Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

The unmistakable voice of Ustad Majeed Khan singing Raag Miya-ki-Todi filled their ears. He had just begun singing and was accompanied only by the tabla and his own tanpura.

It was glorious music: grand, stately, sad, full of a deep sense of calm. They stopped gossiping and listened. Even an orange-crested hoopoe stopped pecking around the flower bed for a minute.

As always with Ustad Majeed Khan, the clean unfolding of the raag occurred through a very slow rhythmic section rather than a rhythmless alaap. After about fifteen minutes he turned to a faster composition in the raag, and then, far, far too soon, Raag Todi was over, and a children’s programme was on the air.

Ishaq Khan turned off the radio and sat still, deep more in trance than in thought.

After a while they got up and went to the AIR staff canteen. Ishaq Khan’s friends, like his brother-in-law, were staff artists, with fixed hours and assured salaries. Ishaq Khan, who had only accompanied other musicians a few times on the air, fell into the category of ‘casual artist’.

The small canteen was crowded with musicians, writers of programmes, administrators, and waiters. A couple of peons lounged against the wall. The entire scene was messy, noisy and cosy. The canteen was famous for its strong tea and delicious samosas. A board facing the entrance proclaimed that no credit would be given; but as the musicians were perennially short of cash, it always was.

Every table except one was crowded. Ustad Majeed Khan sat alone at the head of the table by the far wall, musing and stirring his tea. Perhaps out of deference to him, because he was considered something better than even an A-grade artist, no one presumed to sit near him. For all the apparent camaraderie and democracy of the canteen, there were distinctions. B-grade artists for instance would not normally sit with those of superior classifications such as B-plus or A — unless, of course, they happened to be their disciples — and would usually defer to them even in speech.

Ishaq Khan looked around the room and, seeing five empty chairs ranged down the oblong length of Ustad Majeed Khan’s table, moved towards it. His two friends followed a little hesitantly.

As they approached, a few people from another table got up, perhaps because they were performing next on the air. But Ishaq Khan chose to ignore this, and walked up to Ustad Majeed Khan’s table. ‘May we?’ he asked politely. As the great musician was lost in some other world, Ishaq and his friends sat down at the three chairs at the opposite end. There were still two empty chairs, one on either side of Majeed Khan. He did not seem to register the presence of the new arrivals, and was now drinking his tea with both hands on the cup, though the weather was warm.

Ishaq sat at the other end facing Majeed Khan, and looked at that noble and arrogant face, softened as it appeared to be by some transient memory or thought rather than by the permanent impress of late middle age.

So profound had the effect of his brief performance of Raag Todi been on Ishaq that he wanted desperately to convey his appreciation. Ustad Majeed Khan was not a tall man, but seated either on the stage in his long black achkan — so tightly buttoned at the neck that one would have thought it would constrict his voice — or even at a table drinking tea, he conveyed, through his upright, rigid stance, a commanding presence; indeed, even an illusion of height. At the moment he seemed almost unapproachable.

If only he would say something to me, thought Ishaq, I would tell him what I felt about his performance. He must know we are sitting here. And he used to know my father. There were many things that the younger man did not like about the elder, but the music he and his friends had just listened to placed them in their trivial perspective.

They ordered their tea. The service in the canteen, despite the fact that it was part of a government organization, was prompt. The three friends began to talk among themselves. Ustad Majeed Khan continued to sip his tea in silence and abstraction.

Ishaq was quite popular in spite of his slightly sarcastic nature, and had a number of good friends. He was always willing to take the errands and burdens of others upon himself. After his father’s death he and his sister had had to support their three young brothers. This was one reason why it was important that his sister’s family move from Lucknow to Brahmpur.

One of Ishaq’s two friends, a tabla player, now made the suggestion that Ishaq’s brother-in-law change places with another sarangi player, Rafiq, who was keen to move to Lucknow.

‘But Rafiq is a B-plus artist. What’s your brother-in-law’s grade?’ asked Ishaq’s other friend.

‘B.’

‘The Station Director won’t want to lose a B-plus for a B. Still, you can try.’

Ishaq picked up his cup, wincing slightly as he did so, and sipped his tea.

‘Unless he can upgrade himself,’ continued his friend. ‘I agree, it’s a silly system, to grade someone in Delhi on the basis of a single tape of a performance, but that’s the system we have.’

‘Well,’ said Ishaq, remembering his father who, in the last years of his life, had made it to A, ‘it’s not a bad system. It’s impartial — and ensures a certain level of competence.’

‘Competence!’ It was Ustad Majeed Khan speaking. The three friends looked at him in amazement. The word was spoken with a contempt that seemed to come from the deepest level of his being. ‘Mere pleasing competence is not worth having.’

Ishaq looked at Ustad Majeed Khan, deeply disquieted. The memory of his father made him bold enough to speak.

‘Khan Sahib, for someone like you, competence is not even a question. But for the rest of us. . ’ His voice trailed off.

Ustad Majeed Khan, displeased at being even mildly contradicted, sat tight-lipped and silent. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts. After a while he spoke.

‘You should not have a problem,’ he said. ‘For a sarangi-wallah no great musicianship is required. You don’t need to be a master of a style. Whatever style the soloist has, you simply follow it. In musical terms it’s actually a distraction.’ He continued in an indifferent voice: ‘If you want my help I’ll speak to the Station Director. He knows I’m impartial — I don’t need or use sarangi-wallahs. Rafiq or your sister’s husband — it hardly matters who is where.’

Ishaq’s face had gone white. Without thinking of what he was doing or where he was, he looked straight at Majeed Khan and said in a bitter and cutting voice:

‘I have no objection to being called a mere sarangi-wallah rather than a sarangiya by a great man. I consider myself blessed that he has deigned to notice me. But these are matters about which Khan Sahib has personal knowledge. Perhaps he can elaborate on the uselessness of the instrument.’

It was no secret that Ustad Majeed Khan himself came from a family of hereditary sarangi players. His artistic strivings as a vocalist were bound up painfully with another endeavour: the attempt to dissociate himself from the demeaning sarangi tradition and its historical connection with courtesans and prostitutes — and to associate himself and his son and daughter with the so-called ‘kalawant’ families of higher-caste musicians.

But the taint of the sarangi was too strong, and no kalawant family wanted to marry into Majeed Khan’s. This was one of the searing disappointments of his life. Another was that his music would end with himself, for he had never found a disciple whom he considered worthy of his art. His own son had the voice and musicianship of a frog. As for his daughter, she was musical all right, but the last thing that Ustad Majeed Khan wanted for her was that she should develop her voice and become a singer.