Hindustani Posts

“The Call of Music: 8 Stories of Hindustani Musicians” by Priya Purushothaman

20 09 , 2025 No Comments

The Call of Music: 8 Stories of Hindustani Musicians ( Hachette India) is gorgeous. It is accessible to even the non-Indian classical music listener. More importantly, the sensitivity, understanding, and empathy with which Priya Purushothaman is stunning. Her elegant writing is gracious and dignified as she profiles a fellow musician. She is right when she says in her introduction that it is critical for the younger musicians to be profiled as well. Here is an extract from the introduction:

During the pandemic, when the transiency of life took on an entirely new dimension, I felt an urgent need to document the inner stories of serious practitioners of music, some of whom are not in the limelight. If you’re part of the music world, chances are that you’ve heard such stories through fellowmusicians, perpetuating the casula culture of sharing oral histories that blur the boundaries between rumour, legend, and fact. I wondered about all the stories I wouldn’t get to hear or read, out of sheer lack of access or documentation. This compelled me to seek these individuals and see if they would give me the privilege of sharing a slice of their lives, coming together as something akin to an ethnographic survey of select Hindustani musicians in the twenty-first century.

Normally, such collections would only feature senior artistes, senior by age, that is. I chose to include a spectrum of ages in this collection. Though the culture of Hindustani music glorifies age as a virtue — and certainly age often comes with wisdom and experience — I have also felt that this confines younger musicians to a permanent place of inadequacy. What a young artiste may lack in experience, they may compensate for in freshness of perspective. It is also not always the case that young artistes lack experience, because many musicians begin training at a very young age. By their thirties, they have been in the business for decades. I believe there is much value in hearing the thoughts of younger generation performers — to inspire other youngsters who may be looking up to them, and also to acknowledge that wisdom is not a function of time but of depth of experience and capacity for reflection.

The first musician featured, Alam Khan, reminds of an old soul trapped in a young man’s body. He is wise beyond his years, having immersed full time in this world since his teenage years. He carries the legacy of his father, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, with tremendous humility, reverence, and responsibility. His deep commitment to musical honesty made me ponder the question of intention and awareness as we make music.

Shubhada Paradkar is an indomitable musical spirit whose music negotiates the lively spirit of the Agra and Gwalior gharanas, while challenging the notions of gender in music.

Kala Ramnath’s journey to becoming a world renowned violinist is filled with a lifetime of consistent effort and a quest for a unique, individual voice by innovating on an instrument that was introduced quite late into the Hindustani music firmament.

Rumi Harish turns all conventions of Hindustani msuci upside down with his radical interrogation of concepts of gender and voice through his lived truths in music and activism.

The youngest musician in this collection is Suhail Yusuf Khan, a sarangi player who has performed around the globe, collaborated across genres, and become the first hereditary musician to earn a PhD in Ethnomusicology. Suhail opened my eyes to issues of caste and discrimination as a Mirasi musician.

Shubha Joshi has dedicated her lifetime to mastering the multitude of forms that comprise Hindustani music, deconstructing notions of the feminine voice while intentionally carving her own unique sound.

Yogesh Samsi speaks a complex language of tabla that has evolved through momentous historical moments of both loss and ingenuity. As a master soloist and accompanist, he shows the path to a future of aesthetic and intellectual music.

It is my hope that those who take the time to read his book will gain an insider’s view into the creative processes of music making — the gruelling effort, dedicatio, and sacrifice that make a musician — as well as the undeniable presence of social issues in the world of classical music. Often, musicians choose their path not out of choice, but from a persistent inner call, a driving necessity for their existence. Perhaps after reading these stories, you, the reader, will appreciate the complex life of a musician the next time you hear a piece of music or attend a concert.

I began flipping through this book on a whim, but before I knew what was what, I was immersed in reading the profiles and was able to shut out the world. It is the rare author who can achieve that with their writing. Priya Purushothaman does. The ability to write about a subject that not everyone is familiar with and yet with such elegance create bridges of communication between Hindustani music and the readers is an extraordinary talent. I sincerely hope that she will write more of these long profiles. These must be taxing to write and emotionally draining but the end result is superb.

Book blurb

The Call of Music traces the journeys of eight singular voices in Hindustani music – some acclaimed performers, others quiet torchbearers who create, teach and sustain the tradition far from the public eye. From the narrow lanes of Kashipur to the sweeping hills of San Rafael, these artists emerge from vastly different worlds, yet each has devoted their life to music with unflinching conviction and artistic courage.

Among them are the heirs of musical legacies, grappling with the weight of inheritance; vocalists who challenge gendered assumptions embedded in the tradition; instrumentalists who reimagine the expressive possibilities of their craft; a sarangi player navigating the complexities of caste and faith; and a tabla maestro bridging a lineage ruptured by Partition.

As these musicians forge their identities within a classical tradition, they reveal an artform not only enduring, but continually transforming – connecting generations, reshaping boundaries and resonating anew. What binds them is a profound surrender to the art, a deep-seated devotion that transcends convention and circumstance. Together, they form a luminous, emotionally textured portrait of a musical legacy – rooted and radically alive.

‘This is a rich and beautiful meditation on the greatest of our art forms. Herself an exceptionally gifted vocalist, Priya Purushothaman writes with elegance and empathy about the life and vocation of eight musicians of different backgrounds, whom she has known or studied with. While attentive to questions of caste, gender and religion, Priya never lets her focus waver from the “practice“ of classical music, of what it means to devote oneself to learning, listening, absorbing, practising and performing. As a lover of our shastriya sangeet I found this book utterly compelling. So will readers with a more general interest in narrative non-fiction, and those seeking to make of their profession a calling.’ – Ramachandra Guha

‘Introducing readers to the lives, personalities, strengths, challenges, and music of eight artists who have inspired her over the years, Priya Purushothaman’s writing reflects in totality the rigour and introspection that has marked her journey as a singer.’ – Shubha Mudgal

‘The Call of Music is one of those rare books that forces us to see ourselves for who we are. In this collection of stories, Priya Purushothaman allows us to accompany musicians and learn from the intricate threads that stitch together their identity and life experience with making music. She brings together musicians from very different social and philosophical spaces and lets each of their stories flow into another, subtly initiating a conversation between them. This book is, in its essence, about finding and retaining one’s own voice. For us, the readers, these are moments of personal reflection.’ – T.M. Krishna

Priya Purushothaman is a reputed Hindustani vocalist. She is trained in the style of the Agra gharana, and has performed in major venues in India and abroad. She is also the author of Living Music: Conversations with Pandit Dinkar Kaikini. Priya is interested in documenting stories of musicians and their creative processes from her perspective as a practitioner. Her music can be heard at www.priyapurushothaman.com.

20 Sept 2025

Premchand ki khaniya, Ekada, Westland Books

31 07 , 2025 No Comments

Today is Premchand’s 145th birth anniversary. He was born on 31 July 1880. Dhanpat Rai Srivastava or Munshi Premchand as he was known is famous for his stories in Hindustani. Premchand was a pioneer of Hindi and Urdu social fiction. He was one of the first authors to write about caste hierarchies and the plight of women and labourers prevalent in the society. He is one of the most celebrated writers of the Indian subcontinent and is regarded as one of the foremost Hindi writers of the early twentieth century. He began writing under the pen name ‘Nawab Rai’, but subsequently switched to ‘Premchand’. He published his first collection of five short stories in 1907 in a book called Soz-e-Watan (Voice of the Nation). His body of work includes more than a dozen novels, around 300 short stories, several essays and translations of a number of foreign literary works into Hindi.

Even though he died in 1936, his stories continue to be read and are very popular. Although, I have to say that I have read some recent versions of his stories and they are nothing like the original. New editions tend to “revise” his stories into Hindi rather than retaining the original Hindustani — a mix of Hindi and Urdu that many generations, including mine, grew up speaking and writing. We are familiar with it. Westland Books imprint, Ekada, focusses on Indian language books. Ekada Classics is a curated list that revives beloved literature from various Indian languages. This month, Ekada Classics released माँगे की घड़ी और अन्य कहानियाँ and मोटर के छींटे और अन्य कहानियाँ.

Premchand’s stories will never be out of fashion but will they be permitted to survive as he wrote them, only time will tell.

31 July 2025

“The Jamun Tree” by Krishan Chander

08 11 , 2019 No Comments

Or listen to Yasmeen Rashidi, The Wire, narrate it: https://thewire.in/books/watch-icse-drops-krishan-chanders-1960s-story-which-questions-centralised-governance

Book launch: Mrinal Pande’s “Dhvaniyon ke aalok mein stree” ( 4 January 2016, IHC)

06 01 , 2016 No Comments

On Monday, 4 January 2016, I attended Hindi publisher Rajkamal Prakashan’s book launch  for noted journalist and writer, Mrinal Pande’s Dhvaniyon ke aalok mein stree . Mrinal Pande has written a nonfiction book about the vast contribution of professional women musicians (largely tawaifs or courtesans till the mid 20thC) to Hindustani classical and semi-classical music in post-1857 India. Most of whom went unmentioned even by famous musicians and Ustads, whom they had lovingly and selflessly tutored and mentored through their early days of penury. The panel includes  journalist Yatendra Mishra, singer Shubha 20160104_190652Mudgal, poet Ashok Vajpeyi, Mrinal Pande and publisher Ashok Maheshwari. The event was introduced by editor Satyanand Nirupam.

I enjoyed the event immensely. Two hours went by so swiftly. I could have heard the conversations some more.

I liked the narrative which emerged from the evening’s chat. Women musicians were a phenomenal influence and in many cases taught men who were to later earn quite a name for themselves. But the focus was not necessarily on the women musicians who have been profiled in the book but many like Shubha Mudgal’s Nani ( maternal grandmother) who yearned to learn music but was not allowed by her father. Instead he insisted she learn the piano. To fulfil her desire of learning Hindustani music Nani had herself photographed holding various Indian musical instruments in the garden. (I am curious though how did the Nani get access to those musical instruments with which she was photographed in the garden?) Or the many rich wives of Bombay boxwallahs or the corporates who were taught music to while their time. It served another purpose too – the male musicians social ambitions of being seeing in the right circles. But the true preservers, inheritors and practitioners of music, were the Hindu and Muslim tawaifs, who kept Hindustani musical traditions alive by performing every night gave music a lease of life. Equally significantly they kept local languages and dialects or “bolis” alive in the Hindi that was commonly known and spoken. They were not averse to borrowing, blending, improvising and creating fresh interpretations as long as music was heard. This for Mrinal Pande is a crucial aspect of the womens musicians contribution to language and musical traditions. Her analysis of Hindi being kept alive since it had not as yet been politicised and hijacked depriving it of its backbone, ie the various bolis some of which were integral to the gharanas. So these remained in the social consciousness. I found this gem fascinating.

Another one was that of women singers graduating from anonymity to establishing their name to a recording. The idea that after the 3.5 minutes of 78 rpm had been cut by the German engineers the women to ensure the correct singer was given due credit said her name at the tail end of the song. It is incredible what technology and different kinds of publishing can do for the identity and self-worth of an individual.

The Union Home Ministry note issued in 1946 when Govind Vallabh Pant who was a minister in the provisional government debarring women singers who had a pesha or were tawaifs from singing. Later Mr Keskar, Minister for Information and Broadcasting, post independence, nullified the government note banning,”women whose personal lives are a public scandal”, in 1952. Suddenly it all made sense to my mind…once again the notion of identity of the women along with the patriarchal tyranny which was implicit in the 1946 order. But when Mr Keskar overturned the order he insisted the religion of singer be evident. All muslim singers were to add the prefix “Begum” and hindu singers had to add the suffix, “Devi”. Now that too is a curious move…identification along religious lines. Not unheard of. It could be considered at par with the star all Jews had to stitch on their coats in Nazi Germany.

I liked the story about Mrinal Pande’s mother, the popular Hindi novelist, “Shivani”, taking her husband’s permission to write and then adopting a pen name. Ironically it is Shivani who now remains alive in people’s minds. I enjoyed Shubha Mudgal’s response about her son being cared for by the extended clan while she was on tour and the astonishment expressed by the Indian diaspora who could not fathom how this was possible — “Had she taken permission from her husband to do so?” Having said that I know these women continue to be rare examples and not necessarily the norm.

Even Yatindra Mishra’s tale about his Dadi (paternal grandmother) not being permitted to sing since it would be frowned upon by society especially now that the family had lost their princely status. Given the context that women musicians were mostly tawaifs this would have really complicated matters for the family. So her father did not allow her to sing saying, “What will people say? They will think we have fallen on such hard times that now the daughter of the house is singing to earn!” Funny how far Indian society has now come with children being encouraged to sing and perform publicly in the hope they can become professional singers, preferably in Bollywood.

I liked how gracefully and tactfully Shubha Mudgal and Mrinal Pande dealt with the comment about “deterioration” of Indian classical musicians performing mobile ring tones and snatches of popular Hollywood musicals. It was fascinating to observe the arguments playing out between the purists and those who were arguing for the evolution of musical traditions such as the examples noted by Ashok Vajpayee. He said sometimes he can identify bits of Gwalior or Bhopal gharanas in modern renditions. Interesting.

Dhvaniyon ke aalok mein stree has been published by Rajkamal Prakashan. It is available in hardback and paperback.

6 January 2016

 

Guest post: Rohini Chowdhury, translator of “Bosky’s Panchatantra”

Guest post: Rohini Chowdhury, translator of “Bosky’s Panchatantra”

11 09 , 2013 No Comments

( I invited Rohini Chowdhury to talk about her experience in translating Bosky’s Panchatantra for Red Turtle. She translated Gulzar’s verse rendition of Panchatantra.

She is a widely published children’s writer, and an established literary translator. As a children’s writer, she has more than twenty books and several short stories to her credit. Her published writing is in Hindi and English, and covers a wide spectrum of literary genres including translations, novels, short fiction, comics, and non-fiction.

Rohini’s primary languages as a literary translator are pre-modern (Braj Bhasha and Avadhi) and modern (Khari Boli) Hindi, and English. She has translated the seventeenth century Braj Bhasha text Ardhakathanak, into modern Hindi and into English; both translations were published by Penguin India. Ardhakathanak is the autobiography of the poet, merchant and philosopher, Banarasidas; written in 1641, it is widely regarded as the first autobiography in an Indian language. Her translations include the Hindi novel Tyagpatra [The Resignation] by Jainendra, one of the leading Hindi novelists of the modern period, into English, also published by Penguin India.

Rohini was born and educated in India, and was a management professional before moving to London in 1997. She is widely travelled and brings in the nuances of the cultures of Asia, Africa and the West in her writings.

Bosky's Panchatantra by Gulzar, Rupa Publications, Rohini Chowdhury (transl)Gulzar Bosky’s Panchatantra Translated by Rohini Chowdhury, illustrated by Rajiv Eipe. Rupa Publications (2013)  Pb. Rs. 195

 When I was first asked to translate Gulzar’s verse renditions of stories from the Panchatantra, I was both excited and curious. Excited because I would be translating Gulzar, and curious because these were familiar tales, that I had grown up listening to; also, I had earlier translated several of these stories from the original Sanskrit Panchatantram. Moreover, these stories had been told and retold a hundred times before, in varying forms and formats, by writers and translators of all colours, and I wondered what new twist or angle Gulzar could possibly have given them. The excitement and curiosity were soon replaced by apprehension: Would I be able to do justice to the tales, or would my own familiarity with them stand in the way of my translation? And then, it was Gulzar that I was translating, and translating the work of a living poet of his stature brought its own demands— the quality of my translation had to match the greatness of his reputation, and please the poet as well!  As if these doubts were not enough, the tales were meant for children, and children, as anyone who has had anything to do with them will tell you, are far more demanding and discerning than adults. So there I was, faced with a trio of unprecedented challenges— an overly familiar subject, the text written by a famous and much-revered poet, and meant for children!

But I need not have worried, not about the ‘overly familiar’ at least! As I worked through the tales, I was drawn into their magic once more, and this time the magic came with the added sparkle of Gulzar’s wit and lively humour. Gulzar’s gentle imagination had fleshed out the original tales with dialogue and descriptions, and added events and happenings the way one does when telling a well-loved story to a child several times. The humour and the detail made these stories uniquely Gulzar’s, familiar yes, but new as well!

Gulzar Sahib approved my translation of the first story, and I breathed a sigh of relief. So the second worry was gone too! I could now focus on what, in any case, is any translator’s primary concern— to transmit the original in as accurate and as interesting a manner as possible to her audience, which, in my case, would be made up mainly of children.

Gulzar’s Panchatantra stories are in Hindustani, that inimitable mix of Hindi and Urdu that is so rarely heard these days, the tales related as he would have related them to his daughter, Bosky, when she was little. My main challenge now became to transmit the tones and nuances of his sparkling, softly flowing, idiomatic Hindustani into the much staider, crisper English.

Each language brings with it its own context, social, historical, cultural, so that when we move from one language into another, we also move worlds.  Translation therefore becomes a negotiation between languages and cultures, and the translator, as mediator, must address the issues that arise in such a negotiation: How accurately must the translation follow the original? Which words may be kept, which must be discarded? How best may an idea that is intrinsic to the original culture but alien to the other be transmitted? Can it be transmitted at all? I, too, asked these questions as I sat down to translate Gulzar’s stories.

Gulzar’s use of idiom makes the stories easy to read, but difficult to translate without taking some liberties with the original. Take, for example, the Hindi phrase, ‘jhoot ke pair nahin hote’ which translates literally into  ‘falsehood has no feet’.  In Hindi the phrase makes perfect sense, in English, not so much, not without further explanation of some sort. We finally settled upon ‘A lie never goes very far/For it has no feet at all’.

Certain cultural and social norms which are easily conveyed in Hindi, are almost impossible to convey in English, and compromises are inevitable. Consider the Hindu practice whereby a woman may not address her husband by name. This is conveyed perfectly in Hindi but in English translation, the cultural context is by and large lost. Take the tale of Manram Swaroop, the Brahmin. Though he had a wonderful name, no one ever used it: the entire village called him ‘Panditji’, and his wife, of course, would never address him by name:

His wife would call him

‘Hey, sir!’

‘Ho, sir!’

‘Do you hear me?’

That’s how she would address him…

Though technically correct and adequate for the purpose of telling the story, the translation does not and cannot in itself capture the social and cultural implications that are implicit in this tradition, unless it be accompanied by further explanation, either in the main text itself or in footnotes. But any such explanation would have made the text heavier, and given that my translation was not a scholarly exercise but aimed at young readers, I decided to skip the explanation.

Puns and double meanings are ever the translator’s bane and Gulzar’s gentle and clever play on words throughout the text presented another challenge in translation. Unfortunately, in some instances, this was inevitably lost in translation, though sometimes English actually enhanced the humour of the original. In the tale of the singing donkey, for example, English gave me the facility of playing with two words ‘donkey’ and ‘ass’ to convey the two meanings (the animal, and a fool) of the single Hindi word ‘gadha’.

Gulzar’s stories are in free verse, and therefore, to stay as close to the spirit of the original as possible, I wanted my translation to be in free verse as well.  Translating into verse constrains the translator even further for verse demands economy in the use of words, so that the translator must use words not only effectively, but both efficiently as well. I found myself writing and rewriting, cutting and pruning and editing, till the lines fell into place just so. An arduous exercise, but worth the effort.

Of course, as I worked, every decision I made— the words I used, the phrases I chose to explain or leave to the readers’ understanding, the ideas I chose to convey or glossed over briefly – was influenced by the fact that this work was meant for children.

One might ask, and I asked myself this: why should a translation aimed at children require more care from the translator than a translation aimed at adults? The answer, I realized, lay in the responsibility I feel when writing for children. Children are demanding readers, they absorb and observe, criticize and comment with a great deal more engagement and involvement than do most adults. They are also our future, and therefore, whether it is an original novel or story, or a translated work, children deserve the best that I can give.

London, 11 Sept 2013

(C) Rohini Chowdhury

Email: rohini.chowdhury@gmail.com

 

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