On Kishori Amonkar's 86th birth anniversary, a student looks back on the legendary singer's career, teaching

“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything." - Plato It was in the mid-90s that I became a disciple of Gana Saraswati Pandita Kishori Amonkar. This turning point in my life came about after I attended her concert at the Chowdaiah Memorial Hall, Bengaluru. It was a week-long music festival, where several leading Carnatic and Hindustani instrumentalists and vocalists were giving magnificent music recitals in the Ragas Yaman and Kalyani, and I was looking forward to her recital with immense excitement. That evening, after she appeared on stage with her accompanying artistes, Kishori Amonkar took a preternaturally long time to ensure that the tanpuras of the supporting artistes were tuned properly, and subsequently turned her attention to her swara-mandal. People fidgeted in their seats, displaying their restlessness. After a seemingly interminable wait, she began her recital with a anibaddh aalaap in Raga Yaman. What followed was a divine aesthetic experience which went on till midnight. I listened to her raagvistar, mesmerised by its plaintive nature and marveled at the felicity with which she magically transformed the raga into a palimpsest of moods and a sea-swell of emotions. Her delineation of the famous chota khayal ‘Sakhi Yeri Ali Piya Bina’ in Yaman transported the audience to the highest levels of ecstasy. After that strikingly uncommon rendition of Yaman, she embarked on a lyrical, enchanting exposition of the beautiful night melody raga Rageshree, which was an extraordinary revelation. In her stupendous rendition of the vilambit khayal ‘Palkan Lagi’ and the drut khayal ‘Dekho Shyam Gehalini’, she infused this nocturnal raga with a rare and memorable magic. The grand finale of the concert was an intensely poignant rendition of the vintage thumri ‘Babul Mora Naihar Chooto Hi Jaye’ composed by Nawab Wajid Ali Shah in Raga Bhairavi. This left the audience ecstatic. It was on this night that I decided I should become her pupil. [caption id=“attachment_4424333” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Kishori Amankar performing Raga Bhoopali. Image from Wikimedia Commons[/caption] I had often told my guru, Pandit RV Sheshadri Gawai, who was a direct disciple of Ganayogi Panchakshari Gawai and Dr Puttaraja Gawai of Veereshwara Punyashrama, Gadag, about my great admiration for Kishori Amonkar’s gayaki. I had been his student for 18 years. My guru was an extraordinarily affectionate, open-minded, kind teacher who had never discouraged me from listening to any vocalist. He always advised me to listen to other vocalists of different gharanas and develop my own eclectic approach to music. I was deeply attached to him and wanted his permission to learn from Kishori Amonkar. My guru wholeheartedly blessed me. I had managed to contact Kishori Tai through Usha RK, currently member-secretary of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Ministry of Culture, who knew her well. Kishori Tai permitted me to come and meet her at her house in Mumbai; I was anxious. As I entered the apartment, there she was — sitting on the sofa in the living room, clad in a simple cotton saree, with a dog by her side. I introduced myself and after a brief conversation, she directed me towards the adjoining room, which had many cabinets for tanpuras and a small alcove where there were pictures of deities and idols — a place of worship. There was a tabla player present and he asked me to come in and sing a khayal in any morning raga. With a great deal of trepidation, I picked up one of the tanpuras, fine-tuned it and started singing Lalit. When I commenced the vilambit bandish, the tabla player accompanied me, and half-way through my aalaaps in the rhythmic cycle of teen tal, Kishori Tai entered the room and asked me to render a drut composition. By this time I was totally engrossed in the raga and started singing without any inhibition. I must have sung for 20 minutes. I saw her sitting down, and I stopped singing. By then, other students had come in and she began her riyaz of Raga Ahir Bhairav. As she started with the bandish ‘Rasiya Mara’ in vilambit teen tal, her disciples joined in the aalaap avartans of teen tal. Sitting so close to her, I was witness to something she had described earlier: “The raga was unfurling like a bud blooming into a rose, each note coloured with its own mood, its own feeling. The raga became the musical medium which carried the listener to the state of ultimate emotion.” Practise sessions would start at 10 in the morning every day, a few minutes after the pooja that Kishori Tai always performed with great devotion. She would pray to Shri Raghavendra Swamiji and Krishna, perform an arti and sit down to practice. A tabla player and her senior students, Raghunandan Panshikar and Vidya Bhagwat, would always be present for these sessions. Her evening sessions would be rigorous, often going on for more than four hours at a stretch. Since I was a full-time student, learning in the gurukul style, I had the good fortune of being able to listen to her music for six to seven hours a day! Often, several students came from Pune and other places to learn from her. She was a great teacher who inspired everybody around her. She opened the doors to infinite chambers of music and facilitated their discovery for her students. She never discriminated between her students and took a great interest in each of them. I remember how she used to guide a blind student with a lot of affection and supervise his practice sessions. Many of her students came from humble backgrounds. She had a deeply compassionate side to her personality, and she accommodated those students. A Kannadiga industrialist called Patil had written to Kishori Tai_,_ expressing his boundless admiration for her music. He was interested in becoming her disciple. In his letter, he told her that he was a senior citizen and that his only wish was to listen to Tai’s music for hours on end and imbibe the intricacies of her gayaki and acquire samskar for his next birth. This unusual request moved her so much that she asked me to get in touch with him and call him to come over to her house in Mumbai. When Patil met her in my presence, both of us were profoundly moved by her kindness. That evening, Patil was one among her many students practising her beautiful bandish ‘Mo Man Lagan Lagi Tumisan Kripa Nidhan, Adhama Uddhara’ in vilambit teen tal. Tai_’s bandishes had a laudatory kind of mathematical precision, and the syllables were so intricately distributed through the 16 beats of the rhythmic cycle of teen tal that it took many hours of austere practice to perfect them. But her music was more than notations or compositions or styles. To her, “it was an ocean of philosophy, a mountain of knowledge, an eternal teacher whose student she always remained.” Kishori Tai’s repertoire of ragas was truly kaleidoscopic. After having listened to her, one could perceive the protean possibilities of a raga and its infinite mysteries. She was a tireless explorer. Each time she took up a raga for detailed exposition, she would approach it differently, and contrary to a certain gestalt of a raga that we had in our minds, she would exult in changing it, thereby breaking our stereotypical assumptions. From this point of view, it could be said that she was a rebel with her strikingly iconoclastic convictions about ragas. She had created a storm in the Hindustani classical music circuits with her spectacular and unusual renditions of well-known ragas, alongside her equally brilliant delineations of anavat and aprachalit ragas of the Atrauli-Jaipur gharana. At the core of Kishori Tai’s musical psyche was a relentless sadhana (devotion),_ coupled with a desire to attain the spirituality that is characteristic of our traditional music. Her affinity to adhyatma had endowed her to impart an aura of spirituality to her renditions of bhajans by Meera and Kabir, or the abhangas of Sant Jnaneshwar. A unique Sant Vani programme of the musical rendition of abhangas, written by the great saint Sant Jnaneshwar, performed by her and her team of disciples titled ‘Tochi Nadu Suswar Jhala’ was held in Tilak Smarak Mandir, Pune, and my experiences as a part of that team were unforgettable. [caption id=“attachment_4424447” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Kishori Amonkar passed away on 3 April 2017. She was 84. Image courtesy: YouTube[/caption] Kishori Tai organised a meticulous rehearsal for it. It was her brainchild and was conceptualised entirely by her. She had composed the tunes for many abhangas, and it was a dazzling ensemble. Opening with the reverberating ‘Gajar Jnanoba Mauli Tukaram’ sung by Kishori Tai to the accompaniment of tal and pakhawaj, with her disciples singing the chorus, it was an electrifying entry into the spiritual world of Jnaneshwar’s abhangas. It was followed by the ‘Mangalacharan’, a tribute to Lord Ganesha ‘Om Namoji Aadya Ved Pratipadya Jai Jai Svasavendya Atmaroopaset’ to Raga Bhoopali. Her lyrical renditions of ‘Avachita Parimalu’ in Raga Shuddh Sarang and ‘Jeevachiya Jeeva Premabhavachiya Bhava’ in Bageshree got a huge applause from the audience. Even in the rehearsal sessions when Tai sang the abhanga ‘Mazhavari Daya Kara Thati Ugda Jnaneshwara’ in Raga Darbari Kanada depicting the situation where Sant Jnaneshwar’s sister Muktabai pleads with her brother to open the door, because he had locked himself up in a room after being saddened by people who were gossiping and casting aspersions at his family, I was in tears. People were intensely moved by her renditions of Jnaneshwar’s compositions such as ‘Jane Aj Me Ajar’ and ‘Atha Avadhara’. I was extremely fortunate to have accompanied her on stage for tanpura and vocal support, along with her other disciples. She shared a great rapport with her accompanying artistes. I had seen great artistes like Pandit Appa Jalagoankar and Pandit Purushottam Walawalkar accompany Kishori Tai on the harmonium. She appreciated Balakrishna Iyer’s tabla skills very much. She and the sarangi maestro Ustad Sultan Khan shared a wonderful friendship. Once at a concert in Kolhapur, Ustadji was accompanying Kishori Tai on the sarangi after a long time. As they arrived at the venue, Ustadji walked towards her and embraced her with much love and affection. Tai reciprocated by greeting her beloved brother Sultan Bhai with an equal degree of warmth and exuberance. It was a heartwarming moment for disciples such as myself to see two maestros sharing such an affectionate bond. Of all the titles conferred upon her, the one which was cherished the most by her was ‘Gana Saraswati’, which was bestowed upon her by Jagadguru Swami Bharathi, the Teertha of Sringeri Math. Kishori Tai was a wonderful human being, and all her disciples knew this. I once stayed with her at her Pune apartment. In the 10 days that I spent with her there, she yielded to my persuasion and sang countless ghazals passionately. I could not believe my ears! She loved listening to the thumris of legendary singers like Siddeshwari Devi. She also listened to the Nirguni Kabir bhajans, and khayal renditions by Pandit Kumar Gandharva and Kesarbai. I felt that her style bore a striking resemblance to Kesarbai’s gayaki. Kishori Tai is truly immortal. Her divine musical renditions continue to inspire and guide her students. It is a daunting task to capture the genius of Gana Saraswati Kishori Amonkar in mere words. Her music possesses the allure of the Beyond, the tug of the infinite. Often when I reminisce about her, her meditations on music echo in my ears: “Through music, I try to know myself, within and without. I try to comprehend the universe and the vastness of the cosmos. The planets, the tides – all have their movements and sounds. Is this not akin to sur (tune) and laya (rhythm)? When at last I must face my Creator, I shall say, ‘I know nothing, I am thirsty. Please give me a few drops more from the well of music.’" It is no wonder then that this collection of memories engulfs me entirely.