don't think BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has even purchased a train since the 90s. In Delhi, every train you ride is state-of-the-art.

In 2017, I used the metro a few times while visiting Delhi for a weekend of sightseeing with friends. I remember being impressed, but now that I have a sense of its utility in my day-to-day life it will be hard to resist. It's cheap, efficient, and icebox cold. If we lost power I'd honestly consider joyriding just for for the air.  Back in February, Fulbright advised us to avoid the metro due to covid concerns and suggested auto rickshaws as the best alternative given the open-air design. I heeded the advice for six weeks and became fairly adept at hiring rickshaws, negotiating fares, and sometimes even chatting up drivers. These are all valuable skills, and I do love a rickshaw, but when it's 105-110 outside fighting your way through Delhi traffic in an open-air vehicle for any length of time loses its luster. When it's that hot, the logical course of action is to hire a rickshaw to the station, thus reducing a 10-minute walk to a 2-3 minute ride. That ride alone costs more than the metro fare, but we're still talking $1-2 for the entire commute, depending on the precise destination and whether rickshaws are required on both ends.

Today marks day nine of the chilla. As expected, I've had to shuffle my practice schedule here and there to accommodate other commitments. I forgave myself for practicing one hour instead of two Tuesday afternoon when I also had a lesson in Badarpur (and had suffered acute digestive distress throughout the morning hours). For the most part, I'm settling into a solid routine of spending the first hour of practice on basic strokes and and phrase combinations, then dedicating the second hour to cleaning specific repertoire. Some days I'll start the first hour with a little pakhawaj practice, but for the most part I'm tackling that in the mornings. After just one week, my vocabulary on the pakhawaj is still limited to the extent that there is only so much I can practice in one sitting. My attention tends to wander after about 30 minutes. That will change once I learn more material. Even given the limited material, pakhawaj practice makes for a peaceful morning meditation. I'll plan to post clips once I'm a little farther along, and I might as well post some tabla recordings while I'm at it. Maybe sharing a tabla solo will serve as the culmination of my current chilla. Plenty of time to think about that. For now, it's off to pick up a stack of clothes from our delightful dhobi, Radheshyam, and beat the heat with afternoon riyaz.

Dance Interlude

With Suman's younger daughter, Ananya, before her dance program

Swami leads the audience in casual yoga before said program

Sisters Dancing

Ananya, Suman, their car, and a cow

Life got busy and a thorough update will have to wait for the weekend. In the meantime, here's a glimpse of Ananya and Aanshi's dance program last Sunday. Suman's girls performed six minutes of kathak choreography together, of which I have shared approximately 36 seconds. 

Wishing Sandra Bain Cushman a joyous 64th from the other side of the world! Love you, Ma. For those keeping track of such things, this April 7th also would have been Ravi Shankar's 102nd and Billie Holiday's 107th.

Back with more soon.

 

It's All Happening

 

Lal Qila

Just two weeks ago I wondered if I'd ever break through the initial period of stasis to fill my schedule with consistent in-person research activities here in Delhi. Now I'm wondering if I've taken on too much too quickly. In reality, my current array of engagements is more or less exactly what envisioned when I arrived forty-four days ago. Getting these things off the ground takes time, especially when you're acclimating to life in a new country. And of course those early weeks weren't as static as they felt. They got me here.

Last week I posted about my first two interviews and the possibility of getting together with Utpal Ghoshal for tabla lessons geared towards kathak repertoire and dance accompaniment. Within hours of making that desire manifest, Utpal and I had scheduled a session at Kalashram for Thursday at 10 am. Thursday morning I packed up my tabla, walked the 750 meters door to door, and sat with Utpal da for an hour in the same rehearsal studio where we had met for the interview six days earlier. He started by asking me to play something for him, a pretty standard move in this world, so I launched into a Delhi gharana kayda I'd dusted off the previous afternoon for that explicit purpose. While I played, Utpal da nodded approvingly and commented a couple times about the quality of my hands. He made no attempt to alter the fundamentals of my technique, but gave me a little feedback regarding phrasing and stroke emphasis. He then taught a rela from his tabla guru, the late Subhankar Banerjee, and two kathak tihais he attributed to Birju Maharaj. Banerjee, a maestro of the Farrukhabad tabla gharana, was just 54 years old when he succumbed to covid last August in Kolkata. In a single calendar year Utpal da lost both his Gurus, Subhankar dada and Maharaj-ji. As we sat together at Kalashram, he taught me repertoire from both of them. The gravity of the situation was not lost on me. Around the one-hour mark, my capacity for absorbing new material began to fade and Utpal da and I parted with loose plans to meet at his house next week. That will save me hauling around tabla and it will save him a commute. Plus we'll be able to take our time.

Thursday afternoon I received an email from Shubha Chaudhuri at AIIS in Gurgaon alerting me that she was back in the office and would be happy to see me any time. We settled on Friday 2 pm, and after lunch yesterday I booked an Uber and set off for the institute in moderate South Delhi traffic (heavy traffic by  any other standard). When I arrived, Shubha was finishing her lunch. I waited several minutes in her office, and once she entered I shifted to a seat in front of her desk. We chatted for the better part of an hour about covid, life, and research. As tends to be the case, the connection face to face far exceeded that of our emails and initial zoom meeting. Kind of a fun aside, she knows my advisor Dard from when he was just a kid in the early 1980s. Shubha, who has been at ARCE (Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology) since 1982, worked closely with Dard's father, Dan Neuman, in those days. They even co-authored a book on the music of Rajasthan.

Before showing me around the facilities and introducing me to other staff, Shubha dialed up her friend Nirmalya Dey, an accomplished dhrupad singer in Delhi, to inquire about potential pakhawaj teachers for me. Pakhawaj, a barrel-shaped drum, is an ancestor of the modern tabla and its period of peak popularity predates the widespread embrace of tabla in North Indian court-music contexts. Its stroke vocabulary and repertoire is integral to kathak dance, though these days the pakhawaj is rarely used in dance accompaniment. Even so, I'm determined to learn the basics. The introductory email Shubha sent to Nirmalya several weeks earlier, as well as my follow-up message, had garnered no response. Who knows if he even checks his email. But when Shubha called yesterday he picked up the phone and the two of them chatted in Bangla for a few minutes. By the time they finished, Nirmalya had agreed to talk to Mohan Shyam Sharma, one of the leading pakhawaj players in Delhi (and by extension probably India, and the rest of the world for that matter). I left with Mohan-ji's contact info stored in my phone and decided to send a WhatsApp message while spacing out in the backseat on my long Uber ride back to Hauz Khas. Mohan called as I was whipping up an early dinner and we scheduled an initial meeting at his house in Badarpur for early Sunday afternoon. It's time to learn the Delhi Metro system.

Following the day trip south, last night culminated with a jaunt north to Lal Qila for the Shahid Parvez concert that had been on my radar for a couple weeks. After a few flat out refusals and attempts at price gouging, I found an autowala who didn't mind driving into the heart of Old Delhi during Friday rush hour--admittedly, a bit of a fools errand in hindsight. That said, no one could have anticipated the jam we encountered near Khan Market: an absolute standstill for 25-30 minutes with crawling traffic before and after. My driver chatted with a couple other autowalas nearby and they speculated roads had been closed for PM Modi's motorcade. The jam helped break the ice with my driver anyway and we did some sporadic chatting thereafter. The trip was a total mess, and I'm thankful for his good nature. All told, it took over 90 minutes to make it 15 kilometers from Hauz Khas up to Chandni Chowk. Without being asked, I volunteered an additional 50 rupees upon arrival and we parted as friends.

I hadn't realized beforehand that the concert was but one small part of the larger 10-day Red Fort Festival, which ends April 3rd. The carnival atmospheric paired strangely with the presentation of Hindustani music, right on down to the remote-controlled drone flying low overhead during the alap, but the illuminated Lal Qila made for a stunning backdrop. As support for my working theory regarding the general semi-competence of Indian audio engineers, the concert ended early in a catastrophic auditory meltdown. Sure, there were the expected low-end feedback issues early on, which they managed to resolve for the most part, but the climactic technical failure of the evening far surpassed anything I had  witnessed previously anywhere on earth. Some 10-15 minutes into the gat, after the tabla had entered, a series of terrible crackling sounds overtook the mix and the entire PA cut out in an instant. The musicians' hands were still moving, but no sound reached the back of the crowd. To their credit, the crew got things up and running again for a few minutes, but then it happened all over again. Immediately following the second incident, I saw Shahid Parvez packing his sitar and I knew we were through. The light show that followed--projected against Lal Qila, and infused as it was with hyper-nationalist narration of Indic civilizational history, really saved the evening. And as a bonus, the return trip to Hauz Khas took only 30 minutes. Go figure.

Today is my day of rest but also the first day of my Ramadan chilla, a forty-day pledge involving ritualized daily practice at the same time and same place with explicit focus on a specific goal. Ramadan (Ramzan) begins this evening. Though it only lasts a month, I will continue my chilla through May 11th. Ramadan and the chilla have nothing inherently in common, save perhaps a shared emphasis on physical discipline for the sake of transcendence. The timing just worked out this way. It will be third time I've undertaken such a pledge, dating back to the summer of 2016 in Madison, WI--the summer I started learning Hindi. The second chilla came amid deep quarantine in Bonny Doon, and with the camaraderie of my then-roommate Zack, April to May of 2020. Given the other demands on my schedule at present, and the importance of prioritizing research whenever possible, I will exercise some degree of flexibility regarding the timing of my daily practice. That's ok. I can play by my own rules here. With that in mind, my pledge is to practice two hours a day for forty days on my little Kashmiri rug, under my Ganesh murti, most likely with AC blasting in my bedroom from 2-4 pm. My focus will be on cleaning a 30-minute tabla solo that combines the repertoire I'm learning in my lessons with Utpal da along with the best of my repertoire from Loren and Guruji.

Let the games begin.