Requiem in Raga Janki

by Neelum Saran Gaur

  Then while prasad was being distributed, the guru signalled to them to approach and be seated in front of him. He addressed her boat companion first.

  ‘What have you come seeking, my son?’

  The young man answered in timid confession. ‘I cannot lie, master. I came without any intention of coming.’

  The guru looked closely at him.

  ‘Explain,’ he prompted.

  ‘My name is Bhola Nath Bhatt. I had heard of you. That you help mendicants and musicians—and now I happen to be both. Actually I came to the river to end my life but I was interrupted by a family friend—a Muslim friend of my late father’s—who came upon me and asked me what I was trying to do. I told him I was trying to cross the river. He asked—Are you mad? The river is deepest and broadest here and you will surely drown. He asked me why I was trying to cross the river. I lied to him, master. I said I had no money to hire a boat and I was trying to get to the saint who lived in a boat ashram on the Ganga bank and I thought of swimming across. So he insisted on giving me the boat fare and sent me to the jetty, and by then dawn had broken and I had lost the courage to drown myself.’

  ‘And you, lady?’ The guru turned to Janki. ‘What brings you here?’

  She bowed her head in submission and said simply: ‘I too have come by chance. There was only one boat and there were two passengers. I came to immerse my Saraswati idol in the river because I have converted to Islam and have been commanded to do so by my maulvi.’

  Her simplicity made the guru pause in reflection. He regarded her without comment. After a pause he said, ‘I spent a month reading the Majjhima Nikaya. The Buddhist text. The boat-discourse. Earlier, I had spent a long night meditating the Buddhist axiom “Gate, gate, parasamgate, bodhi swaha”. Which means “Gone, gone, gone, bodhi, to the other shore”. Which means different things to different people. But first, why did you want to end your life?’ He turned to the young man.

  ‘Because my uncle threw me out of the house when my father died. Because he refused to teach me any more music . . .’ brought out the young man.

  ‘You wish to learn music?’

  ‘I wish to be a better singer than my uncle!’

  ‘How may I help you, son?’

  ‘Help me to go away from this city, master.’

  ‘Will it bring any relief to you if you sang something now?’ asked the master.

  ‘If such is your command, how can I refuse?’ whispered the young man.

  He thought a while, then closed his eyes and uttered the opening notes of a morning raga, and even a few lines of song were enough to convey the certainty of his being an exceptional singer, one absolutely beyond the rank and file. His voice carried across the water with sureness and unalloyed perfection. Janki had not heard the like of him before, not since the days of the young Mauzuddin in Benaras.

  ‘Main moorakh teri, Prabhuji more,

  Jo chali tej nadiya-neer pachhore.’

  Thy fool am I, O Lord of mine,

  That I try to sift

  The river waters swift . . .

  Janki held her breath and listened. She closed her eyes and learnt the composition, the words and notes, until they lodged themselves fully in her memory. While the young man sang, a disciple had moved silently to his side and placed a palm-leaf casket of fruit and batashas, the guru’s benediction, in front of him. A similar casket was placed before her. When the song ended, the singer opened his eyes, his face transformed. The agitation had left him and the despair in his expression had cleared.

  The guru spoke: ‘One who has earned by his karma the grace of such music must never be tempted to end his life. It is the tapas of many lives that has brought you this gift. In his kriti Sri Rama Jaya Rama Tyagaraja sings of the mighty force of tapas—that of Kaushalya and Dasharatha to have such a son. That of Lakshmana to have been granted the grace of being with his brother, that of Ahalya to have the touch of the lord’s lotus feet, of Janaka who gave Rama a bride like Devi Sita and that of Sage Narada who sang of them all. You do not know your own tapas in previous lives to have achieved the grace you now possess and you have a world to serve with song. As the Ananda Sagar says, “The soul that does not float on that ocean of the ineffable Bliss of Brahman, which we know as music, is an encumbrance to this earth.” Do not think yourself an encumbrance to this earth. Dedicate yourself to naadopasana, the worship of musical sound, and remember that he who understands the secrets of naada, the srutis, the jatis and the talas ascends the path of moksha without effort. So says the Yajnavalkya Smriti. In the prasad basket you shall find enough money to travel to places where Mother Ganga shall take you, living and singing, not a lifeless corpse—to Benaras, Calcutta. Spare not yourself the tapas which life demands of you.’

  The young man lifted the palm-leaf casket to his forehead, then prostrated himself before the guru. But the guru had now turned his attention to Janki.

  ‘Lady, what be your trouble, that you sought another faith?’

  There was a faint hint of severity in his voice.

  She repeated what she had explained to her mother—that she felt she belonged naturally among her Muslim friends, that she had always felt she belonged nowhere, that she stood outside.

  ‘As to praying from outside a faith, there are examples aplenty. The worshippers of Vishnu and those of Shiva have ever been at loggerheads. Once Adi Sankaracharya visited the ancient temple of Vishnu at Kaladi but the factious Brahmins, who hated his teachings, locked the doors of the temple and told him that it was a temple to Shiva. So Sankara prayed outside the temple and left. When the doors of the temple were opened, lo! The image had changed to that of Shiva. God shall come to you in the form your soul desires. Ekam eva advitiyam Brahma. The same Tyagaraja of whom I just spoke once lost his image of Sri Rama. His brother had thrown it into the Kaveri to spite him. He wept and entreated the lord to return. Saint Haridas told him not to grieve but to offer a hundred songs to the lord. So Tyagaraja sang to the lord in his cottage. One day, as he sang, rapt, he heard a knock on the door. Opening it, he beheld Sri Rama and Devi Sita and Hanuman standing there! It was not the image but the lord himself who had come in answer to his call. But you say you have to immerse your Saraswati?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Omar, one of the your Prophet’s companions, and later a noble Caliph of Islam, refused to pray inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre when it was time for his namaz. Jerusalem was conquered from the Christians by the Muslim armies and he had entered the city, victorious, and the Christian priests had invited him to offer his prayers anywhere he liked but he chose to go out and pray in a field. His reason—that he had instructions never to destroy a place of worship, no matter of what faith, but, he explained, not all his followers could understand this and were he to pray within they were capable of destroying the holiest church in Christendom and turning it into a mosque, which was utterly against what the Prophet had taught. I do not mean to offend you, lady, but even Islam’s wise men knew what its followers were capable of. No one knows this better than us, we who being Hindus, allow all the faiths to speak to us, who can be anything we desire, any faith on earth. I earnestly believe that you have made a mistake. You must return to your mother faith. A simple rite of return and a dip in the holy river shall be enough.’

  She could not meet his eyes. If she stayed any longer in his presence her will would break. ‘Master, I have made my choice. There is no going back for me.’

  He looked displeased. ‘Then go where your karma takes you, lady.’

  As her boat pulled out and swung eastwards in the direction of the sangam, riding the river waves, she did not look back, not once. She was conscious of the young man watching her intently as their boat wobbled precariously on the rising crescents of the ridge of colliding streams that marked the confluence. There she laid her Saraswati in the rapids, just at that joint or fracture in the stream where the Ganga met the Yamuna, and watched the snow-white image sink and vanish in the roiling deep where boats,
it was said, always went out of control and boatmen prayed to the river’s deity to save their craft. The spot where urnfuls of ashes of the dead were emptied, to dissolve and mingle in the flow. Then, dead and reborn, she turned her face to the other bank and covered her face with her veil. ‘Dheerey baho nadia,’ her mind chattered its songs like a runaway beast. And ‘Balam naiyya dagmag doley,’ it chattered on, an interior bandish she could not stop.

  They parted in silence on the Yamuna jetty, she and the young man. Neither knew who the other was. He did not know he had shared the boat and the morning’s experience with the famous Janki Bai. She did not know that she had heard the future sage Bhola Nath Bhatt sing. When Bhola Nath Bhatt returned to Allahabad in 1935 Janki Bai Ilahabadi had been dead a year and buried in the Kaladanda graveyard and had a mazaar in her name named Kaisabiniya ki Mazaar. Maybe the domestic name she came to acquire as a devout Muslim woman was Kaisabiniya, though that is a street distortion and there is no evidence of any other name save the one she signed herself and the one she announced on her records—Janki Bai.

  When Janki returned home she found her mother packed and ready to leave. Her possessions had been put in two metal trunks and her bedroll lay ready on its side in the courtyard. She had made Beni pack up too.

  ‘Where will you stay, Amma?’ Janki asked her mother.

  Manki turned burning eyes on her. ‘My wealthy daughter builds shelters for homeless women, what do I have to worry? There surely is a corner of the floor for this homeless woman, Baiji.’

  ‘And what will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe beg in some temple yard. Till I earn my way to Benaras or Vrindavan.’

  There was no holding her back. Janki, frantic, sought out Beni. ‘I beg you, my brother, take the keys of my Johnstonganj kothi and take her there. Reason with her. She listens to you.’

  Manki’s empty room reproached her for days and she wept in her prayers that her mother might forgive her and be persuaded to return. She found that changing one faith for another was anything but easy. Some mornings she awoke with thumris about Krishna and Radha blowing about her head somewhere on the edges of sleep. She tried harder, became driven and desperate. She prayed, fasted, read the Book. She took to writing devotional verses, sang them to herself until God and His Prophet, Peace Be upon Him, came to reside in her heart and locked its doors securely against the intrusions of other visitations. Then, whenever she was called upon to sing a bhajan to a deity her vocal cords pulsed in sharp grief and when she composed and sang a naat to the Prophet tears choked her voice, and like those boats on the sangam that went out of control on the crashing currents of two mighty rivers and left the boatmen helplessly praying, she too lapsed into incoherent appeals that her prayer be heard. Until she resolved to keep away from devotional songs altogether till such time as her soul had settled. When that happened she made a surprising discovery. She found that she could sing ‘Raghubar aaj raho more pyare’ as well as ‘Madina mein mor piya vala hai re’ with equal fervour. She found that despite her having opted to become a Sunni Muslim she retained enough of the Shia in her as to sing a soz like ‘Balake ban mein jo sograka naamabar aaya’ with deep emotion.

  15

  In early 1908 she recorded for a Frenchman, Henri Lachapelle, at Lucknow for the Pathephone and Cinema Co., Calcutta, acting through the agency of the Hague, Moode and Company of Lucknow, which had come to be established there. Along with her Wazir Jaan of Benaras and Ladli Jaan of Lucknow also recorded. These were eleven-inch discs, pressed in Belgium, and they came to be known as Disque Pathe. But the Hague, Moode and Company soon collapsed.

  Then in late November 1908 she was once again recording for George Walter Dillnutt in Calcutta. Rs 900 for twenty-four titles seemed handsome enough. Though, as often happened, a song or two went missing and she mourned for it. All through 1909 and 1910 these records were steadily released into the market and the number sold rose to 8827. The gramophone companies held back many titles, to announce and advertise them gradually when early titles had circulated sufficiently. Her songs of this period include the popular ‘Main kaise rakhoon praan shyam madhuban gailona’ and ‘Ab kaise jobna dikhaoongi’. In the same lot were ‘Rukh-e-gulshan ki dekhi bahar’, ‘Pyare Ahmed-e-mukhtar, tumpar Allah ka hai pyar’, ‘Ek Kaffir par tabiyat aa gayi’, ‘Hamne to jaantak na pyari ki, Kanha na kar mosey raar’ and ‘Dar kharabat-e-mughan noor-e-Khuda mee beenam’, one of her best-loved Persian ghazals.

  By late 1909 she demanded twice her former rate from the Gramophone and Typewriter Company Limited and the price she quoted was accepted: Rs 1700 for twenty-two titles. These were double-sided discs and they sold out rapidly. In another year a cautious proposal arrived from GTL. There were rival companies competing with them in the Indian market—Beka Records, A.G. Berlin, the Pathephone and Cinema Co., Calcutta, the International Talking Machine, Berlin, representing Odeon. Three of these had offered Janki Bai Rs 5000 a year for exclusive recording rights. GTL offered a three-year contract for forty titles. She refused to be tied down to any such agreement. Her concerts were fetching her more than enough.

  At several of her performances in the city, she spotted Abdul Haq in the audience. At the Hardinge Theatre in Bahadurganj, at the Mayo Hall, at the Police Lines, at the Kotwali, at the Ram Bagh Baradari, it warmed her secret heart to pick out his handsome face in the sea of faces. The very first time she threw him a charming bouquet of lyrics, a lilting provocation, singing:

  ‘Ek Kaffir par tabiyat aa gayi.

  Parsai par phir aafat aa gayi.

  Humdum, isko dillagi samjha hai tu?

  Dil nahin aaya, museebat aa gayi.

  Yaad karke tumko ai jaan ro diye,

  Saamne jab achchhi surat aa gayi.

  Chupke-chupke ro rahe ho kyon samad,

  Sach kaho kis par tabiyat aa gayi?’

  That was one of her most popular numbers and it brought the house down.

  The song passed like a signal between them that she had registered his presence, that she acknowledged it and welcomed him, that she was gladdened that he was there, and that she also knew why he was there. At the next concert she was pleased to find him in the audience again and even more pleased when a farmaish from him, scribbled on a shred of paper, appeared before her, requesting that first song: ‘Ek Kaffir par tabiyat aa gayi.’

  Gratified, she obliged, but added a song: ‘Phadkan laagat mori ankhiyan’, a dadra. A delicate slip of a song, a suggestion more than a statement. He acknowledged it with a salaam, sitting in the audience. At the next mehfil a farmaish came for the song ‘Phadkan laagat mori ankhiyan’. She sang it with a smile playing on her lips. And added another: ‘Mumkin nahin ke teri mohabbat ki bu nahin’, a ghazal in Bhairavi.

  So it went. If he asked for ‘Jabse us zaalim se ulfat ho gayi’, sung in Jhinjhoti, she complied and offered him also ‘Dil ek hi se laga, hazaron khade’ in Pilu. If he requested ‘Kaffire ishkam Mussalmani mara darkar nist’ in Bhairavi, she tossed him ‘Tum hi kufr ho aur iman tumhi ho’ in Jogiya.

  It was a game they were playing and they played it with zest. Then suddenly for her it wasn’t a game any more. For just as suddenly he stopped coming. At the riverside performance, at the Magh Mela, she sought the audience in vain as she sang: ‘Gham raha jabtak ke dam mein dam raha’. Then, at the soirée at Ram Krishna Seth ki Bagiya she missed him again. She had to travel for a recording with Gaisberg’s Company. When she returned to Allahabad and performed at the Balua Ghat Baradari and at the Jamuna Tat, he still wasn’t in the audience.

  She felt an unbearable oppression, the sensation of being trapped in a story, her story, the predictable and ordained script of it, and she longed to discover some welcome fault line in the safe narrative she had so far inhabited without question, and escape into the unexpected. It was a time of obsessive writing for her. Verses flew from her pen, of an intensity and abundance like some sweet and heady possession.

  What or who I am, you know me

  You meet me afte
r an age, do you know?

  Laila lives in the heart, not in the camel’s ‘mehmil’

  O Majnu, that you seek her in wilderness and forest.

  A blink of your eye is sufficient to kill,

  Why do you draw your sword against me?

  This is a great judgement and a new justice,

  That you implicate your friends among your foes.

  You draw your sword repeatedly,

  Have you vowed to slay your lover?

  I am oblivious of past and present.

  Why do you turn epochs in your head?

  I may plead a thousand times, do not meet my rival in love,

  When do you ever heed Janki’s word?

  What perdition has wounded me,

  This injury I have suffered, jesting.

  Only he has enjoyed life whose heart has known love’s wound.

  My wound has stopped hurting but meeting him has exacerbated it anew.

  You tore apart my heart and looked into it.

  But did you spot my pain anywhere?

  Did you see the effect of my love

  That this injury engendered that injury too?

  O Janki, I tell my heartache to that cruel one.

  When she showed them to Akbar, on one of her visits, he read them with a quizzical eye, then took off his glasses and regarded her with interest: ‘Allah bachaye marz-e-ishq se dil ko, sunte hain ki yeh aariza achchha nahin hota. Baiji shows symptoms of a classic illness, I perceive. Who, I wonder, is the happy object of these flights?’

  ‘Love is a classic subject, your honour, and needs no mortal object,’ she quipped. ‘Consider your own verse, sir.’