At half past six on a Sunday morning, the municipal sweeper leans on his broom and watches laggards rush into the open foyer of Ravindra Natya Mandir. They are a motley bunch: silver-maned couples swaddled in mufflers and shawls, blank-faced kids rubbing sleep from their eyes, fitness freaks in headbands and shorts who jog to their seats in the Kala Prangan. “Kahaan kahaan se aate hain yeh log”, he mumbles perhaps, struck by the absurdity of people choosing to battle sloth and slumber at dawn.
“Yeh log” come from Thane and Vasai and Walkeshwar and Kalyan – many by the first trains of the day – drawn by their abiding love for Hindustani classical music.
The first row of plastic chairs is occupied by musicologists and musicians. Others settle into seats near their “concert friends”. The younger, fitter lot sit cross-legged on the red carpet, right in front of the stage. They can all read the dedication engraved on the statue of polymath Pu La Deshpande: “tujhyaasaarkha tuch aanandyaatri”.
How does one describe the experience of listening to an early-morning exposition of an ancient, improvisatory form of music? Should I begin with how the vocalist blends his voice with the drone of the tanpura, then slowly, delicately, masterfully glides up the scale as he weaves an emotive tapestry of sound? Shall I mention how the harmonium player’s fingers dance across the keys, mirroring every expression and shift in voice? How can I leave out the tabaliya’s thoughtful, measured support, providing a rhythmic basis to an hour-long explication of a sombre melody? Did I even notice the first fine strokes of the sun’s brush on the night sky, broadening into lavish golden swathes that light up the heavens as the music builds into a magnificent crescendo?
I have been on an Anand-yatra of my own.
—By arrangement with citystory.com
