The Lost Tunes

(A STORY)

Ah, those days of early youth when Srikantan and I shared the upper storey of a small house in Tinnevelly! I was then a dabbler in letters, and he a budding musician. We were both very sincere about our arts, but he was by far the greater artist of us two. His music, in fact, was a source of constant disturbance to my pursuit of letters, but I found it impossible to wrench myself away from it. That man had genius even in those early days, there can be no doubting it. Early in the morning when the sun had hardly risen, he would be already up, and his sweet voice would steal into my ears, waking me with an almost caressing touch, so that a sense of freshness and bliss came over me. Yes, it was the gentle cheery Bupalam–the rag of the dawning hour– and Srikantan, capturing its inner grace, would sing it as though a soft, mellifluous bell was being rung, gently calling everyone to the day’s work and to witness the glory of the dawn. As he sang it, the rag had all the quality of the slowly rising sun, the splendour of the east, the freshness of morning, and faded away all of a sudden like morning dew.

The world has now meted out to Srikantan the fame that he truly deserved. Few will deny that he is today the only musician who can enter into the spirit of a rag, and so sing it as to make it harmonise with the atmosphere and mood of the moment. But great as he is, I have lately missed in his music the fresh spontaneity of his earlier days. It has appeared to me that nowadays he is surer but not as sublime as he once used to be.

But, when some days Srikantan was here in Madura, and sang before a large gathering at the Saraswati Gana Sabha, he astonished me by reaching musical heights even greater than he reached in his early youth. He developed the Reethi-gowla rag in a manner in which I have not heard it sung before. To say that the rendering was original is not sufficiently to praise it. I would rather say that Srikantan truly lost himself in his music as every creative artist should lose himself in his art. The effect of the rag as he developed it was something indescribable. Ah, how our heads nodded, and how we clapped our hands for sheer joy as Srikantan finished! Yet after returning home with Srikantan, I could not in spite of my best efforts recall even one of those bewitching strains which had come to him so naturally for nearly an hour as he sang the Reethi-gowla rag at the Sabha.

So, after our night meal was over, and we were resting on the terrace, I asked Snkantan,

"Srikanta, I have never heard you or anyone else sing Reethi-gowla as you sang it today. But somehow I cannot re-collect any of those lovely strains. Could you reproduce them for me now?"

Thereupon Srikantan tried to reproduce the development, but although his singing was beautiful and classic, he could not–try as he might–retrace the musical path which he had traversed so gloriously only that evening. Then, suddenly, a shadow came over his face, he stopped singing, and said in disgust,

"No, 1 shall never recollect those strains and those nuances."

"Did you sing Reethi-gowla in this new manner for the first time in your life this evening ?" I asked him.

"No, this is the second time," he answered, and added enigmatically, after a pause, "But there is a history behind these tunes which I am unable to recapture now, and which perhaps I shall never recapture."

It was when I pressed him to make his meaning clear that Srikantan began this story of his strange artistic experience:

"Kesava, you’ll remember the keen disappointment we used to feel at the first few concerts which some of our friends got up for me in Tinnevelly. You would say that in public I was not half as good as I was when I sang with none but you to hear me in the upper storey of the house in which we lived. In those days, the flame of music burned in me with a fresh glow, but because of my hankering after fame, I felt too nervous to rise up to my true height before an audience. Today, the old nervousness has gone, and I have realised fame to be poor stuff, but, though the flame is steadier than before, it is not so brilliant.

"In spite of our dissatisfaction, however, some critics were pleased, and you’ll recall how my own musical guru, Ramalinga Sastrigal, recommended me to this same Saraswati Gana Sabha where I sang today. The great Bharatan, nephew of my guru, himself volunteered to accompany me on the violin. Madura Krishnamoorthy, of whom Sastrigal was wont to say that when he played upon the drum one could not say whether it was the drum that accompanied the voice or the voice that accompanied the drum, was to be the drummer. Krishnamoorthy, as you know, was a very proud man, and would not ordinarily have deigned to let his name be associated with such a raw musician as I was, but because of his respect for Sastrigal agreed to take part in the performance.

"It was my first big performance, and I left for Madura with your good wishes. Even now, I remember how early I arrived in the hall in which musicians far more reputed than I had sung; and how excited I became as the crowd swelled. The fact that Bharatan and Krishnamoorthy were accompanying me was sufficient to rouse public interest in the performance. I particularly remember how my heart gave a leap as Krishnamoorthy entered with that non-chalant face of his. I knew that what I really had to fear was not his perverse temperament but something in myself, the quality of nervousness and a fright at the crowd, that prevented me from losing myself in my music as I should. ‘Music is self-enjoyment. A mlisician should not care what others think of his music,’ I said to myself, but in vain.

"When time was up. I was led to the dais along with the rest. I tuned my thambura with nervous fingers. Bharatan tuned his instrument, and even in the discordant process of tuning, there was visible the inimitable deftness of his touch. Krishnamoorthy tuned his drum with a few sharp hits at the edge, as though he were annoyed at something.

"I began nervously with the usual invocation to Ganesa. I was very much dissatisfied with my rendering, but the appreciative nodding of the audience showed me that I was making some impression. I suppose that when a musician has got some talent he cannot but unconsciously convey a hint of it, however afraid he may be of his listeners. Again, I have observed that the very quality of nervousness in a novice sometimes lends a certain charm to his voice, as, say, the lisp of a child lends a charm to its talk. Or perhaps the audience had not expected of me even the little ability I had shown; and their appreciation was no more than an expression of pleasant surprise.

"Still, I was dissatisfied. I had come with great ambitions. It was my first big performance, and on it might well depend my future career. I was intent upon making of it a signal success. I thirsted for that self-abandonment in music which, in a certain measure, I could have in your company at our house in Tinnevelly. But the very fact that I was anxious to impress detracted from the impression that I could create. The very fact that I tried to lose myself in song made me painfully conscious of myself. To me, it began to seem not so much that I was singing as that I was mimicking myself. Near me, Bharatan’s bow swung on the strings with delightful precision. Krishnamoorthy, non-chanlant as usual, followed my voice so closely on his drum that it looked as if my voice might be overtaken any moment. I felt that I was not singing up to the level of the other two musicians, and thought that because of my lack of brilliance I was curbing the flow of their music, and that they could not rise to the heights which they could easily reach but for me.

"I had sung some half a dozen kirtanas, and, according to my thought-out plan, I had one more kirtana in Reethi-gowla before I should launch out into pallavi. As usual, before rendering the kirtana, I started developing the rag. I was just trying to put some flesh and blood into what was impressing me as mere dry bones, when my eyes discovered something which sent a thrill through me. A beautiful–strangely beautiful–girl was sitting right in front of me under the light in the of the hall, and she was obviously very much interested in my music, as I could see from her eyes and face and the frequent but rhythmic nods of her head. I do not know what it was in the face of that beautiful girl that so appealed to me; nor can I explain the sudden and marvellous change that her mere appearance wrought in my music. She had to me a strangely famliar expression: I had a feeling as though I had seen her before somewhere, though I could not recollect where. Somehow, after I had seen her, my heart was filled with a nervous thrill and my music seemed to take new wings. I gave a few bold touches, very different from those which I had hitherto given. My music drew forth loud sabashes from the audience, once or twice even from Krishnamoorthy. And the more I soared on the wings of song, the more rapidly I seemed to soar to the very perfection of music. It was not merely the self-abandonment which you would say I could achieve only when alone. Firstly, I felt the joy which the knowledge that somebody is entering into one’s own creation gives one. For, that she did enter whole-heartedly into my music I felt instinctively certain. It seemed to me that every tune, every flourish, every touch that I gave to the rag aroused some new emotion in her heart, some old memory in her mind; and, in turn, this emotion and this memory imprinted themselves indubitably on her face. And as her face reacted to my music, so did my own music seem to react to her face. Perhaps it is no more than this: that beauty in one sphere has got its exact likeness or correspondence in another; that what I did was just to translate that woman’s beauty, the lines and curves of her face and the contour of her body into the lines and curves of melody and the form of the rag. But this much can I say, that not even in un-self-conscious outpourings in our house in Tinnevelly had I felt that delight, that supreme bliss of creation which I did now, when, as it were, I shared my creation with another soul. The audience had sunk into an awful silence, and the atmosphere seemed to be surcharged with the majesty of my own music.

"And presently something greater happened. It was as if all this had been only preparatory to an even higher stage. As I sang and sang, I forgot everything, or rather everything seemed to be dissolved and absorbed in my music–everything, the audience, myself, and even that girl’s figure and the out-lines of her face seemed to recede somewhere and vanish out. My eyes closed, and I was lost to everything. After that, I do not know what I sang or if I sang at all. I only know that I had become one with the rag, and whether I actually sang or only imagined myself singing, to me at least it was supremely good….."

Srikantan paused for some time, evidently overpowered by his own utterance. But regarding his doubt as to whether he had actually sung, I am in the fortunate position of being able to say that it is groundless. For as soon as he had described to me his rendering of Reethi-gowla, I was put in mind of the great praise lavished on his first Madura performance years ago, and of a description of the effect of the music by a prominent music critic in that once popular journal, ‘The Nadhapriyan’:

In Srikantan we have without doubt a great musical find. His development of the Reethi-gowla rag can only be described as soul-throbbing……His voice sometimes floated languidly like a bird hanging in the air with un-beating wings; sometimes shot up like a meteor; some-times reminded one of the ripples that continually form in the middle of a river round a particular point...Sometimes, it was soft as down; sometimes plaintive, imploring; sometimes rebellious; sometimes joyous; sometimes caressing...

At that time I had been prone to think that all this was mere journalistic exaggeration, but after having heard Srikantan this day, and after he himself had narrated to me his experience, I was convinced of the truth of the journalistic comment, and accordingly acquainted Srikantan with its substance.

"Be that as it may," continued Srikantan in a rather regretful voice, "that evening at least. I drank deeply of that joy which can belong only to the creative artist at the moment of fulfilment. A rude clapping of hands brought me down again from musical heights to earth. And there she was again, right in front of me; and after my intense experience, I found it almost difficult to recognise her. I had taken nearly an hour, and an hour of pause-less singing, but for those eloquent pauses which are so necessary even in raga-singing–to develop the Reethi-gowla rag. And perforce I had to rush through the rest of the programme. I sang with confidence, but not sublimely. Again and again, my eyes wandered to the girl who had been the inspiration of my music, but it was as though I had exhausted myself in my first great effort. I was not serious any more.

"When the performance was over, I was congratulated by many for my fine development of Reethi-gowla, even including the proud Krishnmoorthy. Bharatan purticularly was wild in his praise. I spent a week in a kind of dreamy delight, not thinking of anything, not bothering about anything, more as if I were a spirit than a human being. I had a vague but ever-present recollection of the girl’s face, and some tune or other always rushed through my head, though I was only hazily conscious of it.

"Then my merits were broadcast, and the very next Sunday, a performance was arranged for me in Madras. I was to have the same accompaniments. I went to the kutcheri very confidently, tunes still ringing in my ears. But my confidence proved my undoing. You know the absolute hash that I made of my first performance in Madras, and the slough of despondence into which I was thrown by my ignominious failure. Yes, it was unbearable for some time. Inspired with confidence by my fine rendering of Reethi-gowla in Madura, and because of those tunes still ringing in my ears, I had the temerity to choose Reethi-gowla as the rag in which I would sing pallavi that day. With superb carelessness I rushed to the fond item, impatient of scaling those glorious heights I had scaled only the other day. The result was that the first few songs were far from being impressive. But my shame came only when I actually began to develop Reethi-gowla. I simply could not reproduce my form of that day, and those tunes which I had sung and which till a short while ago had been ringing in my ears had quietly gone out of my memory. The pallavi was a dismal failure, and my efforts to scale great heights despite the lack of inspiration resulted in stale repetition and even in some gross errors of taste. The audience began to boo...But it is needless to dwell longer on my miserable failure...

"The next few years were for me years of humble and patient toil during which I worked my way to the forefront again, and slowly erased from the public mind the memory of my initial failure. But those musical heights to which I scaled in my first Madura performance, I not once scaled again. I was too afraid even to try Reethi-gowla any more in public. But those forgotten tunes continued to trouble me for a pretty long time. They would come to me in disconnected patches in dreams, but eluded me whenever I was awake. I tried all sorts of queer expedients to recapture them. I would try futile permutations and combinations on the musical scale. Then, knowing that it was the girl’s face that had inspired them, I would try to recall the outlines of the face. I would look in the female half of the audience to see if perchance that woman was there. But both the woman and the tunes seemed to have gone out of my life for ever...In those days, when you used to write, I remember how much you used to be upset if you forgot some idea you had hit upon for a story, or some new thought or felicitious turn of phrase to be used in a poem. But the writer and the painter can at once record that which they feel or conceive in word and on canvas, and can get to their works if they want to recapture their delight. But what of the musician who hits upon some novel tune in a public performance and then forgets it? You can imagine what my sorrow should have been...

"But those are far-off days. I fear, Kesava, that of late Mammon has begun to creep into my art. It is the inevitable price you have to pay for fame. Detest fame, and spend your life-time in solitary pursuit of your art, then you can rise to any height in art. But once you have begun to sell your art, deterioration invariably sets in. Then again, you have added worries in the shape of wife and children. You are bothered with the practicalities of life…..

"But today again after many years I tasted of the artist’s ecstatic joy in the moment of fulfilment. Today, again, I captured those tunes which I lost many years ago and had despaired of finding. For today I saw her."

"Her? Whom do you mean?...It should be more than twenty years since you first discovered those enchanting tunes, if I understood you aright," I said, surprised.

But without heeding me, Srikantan went on,

"Today, I was singing as usual with that cold precision and assurance of which I have almost begun to tire nowadays. But in the middle of the performance I saw her–here in the same place in the same hall where I had first seen her. Right in front of me was an oldish, repulsive-looking woman, and the moment I had caught sight of her, some dim memory was lit up in me. It was as though, she had been twisted and drawn and pressed into some monstrous shape, as if a gruesome caricature had been sketched of her. A spasm of grief seized my heart at sight of her but, turning my eyes away from this grotesque figure, I saw seated beside it she herself, as if in contrast to the caricature...She herself with all her strange, radiant, yet mellow, soul-stirring beauty...Only, ...only, she seemed to have, by some mysterious process, rendered herself a couple of years younger...

"Where was this woman? Where was she sitting?" I asked Srikantan, greatly excited.

"She was right in front of me. Beneath the big electric bulb at the of the hall... There used to be a petromax lamp there in those days."

"Must be Kamalambal with her daughter Leelavati," thought I. "Kamalambal herself was something of a beauty in those days, although, perhaps, as Srikantan says, a strange beauty."

"...And the moment I saw her,"went on Srikantan, "some kind of spiritual effervescence was stirred in me; and the olden days, my first Madura performance, and my incredible success with Reethi-gowla, all came to my mind in the twinkling of an eye. At once, with trembling heart and quivering voice, I tried. And her silent approbation, her manifest absorption in my music gave it new wings. With growing confidence I went on developing the rag. And as I went on, it was as if every flourish, every touch aroused a corresponding emotion or memory in her heart, which immediately imprinted itself on her face...And her face reacting to my music, and my music reacting to her face, I went on and on, on the wings of song…"(Srikantan paused here for some time) "until everything faded away before me: the woman, the hall, the audience. And I was left alone in a state of bliss with my music–yes, with those enchanting tunes which I had once lost, which I had despaired of discovering again until today I re-discovered them, and which I have since forgotten...."

Srikantan stopped here; and I sat silent; revolving in my mind his strange experience. Yes, as Srikantan sang Reethigowla at the Sabha, he seemed to excel himself, and gave so many new flourishes and touches to the rag, which I could have hardly believed anyone to be capable of before. But to whom should I give the credit for his wonderful performance? To his own genius, long turned stale, which had suddenly manifested itself again, as it were with a vengeance? Or to Leelavati?

Those tunes which he had re-discovered and again lost must be there imprinted on the young dancing-girl’s face, and Srikantan (thought I) will not re-capture them unless he sees her and sees in her, unchanged, her mother’s ecstatic face of twenty years ago.