Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘So you’ve decided to make a reappearance, have you? Now that the university is closed I suppose I can expect to see my classes fill up again. Everyone talks about their devotion to music but during examination time they disappear like rabbits into their burrows.’

The Ustad then turned to the stranger. This was Motu Chand, the plump tabla player who as a rule accompanied Saeeda Bai. Ustad Majeed Khan, surprised to see someone whom he did not immediately recognize in place of his regular tabla player, looked at him sternly and said, ‘Yes?’

Motu Chand, smiling benignly, said, ‘Excuse me, Ustad Sahib, for my presumption. Your regular tabla player, my wife’s sister’s husband’s friend, is not well and he asked me if I would stand in for him today.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘Well, they call me Motu Chand, but actually—’

‘Hmmh!’ said Ustad Majeed Khan, picked up his tanpura from the rack, sat down and began to tune it. His students sat down as well, but Motu Chand continued standing.

‘Oh-hoh, sit down,’ said Ustad Majeed Khan irritably, not deigning to look at Motu Chand.

As he was tuning his tanpura, Ustad Majeed Khan looked up, wondering to which of the three students he would give the first fifteen-minute slot. Strictly speaking, it belonged to the boy, but because a bright ray from the skylight happened to fall on Malati’s cheerful face Ustad Majeed Khan decided on a whim to ask her to begin. She got up, fetched one of the smaller tanpuras, and began to tune it. Motu Chand adjusted the pitch of his tabla accordingly.

‘Now which raag was I teaching you — Bhairava?’ asked Ustad Majeed Khan.

‘No, Ustad Sahib, Ramkali,’ said Malati, gently strumming the tanpura which she had laid flat on the rug in front of her.

‘Hmmm!’ said Ustad Majeed Khan. He began to sing a few slow phrases of the raag and Malati repeated the phrases after him. The other students listened intently. From the low notes of the raag the Ustad moved to its upper reaches and then, with an indication to Motu Chand to begin playing the tabla in a rhythmic cycle of sixteen beats, he began to sing the composition that Malati had been learning. Although Malati did her best to concentrate, she was distracted by the entrance of two more students — both girls — who paid their respects to Ustad Majeed Khan before sitting down.

Clearly the Ustad was in a good mood once again; at one point he stopped singing to comment: ‘So, you really want to become a doctor?’ Turning away from Malati, he added ironically, ‘With a voice like hers she will cause more heartache than even she will be able to cure, but if she wants to be a good musician she cannot give it second place in her life.’ Then, turning back to Malati he said, ‘Music requires as much concentration as surgery. You can’t disappear for a month in the middle of an operation and take it up at will.’

‘Yes, Ustad Sahib,’ said Malati Trivedi with the suspicion of a smile.

‘A woman as a doctor!’ said Ustad Majeed Khan, musing. ‘All right, all right, let us continue — which part of the composition were we at?’

His question was interrupted by a prolonged series of thumps from the room above. The bharatnatyam dancers had begun their practice. Unlike the kathak dancers whom the Ustad had glared at in the hall, they did not wear anklets for their practice session. But what they lost in tinkling distraction they more than compensated for in the vigour with which they pounded their heels and soles on the floor directly above. Ustad Majeed Khan’s brows blackened and he abruptly terminated the lesson he was giving Malati.

The next student was the boy. He had a good voice and had put in a lot of work between lessons, but for some reason Ustad Majeed Khan treated him rather abruptly. Perhaps he was still upset by the bharatnatyam which sounded sporadically from above. The boy left as soon as his lesson was over.

Meanwhile, Veena Tandon entered, sat down, and began to listen. She looked troubled. She sat next to Malati, whom she knew both as a fellow-student of music and as a friend of Lata’s. Motu Chand, who was facing them while playing, thought that they made an interesting contrast: Malati with her fair, fine features, brownish hair, and slightly amused green eyes, and Veena with her darker, plumper features, black hair, and dark eyes, animated but anxious.

After the boy came the turn of a cheerful but shy middle-aged Bengali woman, whose accent Ustad Majeed Khan enjoyed mimicking. She would normally come in the evenings, and at present he was teaching her Raag Malkauns. This she would sometimes call ‘Malkosh’ to the amusement of the Ustad.

‘So you’ve come in the morning today,’ said Ustad Majeed Khan. ‘How can I teach you Malkosh in the morning?’

‘My husband says I should come in the morning,’ said the Bengali lady.

‘So you are willing to sacrifice your art for your marriage?’ asked the Ustad.

‘Not entirely,’ said the Bengali lady, keeping her eyes down. She had three children, and was bringing them up well, but was still incurably shy, especially when criticized by her Ustad.

‘What do you mean, not entirely?’

‘Well,’ said the lady, ‘my husband would prefer me to sing not classical music but Rabindrasangeet.’

‘Hmmh!’ said Ustad Majeed Khan. That the sickly-sweet so-called music of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs should be more attractive to any man’s ears than the beauty of classical khyaal clearly marked such a man as a buffoon. To the shy Bengali woman, the Ustad said in a tone of lenient contempt: ‘So I expect he’ll be asking you to sing him a “gojol” next.’

At his cruel mispronunciation the Bengali lady retreated entirely into a flustered silence, but Malati and Veena glanced at each other with amusement.

Ustad Majeed Khan, apropos of his earlier lesson, said: ‘The boy has a good voice and he works hard, but he sings as if he were in church. It must be his earlier training in western music. It’s a good tradition in its own way,’ he went on tolerantly. Then, after a pause, he continued, ‘But you can’t unlearn it. The voice vibrates too much in the wrong kind of way. Hmm.’ He turned to the Bengali woman: ‘Tune the tanpura down to the “ma”; I may as well teach you your “Malkosh”. One should not leave a raag half-taught even if it is the wrong time of day to sing it. But then I suppose one can set yogurt in the morning and eat it at night.’

Despite her nervousness, the Bengali lady acquitted herself well. The Ustad let her improvise a little on her own, and even said an encouraging ‘May you live long!’ a couple of times. If the truth be told, music mattered more to the Bengali lady than her husband and her three well-brought-up sons, but it was impossible, given the constraints of her life, for her to give it priority. The Ustad was pleased with her and gave her a longer lesson than usual. When it was over, she sat quietly to one side to listen to what was to follow.

What followed was Veena Tandon’s lesson. She was to sing Raag Bhairava, for which the tanpura had to be retuned to ‘pa’. But so distracted was she by various worries about her husband and her son that she began to strum it immediately.

‘What raag are you studying?’ said Ustad Majeed Khan, slightly puzzled. ‘Isn’t it Bhairava?’

‘Yes, Guruji,’ said Veena, somewhat perplexed herself.

‘Guruji?’ said Ustad Majeed Khan in a voice that would have been indignant if it had not been so astonished. Veena was one of his favourite pupils, and he could not imagine what had got into her.

‘Ustad Sahib,’ Veena corrected herself. She too was surprised that in addressing her Muslim teacher she had used the title of respect due to a Hindu one.