How Does One Mourn The Death Of Music?

The echo died. Chasing its own disappearance. Bouncing off the walls. Round corners. Racing down corridors. The single note. Lived its moment. Slipped into memory. Here it resonates. Remembered for its brief cameo. Not unlike a musician that refuses to linger after the encore.

It didn’t mean anything to most people passing by. It neither stopped. Nor cried halt. It just left. Without a goodbye. No leave taking. A shadow that simply opted out. Mingled with the crowd. Or perhaps walked into the horizon. Here one day. Gone the next. Just like that.

I stand at the window thinking. How does one mourn the death of music?

A setting for Zakir.

The audience is restive. Quiet. Nervous. Edgy. They are hushed. Murmuring. Whispering. The mood is of anticipation. And the possibility of the ephemeral making itself ‘visible’. Like hair that stands on edge when visited by unexpected grace.

The curtain goes up on Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and Zakir Hussain. Santoor and tabla.

Revealing turquoise, firozi, and burnished gold jalis or jafri arches that will form the setting for the concert about to take place.

Except that the arches—three of them, each 14 feet by 6 feet, are suspended above the musicians to form an architectural canopy at asymmetrical levels and the beams of light are placed above them in a manner that creates a pattern across the stage and the platform on which the musicians sit. The platform itself is an aquamarine velvet a foot and a half in height from the wooden stage floor.

The whole effect is surreal in a tangential manner for an audience that is used to countless curtains going up on white plywood jali arches in a semi-circle behind the musicians and bright lights.

Later, after the magic they both make as musicians of the ethereal, Zakir seeks out the lighting designer and embraces my hands. Nothing is said. Everything is felt.

***

I did not know Zakir well. Or at all, for that matter. Not in the way friends do. What I did know was the music. Or should that be what I sensed was the nature of his art. His artistry. And my life as a theatre lighting designer allowed me the joy to ‘be in a relationship of backstagedness’ with this Being of Music. We met backstage. Often. Never elsewhere. Not that I did not run into him in the world outside. I just shyly preferred the intimacy of the wings.

Another night and yes, another curtain, going up on large sheets of corrugated aluminium sheets of silver, the size of large doorways with portholes that overlook oceans in luxury ships cut out to reveal reams of white silk fabric flowing through them. Like an entire seascape suspended behind the artistes in the shadows. Or in light that at best could be described as incidental.

The curtain comes down after two hours of exhilaration.

This time, the hands are no longer embraced. Instead, I am.

A whispered ‘thank you Naveen bhai, gazab kar diya aap ne!’

***

Memory. Remembrance of things as they were. More importantly, as they could have been. Having happened. Taken place. And then ‘happening’ and ‘taking place’, even as I write, in the reservoir of my mind. My emotions betraying a strong impulse to revisit them as only I can. Through the lens of my wishful thoughts.

Why is memory so often sensual?

It is the hour after Babri. I am to design yet another stage for a concert featuring Hariprasad Chaurasia and Zakir Hussain for Sanskriti Sagar at the G D Birla Sabhaghar. I have been doing their stages for the last 15 years, using whatever material I can lay my hands on: there have been stages for bhajans with 1,600 terracotta pitchers forming a gigantic half-moon with an aquamarine Krishna and his gopis in a navrasmalika rendering painted on the pitchers as if the undulating surface was a canvas; a Bismillah Khan concert ushering in the new year has a cluster of large chandeliers gathering dust on the floor in one corner of the stage. The rest of the stage is full of half-covered antique chairs in a helter-skelter that gives a sense of a large haveli that has seen a glorious past and is now in ‘tatters’. But the music must go on; a Kishori Amonkar morning raga which reveals a backdrop of suspended planks, charred, soot-covered, hanging in various permutations from pristine white ropes. Like giant swings. Each plank has a hundred smouldering diyas. Fifty planks. Five thousand snuffed diyas and the wisp of innumerable smoke trails struggling to find a way out of the theatre, succeeding instead to slowly drift upwards and hover above the singer and the musicians. Listening, remembering the time that was.

But today, this ‘whimsy’ will not do. Or if it will, it will be bursting with anger. And frustration. And despair. For I have just heard the rumour that in the wake of the Babri backlash, some people rushed into the train from Pune to Mumbai to cut off Zakir라이브 바카라 hands.

How does one translate this into the helplessness of a stage design that will both be a tribute to a great musician and a release for my impotence?

I reach for the two aluminium ‘A’ ladders lying in the theatre. One taller than the other. I place them diagonally across the back of the 16 foot by 8 foot platform covered in black velvet, which is, in turn, placed square on a matte black floorcloth that shrouds the entire floor of the stage. I then proceed to insert wooden battens that are like giant spikes into the different rungs of the ladders. Like a porcupine that has been startled. I then rip open reams and reams of blood-red cloth and suspend one end from the black flies above the ladders. The other end ties the ladders into knots and spills over on to the black velvet. Makes its way across the black of the floorcloth. There is no stopping the blood now. It flows freely and out of control. Like an artery that has been slit. It covers the seats bisecting the hall diagonally and makes its way to the foyer and up the stairs and on to the street. I create another fissure across the other side, also diagonally bisecting the first one. Like a giant ‘X’ of Red. This too finds its way to the street from the other entrance.

The audience sits on the bloodied seats.

***

What does it mean for an artiste to take a risk?

Choosing the path of immaculate selflessness where your role as ‘accompanist’ or as ‘shadow-being’ to a Ravi Shankar or a Shivkumar Sharma or innumerable music masters is both persuasive as it is unobtrusive. You do not seek the light. It is the intuitive compulsion of light to find its way to you.

It means that each time you set out to create music, you go out on a limb. It means having to dispense with the safety nets for the trapeze act you are about to perform. It means having to find your own permanent connection with the inspiration inside your head.

Pluck the idea of what you wish to do out of the air. Again and again. With unfailing consistency.

The shadow detached itself from the clouds. Reaching out. It placed its palm on eyelids still warm. Shutting them gently.

Think of a long night of complete and absolute silence. Not the one he had slipped into. Just before this one. This is a new solitude. This absence of sound. Is. Peaceful. It is bathed in light. Like that of the sun. Light woven with golden thread. And a tinge of autumn. Hand-stitched by good souls. The ones we call guardian angels. A little like coming back to the home of your childhood. A happy home. One without fear. One that was caring. Full of play. One with siblings and parents and visiting relatives who, like the loyal Magi, came bearing gifts. Frequently. Joyfully. The kind of joy that fathers memory.

Think of it like closing your eyes to unbearable pain. Taking over your body. Bit by bit. And opening them. Instead. To a place that your friends, the ones you thought you had lost; had retreated to. A happy place. A place where the only music that played was the sound of children laughing. As they swam. The lamps that some invisible being lit at twilight. Each evening as you cycled home. Think also of the food and the wine. Homemade. Mulled to perfection. The kind that as adults we shared. Round tables lit by firelight. And well-being.

Think of it as a homecoming.

Voices softened

Hushed turning mute

Fading

Sinking into silence

Gone

One by one

The happy musicians

That like laughter

Died

Abruptly