Mukul Shivputra

Attended a concert by Mukul Shivputra, Kumar Gandharva's son, a few days back at Yashwant Sabhagrah.

Few sons of gifted fathers grow out of the long shadows cast by their illustrious parents. We’ve all grown up listening to Kumar Gandharva’s distinctive music in awe…can’t think of a longer shadow than that to grow out of.

Before the concert we talked about how so many sons and disciples of the classical music maestros seem like pale imitations of the original. They imbibe the style and technique but the creative genius is missing.

I had heard a lot about the reclusive Mukul Shivputra…don’t know how much of it was truth and how much, hearsay. That he has spend the last 20 yrs like a sanyasi in the temples of Madhya Pradesh, that he sung only in temples for many years, also that he had addiction problems, had performed rarely in his lifetime but still was rumored to be one of the most talented singers of Hindutani classical music. We were curious to hear for ourselves…..almost expecting to be disappointed. The organisers hadn't even announced his name after earlier performances. Heard whispers going around...'has he not turned up !'. He also had a reputation for being quite the infant terrible and not turning up for concerts, they said. However, to our relief, when the curtains opened after the break, there he was tuning the tanpuras.

His first notes poured in and they totally captivated us. There were no calisthenics to show off his prowess...the raag poured forth, mellifluous and smooth. A beautiful and delicate fabric of the Jaijaiwanti was woven. Often singers show off with complicated ‘alaaps’ and ‘taans’ to impress listeners, not realizing that this sometimes violates the very nature and mood of the raag. Mukul is clearly a maestro and he did not need to do that. I would say his Jaijaiwanti was remarkable and up among the very best.

His style is clearly different from his father, with clear influences of the dhrupad, dhamaar gaayaki. You don’t feel like you are listening to ‘junior’ but a ‘Pandit’ who has spent a lifetime in ‘saadhana’.

He ended what felt like a short performance with the Bhairavi. The Bhairavi, to me, evokes a feeling of completion; a feeling of finishing one journey and setting off on another longer sojourn. It has both sweetness of having enjoyed a great time together and the grief of parting. To me, Bhimsen’s rendition of ‘Babul mora….naihar chooto jaye….’ is the classic Bhairavi. Mukul ended his performance with a Bhairavi so brief and piquant and of such heart-rending finality…. that we sat numb in our seats….forgetting to clap, craving for more!!

I will return to listen to Mukul Shivputra if he visits our city again….I want to hear him sings the more aggressive ragas, the introspective ones and also the playful ones.
Most of our stalwarts of Hindutani classical vocal music like Bhimsen Joshi, Kishori tai, Prabha Atre, Pandit Jasraj are 75 +….they have their best years behind them!
It feels good to know that we have gifted singers like Mukul to listen to for the years to come.

Two Divas on International Women's day

Today, on international women’s day, I want to recount an evening with two Granddames of Indian classical music and theatre respectively – Kishore Amonkar and Vijaya Mehta. The occasion was a the publication of Kishori’s book ‘Swararthmani’.

Gaan-saraswati Kishori is 77 yr old and is one of the most eminent singers of Hindustani classical music of our times. Vijaya Mehta, 75 yr old, theatre actor, director and director of NCPA has left an indelible mark on Indian theatre, experimenting with various indigenous and international theatre forms.

It was privilege to listen to these women in discourse with each other….I don’t know if the younger generations would ever have such an opportunity.

They talked of defining moments when they felt a oneness with their art and which left lasting impressions on their lives. Kishori, when she sung the Raag Baageshari once as a young girl had the experience which changed her life. While she sat to do her daily riyaaz in a very jovial and happy mood, she ended up feeling very despondent and introspective after her riyaaz. It was then that she realized that it was the very essence and ‘bhaav’ of the Raag Baageshri which had seeped into her mind ….that the ‘Raag’ was a living, breathing entity……had a life of it’s own and was not just a sequence of notations. Thus she stressed that its important when singing to immerse oneself and to be one with the soul of the ‘Raag’. She say’s; ‘I realized that even if I die, the Raag Bageshshri will be alive and will thrive through other voices…I’m just the instrument”

Vijaya Mehta recounted how, once as a novice actor, she had arrived early for a rehearsal of a play….she was alone in the theatre and she had this out of body experience where the stage, the light beams, the gentle swaying of the curtains, the silence in the auditorium made her feel part of the ‘Natya bramha’ (the cosmos of theater), she felt it breathing with her and had tears streaming down her cheeks. She had to strive to seek to seek a oneness with it everytime she performed/ directed plays on the stage.

Vijaya Mehta talked about attaining ‘Solititude in Public’ with every person in the audience connecting individually with the artist/ performer and both the performer and listener forgeting their physicality. Like emotional memories where some sensory stimulus like a the smell of new rain for example can evoke old memories so vividly complete with sounds, textures, colors, smells and emotions …..in the same manner once an actor becomes one with a character he/she should be able create an environment which is so alive to the audience they become totally engrossed in what’s happening on the stage.

The two women who have striven for excellence and realization in their art, embodied ‘Streeshakti’ at its most vibrant and

vital at 75 +.

Running out of time !

Quoting some provocative thoughts that appeared in an article in the 24 Jan, 2009 issue of Tehelka, by Prerna Singh Bindra

"Upto 4 species go extinct every hour. If we want to preserve our world, and ourselves, we must act immediately. An estimated 99.9 percent of all the species that have ever appeared on this planet are now gone forever."
"Biodiversity is vital for the survival of life on earth. Everything is linked, nothing exists in isolation, but instead in a symbiotic relationship. A break in a crucial link in the chain and life as we know it would collapse like the proverbial house of cards"
"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left", was Albert Einstien's apocalyptic vision.

The Forgotten Temple

I had never heard of this 12th century temple before I stumbled upon pictures on Flickr and was totally entranced. I just had to visit the temple soon and my wish was finally fulfilled.

Though, the guide books say 60 kms from Kolhapur, it took a much longer time to drive down as most of the road meanders through small villages. It was sugarcane harvest season and every now and then bullock carts loaded with sugarcane would block the one-lane roads and we would have to patiently cool our heels and let them pass before driving on. The tourists obviously have not discovered this place yet.

It was harvest season and driving through rippling fields of millet, ripe yellow sunflowers, dense sugarcane and cool banana plantations made us forget the blistering afternoon heat.
This was real village life untouched by urban ugliness. Old fashioned red roofed houses with wells in the courtyard and the beautiful white flowering ‘chapha’ trees gracing the courtyards. Bullocks instead of tractors tilled the farms and not a single car zipped past us.

Khidrapur really is a very small village with only a couple of tea stalls outside the temple complex. Stepping through the simple stone entrance, the sight that great your eyes leaves you spell bound. My teenage daughter, who usually greets new places with the bored cynicism typical of a teenager, was speechless and just wandered around touching the smooth, time worn stone structure with reverence. The beauty of the old stone temple takes your breath away.


The lone guide roaming the premises soon spotted us and gave us his spiel on the temple history and mythology. It was a wondrous story... the myth behind the beautiful, ancient stone temple. Lord Shiva is bequeathed with an unusual name here. ‘Kopeshwar’- the furious one and never was a name more befitting to his true nature. The story goes that his wife visits her father, King Daksha. She is insulted when he insults her husband. (Shiva- the ascetic, who lives in the rarified mountains of the Himalayas, with his austere and almost frightening demenear, he who gets punch drunk with his followers and dances the wild, abandoned ‘tandav’, has a serpents around his neck, adorns his body with the ashes of the dead and carries the river Ganga in the wild, matted locks on his head was not know to be the most genteel of Gods.) She is angry and she jumps into the ‘Yagna’ and immolates herself. Shiva infuriated on hearing this starts emiting tremendous heat. The legend says that temple was built to cool him down.

According to the guidebook,this temple was built by three generations of kings, the Shilahar kings- Gandaraditya, Vijayaditya and Bhoj-2 between 1109 and 1178 ad. There are inscriptions in Devanagri in the temple to support this. It's also one of the few temples where both the shaivas and vaishnavas, who are arch rivals, come together in worship.

Step into its cool precincts and marvel at the beautiful circular swarga mandap which is most unusual in its architecture. There are twelve beautiful tapering pillars which support the stone ceiling that is open to the skies. The Sabhamandap, Antaralkaksha and Garbhagriha, which is almost entirely in darkness, follow. The guide book informs us that the temple is adorned with ‘105 elephants and 95 pillars and hundreds of sculptures from the Shiv charitra, Mahabharata, Ramayana and flowers, trees, birds, human figurines.'

Unfortunately, the sculptures are badly mutilated by Islamic invaders in the later centuries. The story goes that one of Aurangazeb’s progeny strayed when wandering around on her own and came across this temple. She was so entranced that she refused to leave the temple complex and go with her attendants. The Emperor came personally to fetch her. She requested him not mutilate the temple and mar its beauty and so the temple remained unscathed from the otherwise merciless Aurangazeb’s sabre. It was Khyder Khan a later invader, who supposedly mutilated the carvings on the temple and the cut almost all the elephant’s trunks. There is no accurate historical record of this, though. Whoever destroyed it, you feel pained to see such beauty marred and mutilated. The irony is that the village of Wadi-Kopeshwar later came to be known as Khidrapur after this cruel invader.

Though one does feel that this treasure should be appreciated by many, the thought of tourists invading in hordes is distressing. I want to visit atleast one more time before that happens.

Street gastronomia

Paani puri is an Indian snack that should ideally only be had on the streets. This photo shows a sanitised version served in the food court of a mall. Notice the plastic gloves worn by the guy, the bottle of mineral water and the sparkling clean utensils. No fun !!

I attempt to describe this snack with much trepidation because one only just has to eat it to understand what it is all about. Its not as much a gastronomic delight as its a tangy gastronomic sensation !

These crisp fried rounds (puris, which you can see in the picture) are punctured with a finger and filled with steamed lentils, boiled and spiced potatoes and what have you. Then these are dipped in a sweet sour chutney (made of tamarind, dates, jaggery and other tangy spices). Finally this puri is dipped in the pot containing the 'paani' -spiced water. (which he is doing here). What goes into the paani is a trade secret the paanipuri walas never reveal and you can never get it just right at home). Then with the water brimming over the puri you are to pop the puri whole into your mouth, crunch on it and just drown in the sensation.
I feel no-one makes Paani Puri like the Bumbaiyya panditji - something about the water here :) I think ! Its not for the squeamish and those prone to stomach infections though. When I was new to the city and was trying it for the first time I choked on a puri and stayed away from it until I could muster enough courage to try it again!

P.S- I saw an interesting journey into evolution of Indian street food on a News Channel on TV, the other day by veteran journalist Vinod Dua. He took us to the streets of old Delhi which still bear some traces of Moghul culture in its old buildings and street shops. There are some shop in the food steet there which have been in the business for 7 generations and still use the same recipes. Paani puri seems to have originated in the Moghul times when there was a water infection in the city and people added some spices known for their digestive properties (like cumin powder, black salt) to the drinking water.

The ‘Kawaii’ Kraze in Japan

(I clicked this photo in a suburban Mumbai mall. It was their monsoon decoration theme and seemed, with its pastel colours, an apt illustration for this blog post)

Young women squealing –‘Kawaiiiii’ in a high pitch, long drawn out voice is what you will hear most commonly in Japan. Kawaii means cute and cute seems to be the all pervading trend in Japan. It’s not so much a wave as a tsunami and 'Kawaiiness' seems almost embedded in their culture.

The most popular fallout of Kawaii – the ‘Hello Kitty’ motif, adorns lunch boxes, clothes, office stationary, even kitchen appliances. Pink is the favorite color and several corporates have build multi million yen empires fuelling the Kawaii trend.

There seems almost an obsession with being cute with Japanese women: Kawaii frilly pastel shirts, pink lipstick, butterfly hair bands, hello kitty wallets. Women talk in cute squeaky voices, pout, act silly and strike affective poses.

Feminists strongly opine that the traditional male centric Japanese culture attempts to keep its women dependant, immature, simpering to keep them from becoming assertive like western women.

There is a contrasting point of view however, which thinks these ‘Kawaii’ women are material girls….with their unashamed consumerism and self indulgence!! Young women more often than not live with their parents, save on housekeeping expenses and splurge on branded clothes, cosmetics and foreign holidays. They don’t want to get married and follow the conventional Japanese ‘home and hearth’ dictum.

Isn't that in keeping with the world ! Women all over world are becoming consumerist with a vengeance and Japanese women have just given consumerism a 'Kawaii' twist !!

Change the Way the World sees you......

...BE AN IT PROFESSIONAL !!

This Ad on a bus in Mumbai seemed bang on....pressing the buttons of almost every young Indian students aspirations !!

Ironically, the people sitting in the bus seemed to symbolise those who have actually missed the new economy bus; (the beneficiaries being the new IT professionals with their swanky cars, five figure salaries and jet setting lifestyles); and are stuck with socialist India's shackles.

A man who had worked for 30 yrs of his life said despondently, " I finally paid off my apartment mortgage after working for so many years and it was my biggest achievement but today my son (the IT professional) has bought an apartment and a car in just two years of working and is planning a 'foreign' honeymoon. I feel like a failure."

Today's Indian youngster does not rebel against parental restrictions...she does not have the time....she joins coaching classes paid for by parents, studies long hours...clears her exams and gains her coveted IT degree which is going to be her passport to freedom and a lifestyle which her parents didn't even dream about.

'India didn't benefit only from the dot-com boom, it benefitted even more from the dot-com bust' say's Thomas Friedman.
SO BE AN IT PROFESSIONAL OR IF YOU CAN'T MAKE THE MARK ATLEAST JOIN A BPO !