Burn slow: Ghazal evening

Deeply felt experiences have a habit of announcing their arrival at lightning speed. That first impact is so intoxicating that all your senses take leave. Just seconds before it, you could be doing something entirely mundane. Adjusting your seat or cleaning your glasses to see what’s in store. Then there’s that assault without intimation. Hooking, transfixing, transcending, divine. You are led by superior forces to unknown places and you can’t help but follow. Right brain 1, left brain 0.

How excited would you be if you were asked to attend a ghazal concert on a Saturday night? You can raise both your eyebrows or just one but perhaps you’ve not seen Jagjit Singh in concert. Personally, I was dismissive when my flatmate Harpreet suggested what we could do on our barely happening weekend. “Jagjit Singh Buddha ho gaya hai,” I had said. What cheek! I came back feeling younger. Eating my words has never felt more nutritious and delicious.

The concert was scheduled at 7.30 pm on Saturday. Negotiating the minefield that is Bangalore traffic, we managed to slip in by 7.25 pm. Already the pretty Punjabi faces were making it seem worth it. The audience was sizable, actually much more when I think back of my aforementioned indiscreet remark.

We sat without stepping on too many toes. The CEO of Idea Cellular (who was the main sponsor) trooped in. He discontinued mid-way what was to my mind a rather garrulous introduction. Stunningly, he wanted us to listen to how he felt about music. After all we had come to listen to hear Jagjit Sing(h) and not him speak. I saw a new form of protest: clapping. The audience clapped hard and with purpose. It was deafening enough to drown his own voice. At first he may have been mistaken that they were appreciating his drivel (causing him to up the ante) but soon got the hint. Loud enough hint. After rooting (pun intended) him out, we sat waiting.

The man who caused us to come, came in like one of his ghazals “ahista, ahista” (Softly, softly). He was dressed in a black Pathan suit and there was not a bit of celebrity in him. He almost wandered in as if at the end of a leisurely but edifying walk. He was presented the customary shawl and a colourful headgear I have only seen Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan wear in his black and white photos. Luckily, no lamps were lit.

“This year I will be completing 70 years,” he said before starting. “Dikhta nahi hoon naa! Magar hoon.” Wow, I thought, that makes it two of my favourite musicians turning 70 this year, Bob Dylan is the other. He proceeded to say that as celebrations he has planned 70 concerts this year all over the country. 70! That means one concert every week and two in some weeks. 70 does not rhyme with such energy and dedication. But he was never out of tune from the time he first danced his fingers on the harmonium that evening.

A little background on him. He produced his first album in 1976 and is actually a sardarji. He cut his hair during the 1984 Sikh massacres. He is married to a Bengali, Chitra Singh, who’s also a ghazal singer. In 1991 there only son Vivek died in an accident. Chitra Singh hasn’t sung since. In 2009, her daughter from her previous marriage committed suicide. Can a greater tragedy befall a human being, losing both your kids in your lifetime. Recently, I also read an interview of the late MF Husain saying he picked up his dead son’s body from a ditch and buried it (“what was pain after that,” he said). My solitary real life interaction, on this subject, with a parent who’d lost her only child – cruelly – led me to believe that this is one loss, the pain of which only grows as the years go. The best artists are tormented? Jagjit Singh also had a massive heart attack in 1997, after which he gave up smoking.

Perhaps, it’s just his art and the succor of humour that has kept Jagjit Singh going. That understated humour, mocking life was on show for most part of the evening. He said the cheesiest jokes so endearingly that we couldn’t help laughing. He had us so entranced that he could’ve said “2+2=5” and we would have laughed.

So he began, “Thukrao ke ki pyaar karo, main 70  ka hoon (he said seventy, not sattar)” (Spurn me or love me, Now I’m 70). The real lines are, “thukrao ke ki pyaar karo, main nashe mein hoon” (Spurn me or get me sated, I’m intoxicated). The evening wore on and not one emotion was left unexplored. Melancholia, wistfulness, love, separation, rebellion, playfulness. He was at once sorcerer, prophet, fellow-traveller, dervish. The couplet that got the maximum applause:

“Baghbaan, kaliyan ho halke rang ki;

Bhejni hai ek kamsin ke liye"                                                                                                           

Baghbaan means gardener, he said. He went on to translate whenever the Urdu got too serious. After that there was a torrent of hits. The audience sang along, sometimes alone. Stray members in the audience with paparazzi ambitions took pictures with the flash on, when they were asked not to.

In his songs we could hear a man who had lived his life fully and still yearning for more. And as the curtains drew to a close, we heard the baritone fade out, “kabhi phursat mein kar lena hisaab, ahista, ahista” (Where there’s time to kill, I’ll return what I owe, slowly, softly).