In my early childhood I went to Professor Dr. D.T. Joshi to learn Indian classical music. He was a Marathi Brahmin. I can still remember the sacred thread – upabeet – dangling across his body when Muktida, his attendant-cum-cook removed his fatua and bathed him in the sun, under a bark-peeling guava tree in the courtyard.
Joshiji was very fond of sheek-kabab. He made it a point that sheek-kababs must be bought from Hamidia Muslim Restaurant at the Ranigunj Bazaar four-crossing, because of its fame in beef-made sheek-kabab.
No beef, no kabab – he used to say very often. So he sent his disciple Golam Imam to Hamidia to bring him beef-kabab.
Golam Imam and Shampa Reja, the other disciple from Bangladesh who stayed at Joshiji’s Kalibazaar residence for a long time to take lessons in Indian classical music, organized Saraswati puja with a spirit of unedited joy and spiritual solemnity. We, the other students, enjoyed the puja-day so much as to lament, at the end of the day, how and why the time should slip away so soon.
Joshiji wanted to be buried in the garden of Golam Imam. In the absence of any written direction from his end (he barely could write because of his paralysed hands; it is the reason why a sitarist in him was forced to become a singer), his last wish remained unrewarded. He was cremated at a burning ghat in Burdwan. The whole of Burdwan, as it seemed, descended on the sole road to Nirmal Jhil, the smashan, to carry Professor Joshi’s lifeless body. The seventy-two year old musician, whose disciples included Ustad Vilayat Khan, Rabindrasangeet exponent Kanika Bannerjee, Geetoshree Sandhya Mukherjee, among others, was consigned to flames, on the bank of river Banka.
Baba Alauddin Khan, the guru of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Pandit Ravishankar, used to perform Kalipuja at his home like a devout Hindu.
Hari Om Tatsat – Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan used to end his programme with this bhajan. A deep calm blessed the audiences after a night-long musical odyssey as Ustadji wove on his tonal magic.
Ustad Bismillah Khan – the iconic sehnai player performed namaaz five times a day, like a puritan Muslim. He was a regular at Kashi’s Biswanath temple during its daily puja. His sehnai blended with ringing bells of temple as Ganga flowed on serenely at the back.
This is my India. Our India. This is real. This is no dream. Nobody wants the real to turn to a distant dream.
Md. Sahid. Awake! Let your hockey stick dodge past the opponents with your erstwhile colleagues: M. Somaya, Surjeet Singh, Mervyn Fernandez… to spread out to the field…to broaden the field against heavy odds to win it for India; the field is getting narrower day by day. Alarmingly.