12 February 2003, 11:36pm IST
Bindu Chawla.
My father, Pandit Amarnath, would often tell us this story: His guru, Ustad Amir Khan Saheb, was an adolescent when a famous musician visited their home. Mid-conversation, the visitor said to his father, Ustad Shahmir Khan Saheb: “I have ‘crossed’ the ocean of music!” To this, Amir retorted: “You may have crossed the ocean of music, but have you surfed enough to know at which spot how much water flows?”
No nada-yogi has, to this day, been able to say that he has ‘completed’ his sadhana in music. Sadhana can complete us, but is in itself beyond completion. Through sadhana, siddhi and sama-dhi, we merge into the ocean of music, but we never ‘cross’ it. Even as a child, Ustad Amir Khan Saheb seemed to have an inner knowledge of such matters. A deeply contemplative boy, he was ever absorbed in the ocean of nada, its highs and lows, aware of the cosmic play of swaras. He went on to found the Indore gharana of Hindustani classical music, creating a singing style that became a gayaki of the anahada nada — the unheard sound. To tell us the inner and outer secrets of his style, Pandit Amarnath would repeatedly draw our attention to the use of mauna or silence in the singing of his ustad. A deeply creative silence founted each phrase of his music.
How was one to ‘listen’ to this silence? Through the tanpura. The tanpura was a symbol of the anahada. Singing a phrase, then allowing the tanpura to take over and ‘dictate’ the next phrase — that was the technique. This interim silence provoked and stimulated more and more new phrases. Thus Khan Saheb ‘fashioned’ the ‘silent phrase’ in his singing, which Pandit Amarnath would refer to as the thinking or working out of the pause, or the nyas, in the entire phraseology of the alap or slow improvisation of his gayaki. When in the name of music silence finds an antonym, it is referred to as sound. But when in the name of music silence finds its synonym, that is referred to as nada yoga, the yoga of music or sound.
One night after dinner, guru and shishya were taking a walk. Khan Saheb had his right arm around the shoulder of the young man, of whom he was both proud and fond. They were walking slowly. Normally, Khan Saheb’s silence would speak and communicate everything to the initiated, and there would often be no need for a verbal dialogue. But today his silence, directed towards his shishya, expressed that he wished to say something. Soon he stopped, and said: “My son, every night at bedtime, hum the raga which is circling in your mind, before you sleep. If there is any doubt in your mind, keep thinking about it till you fall asleep. In the morning it shall have been resolved...” Were the answers lying buried in one’s soul?
I recall a khayal bandish created in the raga Bahaduri Todi by Pandit Amarnath: Pratham bhor jage, jage chatur sujan, Antaryami lekha baanche, suniyo hukam subhan. “At first dawn awa-kes, awakes the wise man, His inner self taking karmic accounts, O listen to the glory of the Divine Word!”
All night we speak to God. And when we have been heard, in the morning God begins to speak to us, through us... This is the inner process that was at work when Ustad Amir Khan Saheb sang. He appeared so deeply absorbed in his tanpura. But the way his music was being ‘heard’ and being ‘answered’ it was as if the ‘Oversoul’ had chosen to sing through him. That is why the Indore style is also known as a meditative style — which suffuses itself with the glamour of the spirit, referred to as khumar or intoxication. And that is why Ustad Amir Khan Saheb’s music unfailingly intoxicates listeners even today.
(Today is the 29th Barsi of Ustad Amir Khan Saheb)
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