While the select few from the Hindustani Classical Music world, especially those performers and aficionados from the 60+ generation, need no introduction to Smt. Kausalya Manjeshwar, or Kausalya Paachi, to me, I think I still owe one to her. Having said that, I lay no claims to being perfect, complete or politically correct.
Kausalya Paachi, born Kausalya Padukone, was as much of an individual steeped in Hindustani Music as any I have seen (and that's not too many of them) these last forty odd years that I have been alive, awake and musicophiliac. She was a devoted disciple of the legendary Smt. Mogubai Kurdikar (Gana-Tapaswini), for decades, having also trained earlier with Shri Gajananbua Joshi. She was a regular performer on All India Radio, regaling listeners with beautiful Ragas in the Jaipur-Atrauli style - my favourites among her renditions being Gaud Malhar, Kukubh Bilawal, Jaijaivanti and Lalita-Gauri, to name a few.
While Kausalya Paachi's principal disciple was, no doubt, Pratima Tilak, having trained for several years with Paachi, and there are others like my current Guru Smt. Kumudini Katdare, who have received from her, much more and for much longer than I have, my own mere one and half years with Paachi were nevertheless so full of their own 'Aha !' moments and eye-openers, that I feel drawn to say something about them.
So, cutting to the chase, what did I get from her ? (I apologize if I sound oportunistic, but I have been like that in matters of music and other subjects that pique my interest. ) But before we get to that, some background of how I ended up going to her for lessons in the first place. It is not as if I hadn't heard of her - I had, since my childhood actually. My aunt Savitri Babulkar was her neice and Paachi, I learned from Paachi herself later, was actually my aunt via a different link. We Chitrapur Saraswats are anyway, all related somehow ! I remember Savitri Paachi, herself a very good singer, having told me when I was a little boy about the intricacies of the Jaipur-Atrauli style of Khayal singing. What stuck in my impressionable mind was the following - " This style imposes restrictions on attempts to improvize the bol-aalaaps and bol-taans in a way that the performer is expected not to change the words of the composition or Bandish, or change the sequence of words, or to repeat words or phrases or break the flow of words such that the sequence is no longer literarily meaningful ". For example, suppose the lyrics of the bandish are " Piya Hama Waari Tope, Brija ke Basaiyyan. Tumhare kaarana bekala hota jiya" (Raga Desi). Other styles think nothing of the singer repeating the phrase "Piya hama Waari" again and again, or even just "Hama Waari", although it distorts the literary meaning, as long as the repetitions vary and appeal in their tune and/or rhythm. I realized even at that time that this added constraint of preserving the literary aspect of the Khayal Bandish even in improvisations, made this style all the more demanding. But at the time, I was completely ignorant of how much value this restriction added to the over-all aesthetic appeal of the rendition. Also, I wasn't that much interested in pursuing Classical music anyway, so all this was just academic.
It was only several years later, in 1999, after I had already emigrated from Mumbai to Pune several years earlier, that, having started my training under the legendary and redoubtable Smt. Kishori Amonkar (Gana-Saraswati), I was exposed to the aesthetic grandeur and quality of what was till then just hearsay. I admit, the first Jaipur-Atrauli style rendition I heard was Kishori-Tai's Sampoorna Malkauns in 1999, when I was already 30+, and I fell in love with that style immediately ! Till then my staple had been Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Amir Khan and Pt. Bhimsen Joshi. I learnt a lot from Kishori-Tai, but was in complete awe of her and travelling to Mumbai and spending almost all my weekends away from family, was taking a toll. Finally after learning from her regularly for almost six years I just stopped one day. It's almost a year after this, in December 2005 that I requested Kausalya Paachi to teach me Raga Shukla Bilawal, and she kindly agreed. This association was to extend until her sad demise in August 2007, and by that time, I was to become the richer by several more Ragas and Bandishes - many of them rare gems from the traditional Jaipur-Atrauli repertoire.
There's no doubt that Kishori-Tai had opened up the entire world of classical music with its myriad aesthetic possibilities before my eyes (or ears !), but I still found myself floundering along the slippery pathways of developing a Raga in the Khayal format (by the way, this self-observation, self-introspection and even self-criticism, if you will, is , in my humble opinion a necessary first step towards self-improvement, however much that sounds out of place in today's prevailing, self-congratulatory, majority mind-set). It seemed to me that I still didn't 'get it'.
I still remember my first day at 'Shiv-Aram' building, Shivaji Park, Mumbai - residence of Kausalya Paachi and Dinkar Maam (Shri. Dinkar Rao Manjeshwar). Paachi was a woman of few words, but what presence ! And the eyes were at once kindness and wisdom personified. She asked me to unfasten the old Khemraj taanpura from the glass closet in the living room, and we went to an inner room to begin the first lesson - the glorious Bandish , "Aao Aaja Baaje bajaayen" in Raga Shukla Bilawal, composed by the legendary Allahdiya Khan Saheb, and immortalized in Mai's (Smt. Mogubai Kurdikar's) recording. Although, she could not sing full-throated, (being 85 and ailing ) she managed to communicate, sometimes in falsetto, sometimes telling me the actual notes she wanted me to sing. The best thing about her teaching was how she simplified things, and her brief, to-the-point directions. "Don't break the flow", she would say, "glide from the Gandhar to the Madhyam". Or, " Move from note to note with 'Gamaka'. To do this sing a particular note by starting from and taking the support of a lower note, as if using the lower note to lauch to the desired note". This movement somehow reminded me of the "Cycloid", a curve we were taught unto boredom about, in my Engineering classes. "There's some use for it at last, if only as a metaphor !", I said to myself. She wouldn't go ahead till I got this movement right, or till she was convinced I was in a position to perfect it through practice at home.
"Sing in Aakaar. It's easier to maintain the flow and glide that way.", she would say.
Another golden "Aha!" moment was the manner in which she would approach the 'Sam' after completing the improvised Raga development in a rythmic cycle. There was neither any sign of haste, nor of having embarrasingly too much time to spare before she eased into singing the sign line to approach the 'Sam'. It was most graceful and smooth - as if composed. This was true, irrespective of whether the improvisation was a slow Aalaap, or Bol Aalaap, or a fast Taan. The secret, she told me was to work backwards from the sign line. In time, with practice, this kind of development would become second nature, and completely spontaneous. And she was right as usual.
Her most stunning direction to me was something she credited her Guru (Mai) with. In their early stages of development, singers sometimes have a tendency to 'do too much' - too many notes, too many variations, too many improvisations. It takes a while to realize that an improvisation is an improvisation only against a backdrop of the predictable and mundane. If your entire performance is full of only improvisations, then the audience (not to mention the observer within the performer) is left bewildered and unsatisfied. An impactful performance should alternately heighten tension and bring back the listener to peace , may be in inscrutable ways for greater effect. But the 'bring back to peace' part is necessary - it's not a mere accidental occurrence that can be left to chance. The performer has to be doing it by design. Paachi would often repeat Mai's words - "Sing only two notes when your intellect tells you, you can squeeze in three, one note where you think you can squeeze in two" - valuable advice indeed. The intellect does tend to run amuck. I was surprised merely to realise how, in practice, this 'economy' actually lifted a performance. Among other things, it gave the mind the time and the means to be 'strategic' rather than only 'tactical', the 'means' being greater capacity for the performer to himself/herself feel the impact of the note, which phenomenon in turn automatically triggered further, appropriate innovation. In my humble opinion, I would associate , in terms of the effects they produce, being tactical largely with dazzling the listener with embellishments, while I would associate being strategic largely with creating an over all mood (or Maahaul) of the Raga (At least in my case, it is the latter that stays with me long after the performance is over). The other surprise, was that this philosophy of economy seemed to encompass all the arts. This is demonstrated in Antoine St. Expuiry's quote :
"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away".
Indeed, one can argue from this that good art (or even good mathematics !) is necessarily minimalistic. The likes of Mai and Paachi knew all this through their musical practice. Paachi's Raga development almost resembled the blooming of a bud into a flower - gradually, naturally and non-violently. One only has to listen to Paachi's performance recordings to see this in practice. I never stopped being amazed by the poise and balance one discerned from the renditions, or the sheer grace and inevitability of the improvisations and the overall development of the Raga - and all this despite her start being shaky in some recordings, and her voice showing strain in the higher octaves. For me, this truely conveyed the triumph of the 'Thought' (or 'Soach' as we call it in Hindi) over the Medium i.e. the voice. Since that realization, I have become less fearful of getting a cold before a performance.
The other striking feature of Paachi's Gayaki and teaching was how she treated her bol-aalaaps and bol-taans, or as she called them, Bol phiraana. Remember, in the Jaipur-Atrauli style, this can mean actually composing the entire Bandish lyrics, impromptu, in a different tune while still being confined to the grammar of the Raga, and all this in that one (or at most two) rythmic cycle that the performer is embellishing. And to top it all, the performer is also expected to finally sing the sign line to approach the 'Sam' with the same characteristic Jaipur-Atrauli grace and finesse - almost nonchalance. Her advise to my eager ears was again, to compose first without regard to Taal, and then work back from the Sam and find out when in the Taal cycle to start the Bol improvisation - again "practice would make perfect and spontaneous".
"Once you can do 'Bol Phiraana' in the Raga, you have pretty much understood the Raga", she would say. At other times she would say comfortingly, "Keep doing it. You will get it eventually". Unbeknownst to me at the time, what subliminal learning I got from practising this Bol phiraana, is exactly what helps me compose tunes for Ghazals and Bhajans today.
One only has to hear Paachi's Taans in her Gaud Malhar or Ek Nishaad ka Bihaagada renditions or in her other Ragas like Marwa, Jaijaivanti or Lalita-Gauri (the latter three being available commercially) to discern the sheer clarity, variety, gracefulness (due in large part to the Gamakas) and breath control evident in them. Again their completion to the 'finish' point of the 'Sam' is impeccable in every rythmic cycle. It speaks volumes of the 'Saadhana' of Kausalya Paachi.
To sum up, I owe her for how she masterfully inculcated in me the sheer love of the true note - Saccha Sur, the swaying and foot-tapping rythm or Laya characteristic of Jaipur-Atrauli renditions, immaculately rendered Bandish and finally the appropriate, completely context-suitable, and indeed inevitable Raga development or Vistaar - and all this in a short span of one and a half years.
--Ciao, Sachin
Kausalya Paachi, born Kausalya Padukone, was as much of an individual steeped in Hindustani Music as any I have seen (and that's not too many of them) these last forty odd years that I have been alive, awake and musicophiliac. She was a devoted disciple of the legendary Smt. Mogubai Kurdikar (Gana-Tapaswini), for decades, having also trained earlier with Shri Gajananbua Joshi. She was a regular performer on All India Radio, regaling listeners with beautiful Ragas in the Jaipur-Atrauli style - my favourites among her renditions being Gaud Malhar, Kukubh Bilawal, Jaijaivanti and Lalita-Gauri, to name a few.
While Kausalya Paachi's principal disciple was, no doubt, Pratima Tilak, having trained for several years with Paachi, and there are others like my current Guru Smt. Kumudini Katdare, who have received from her, much more and for much longer than I have, my own mere one and half years with Paachi were nevertheless so full of their own 'Aha !' moments and eye-openers, that I feel drawn to say something about them.
So, cutting to the chase, what did I get from her ? (I apologize if I sound oportunistic, but I have been like that in matters of music and other subjects that pique my interest. ) But before we get to that, some background of how I ended up going to her for lessons in the first place. It is not as if I hadn't heard of her - I had, since my childhood actually. My aunt Savitri Babulkar was her neice and Paachi, I learned from Paachi herself later, was actually my aunt via a different link. We Chitrapur Saraswats are anyway, all related somehow ! I remember Savitri Paachi, herself a very good singer, having told me when I was a little boy about the intricacies of the Jaipur-Atrauli style of Khayal singing. What stuck in my impressionable mind was the following - " This style imposes restrictions on attempts to improvize the bol-aalaaps and bol-taans in a way that the performer is expected not to change the words of the composition or Bandish, or change the sequence of words, or to repeat words or phrases or break the flow of words such that the sequence is no longer literarily meaningful ". For example, suppose the lyrics of the bandish are " Piya Hama Waari Tope, Brija ke Basaiyyan. Tumhare kaarana bekala hota jiya" (Raga Desi). Other styles think nothing of the singer repeating the phrase "Piya hama Waari" again and again, or even just "Hama Waari", although it distorts the literary meaning, as long as the repetitions vary and appeal in their tune and/or rhythm. I realized even at that time that this added constraint of preserving the literary aspect of the Khayal Bandish even in improvisations, made this style all the more demanding. But at the time, I was completely ignorant of how much value this restriction added to the over-all aesthetic appeal of the rendition. Also, I wasn't that much interested in pursuing Classical music anyway, so all this was just academic.
It was only several years later, in 1999, after I had already emigrated from Mumbai to Pune several years earlier, that, having started my training under the legendary and redoubtable Smt. Kishori Amonkar (Gana-Saraswati), I was exposed to the aesthetic grandeur and quality of what was till then just hearsay. I admit, the first Jaipur-Atrauli style rendition I heard was Kishori-Tai's Sampoorna Malkauns in 1999, when I was already 30+, and I fell in love with that style immediately ! Till then my staple had been Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Amir Khan and Pt. Bhimsen Joshi. I learnt a lot from Kishori-Tai, but was in complete awe of her and travelling to Mumbai and spending almost all my weekends away from family, was taking a toll. Finally after learning from her regularly for almost six years I just stopped one day. It's almost a year after this, in December 2005 that I requested Kausalya Paachi to teach me Raga Shukla Bilawal, and she kindly agreed. This association was to extend until her sad demise in August 2007, and by that time, I was to become the richer by several more Ragas and Bandishes - many of them rare gems from the traditional Jaipur-Atrauli repertoire.
There's no doubt that Kishori-Tai had opened up the entire world of classical music with its myriad aesthetic possibilities before my eyes (or ears !), but I still found myself floundering along the slippery pathways of developing a Raga in the Khayal format (by the way, this self-observation, self-introspection and even self-criticism, if you will, is , in my humble opinion a necessary first step towards self-improvement, however much that sounds out of place in today's prevailing, self-congratulatory, majority mind-set). It seemed to me that I still didn't 'get it'.
I still remember my first day at 'Shiv-Aram' building, Shivaji Park, Mumbai - residence of Kausalya Paachi and Dinkar Maam (Shri. Dinkar Rao Manjeshwar). Paachi was a woman of few words, but what presence ! And the eyes were at once kindness and wisdom personified. She asked me to unfasten the old Khemraj taanpura from the glass closet in the living room, and we went to an inner room to begin the first lesson - the glorious Bandish , "Aao Aaja Baaje bajaayen" in Raga Shukla Bilawal, composed by the legendary Allahdiya Khan Saheb, and immortalized in Mai's (Smt. Mogubai Kurdikar's) recording. Although, she could not sing full-throated, (being 85 and ailing ) she managed to communicate, sometimes in falsetto, sometimes telling me the actual notes she wanted me to sing. The best thing about her teaching was how she simplified things, and her brief, to-the-point directions. "Don't break the flow", she would say, "glide from the Gandhar to the Madhyam". Or, " Move from note to note with 'Gamaka'. To do this sing a particular note by starting from and taking the support of a lower note, as if using the lower note to lauch to the desired note". This movement somehow reminded me of the "Cycloid", a curve we were taught unto boredom about, in my Engineering classes. "There's some use for it at last, if only as a metaphor !", I said to myself. She wouldn't go ahead till I got this movement right, or till she was convinced I was in a position to perfect it through practice at home.
"Sing in Aakaar. It's easier to maintain the flow and glide that way.", she would say.
Another golden "Aha!" moment was the manner in which she would approach the 'Sam' after completing the improvised Raga development in a rythmic cycle. There was neither any sign of haste, nor of having embarrasingly too much time to spare before she eased into singing the sign line to approach the 'Sam'. It was most graceful and smooth - as if composed. This was true, irrespective of whether the improvisation was a slow Aalaap, or Bol Aalaap, or a fast Taan. The secret, she told me was to work backwards from the sign line. In time, with practice, this kind of development would become second nature, and completely spontaneous. And she was right as usual.
Her most stunning direction to me was something she credited her Guru (Mai) with. In their early stages of development, singers sometimes have a tendency to 'do too much' - too many notes, too many variations, too many improvisations. It takes a while to realize that an improvisation is an improvisation only against a backdrop of the predictable and mundane. If your entire performance is full of only improvisations, then the audience (not to mention the observer within the performer) is left bewildered and unsatisfied. An impactful performance should alternately heighten tension and bring back the listener to peace , may be in inscrutable ways for greater effect. But the 'bring back to peace' part is necessary - it's not a mere accidental occurrence that can be left to chance. The performer has to be doing it by design. Paachi would often repeat Mai's words - "Sing only two notes when your intellect tells you, you can squeeze in three, one note where you think you can squeeze in two" - valuable advice indeed. The intellect does tend to run amuck. I was surprised merely to realise how, in practice, this 'economy' actually lifted a performance. Among other things, it gave the mind the time and the means to be 'strategic' rather than only 'tactical', the 'means' being greater capacity for the performer to himself/herself feel the impact of the note, which phenomenon in turn automatically triggered further, appropriate innovation. In my humble opinion, I would associate , in terms of the effects they produce, being tactical largely with dazzling the listener with embellishments, while I would associate being strategic largely with creating an over all mood (or Maahaul) of the Raga (At least in my case, it is the latter that stays with me long after the performance is over). The other surprise, was that this philosophy of economy seemed to encompass all the arts. This is demonstrated in Antoine St. Expuiry's quote :
"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away".
Indeed, one can argue from this that good art (or even good mathematics !) is necessarily minimalistic. The likes of Mai and Paachi knew all this through their musical practice. Paachi's Raga development almost resembled the blooming of a bud into a flower - gradually, naturally and non-violently. One only has to listen to Paachi's performance recordings to see this in practice. I never stopped being amazed by the poise and balance one discerned from the renditions, or the sheer grace and inevitability of the improvisations and the overall development of the Raga - and all this despite her start being shaky in some recordings, and her voice showing strain in the higher octaves. For me, this truely conveyed the triumph of the 'Thought' (or 'Soach' as we call it in Hindi) over the Medium i.e. the voice. Since that realization, I have become less fearful of getting a cold before a performance.
The other striking feature of Paachi's Gayaki and teaching was how she treated her bol-aalaaps and bol-taans, or as she called them, Bol phiraana. Remember, in the Jaipur-Atrauli style, this can mean actually composing the entire Bandish lyrics, impromptu, in a different tune while still being confined to the grammar of the Raga, and all this in that one (or at most two) rythmic cycle that the performer is embellishing. And to top it all, the performer is also expected to finally sing the sign line to approach the 'Sam' with the same characteristic Jaipur-Atrauli grace and finesse - almost nonchalance. Her advise to my eager ears was again, to compose first without regard to Taal, and then work back from the Sam and find out when in the Taal cycle to start the Bol improvisation - again "practice would make perfect and spontaneous".
"Once you can do 'Bol Phiraana' in the Raga, you have pretty much understood the Raga", she would say. At other times she would say comfortingly, "Keep doing it. You will get it eventually". Unbeknownst to me at the time, what subliminal learning I got from practising this Bol phiraana, is exactly what helps me compose tunes for Ghazals and Bhajans today.
One only has to hear Paachi's Taans in her Gaud Malhar or Ek Nishaad ka Bihaagada renditions or in her other Ragas like Marwa, Jaijaivanti or Lalita-Gauri (the latter three being available commercially) to discern the sheer clarity, variety, gracefulness (due in large part to the Gamakas) and breath control evident in them. Again their completion to the 'finish' point of the 'Sam' is impeccable in every rythmic cycle. It speaks volumes of the 'Saadhana' of Kausalya Paachi.
To sum up, I owe her for how she masterfully inculcated in me the sheer love of the true note - Saccha Sur, the swaying and foot-tapping rythm or Laya characteristic of Jaipur-Atrauli renditions, immaculately rendered Bandish and finally the appropriate, completely context-suitable, and indeed inevitable Raga development or Vistaar - and all this in a short span of one and a half years.
--Ciao, Sachin
