Anecdotal Life

I must have read more than two dozen obituaries of Gangubai Hanagal in the last fortnight, both in English and in Kannada. Something common to most of these obituaries is that they reconstruct the life of the music doyenne through a string of disjointed anecdotes. In many instances these anecdotes were supplied by the lady herself and had been in circulation for years and decades. As you read them, you wondered if you were mourning the passing away of a towering classical musician or a remarkable raconteur. There is no doubt that Gangubai or Gangajji, as she was fondly referred to in her hometown Hubli, was both. 

The two times I met her, I too gathered a sackful of stories to take home. My first meeting with her was in the early 90s in Hampi as a student and the only anecdote I recall from that meeting was related to colonial history. She made an interesting observation on how Western tunes and classical Indian ragas were treated in early Indian films. Western tunes, she said, were adapted to songs sung by asuras or villains in the movies and the gods or heroes remained loyal to the Indian musical tradition. Did she hum a line or two to illustrate her point? My memory is hazy, but I remember her reference to the film Maya Bazar, in which Gatotkacha sings 'Vivaha Bojanavidhu' set to a Western tune. The smash-hit movie made in the mid-50s was based on an episode from Mahabharata and was first released in Telugu and then in Tamil and Kannada as well. Gangubai had used this anecdote to communicate in her own unique way the subtle expression of cultural resistance to our British rulers. 

My second encounter with Gangubai was as recent as December 2008, when I went to ask her what she thought about her guru-bhai Bhimsen Joshi who had been awarded the 'Bharat Ratna'. She regaled me for more than an hour with her Bhimanna's bhaakri stories. The only technical reference she made in that conversation was about 'karaj mehnat.' She recalled how Bhimanna and she would try to perfect the lower octave early in the morning on an empty stomach. 

The anecdotes that Gangubai reeled out to all those who went seeking them was more about the context and circumstance of her music than her music itself. She perhaps would never tell you why her rendering of the 'Abhogi Kanada,' 'Asvari Todi' or the 'Bhairavi' was special. She kept her conversation plain and unpretentious with a bit of humour thrown in, but with an enormous human caring at its core. This made her relate to people quickly and easily. She was completely free of quirks and eccentricities that we so readily associate with 'ustads' and 'pandits.' In a world dominated by male maestros, it appears she had worked out pretty early how to remain an endearing 'Bai' and to expect nothing more. Therefore, when I spoke to her about Bhimsen Joshi, who was much younger than her, there was not an iota of bitterness or jealousy about his having overtaken her in the government's award scrolls. At no point did she halt the conversation to say 'no comments.' There was a natural flow to what she had to say and also a natural rejoicing. Once, when she strayed to speak about his two marriages and the grief of his first wife, she immediately corrected herself and instructed me not to write about it. "He deserves every bit of these laurels, don't hurt him in any which way," she had said.

After having listened to many anecdotes from Gangubai in person and after having read many more, I have come to wonder what end did these anecdotes serve the musical legend? Why did she convert every incident of her life into a little tale? People, of course, use these to mythologise her, but then what did they mean to her? Why did she take refuge in them so often? Was it her way of surviving in a literate world, where she had only a minimal formal education? Were these anecdotes a mask to hide her hurt and pain? Was this delicate figurative style of thinking the only way she knew to negotiate with the world? Was it her way of perceiving the world? Interestingly, some obituarists have highlighted that she sang without embellishments and stuck unwaveringly to the classicism of her Kirana gharana; that she never preferred to sing the lighter forms like a 'thumri' or an 'abhang.' But, ironically, whatever 'colour' she may have denied to her singing, she more than accommodated it in her banter. This is precisely why it makes you curious, especially when you realise that anecdotes conceal more than what they reveal. Instead of one idea, an anecdote exposes a listener to a spectrum of thoughts without easily revealing the nucleus of those thoughts. Sometimes I wonder if Gangubai's anecdotes were well 'riyazed' like her ragas? Many people came to see her and these anecdotes required a constant retelling, but she never altered her versions. What she told me a year back would exactly be what she told somebody else a decade ago. She wouldn't bend her anecdotes to suit her audiences. This consistency built a trust in her narratives.

However, it is important to record here the efforts that were made to violate this trust that Gangubai had built with her people. In my December 2008 encounter with the singer, the most irritating presence was Manoj Hangal, her grandson. Strangely, he was telling me what to ask and what answers to expect. He was also telling me what cues to introduce when she recalled a particular anecdote to ensure a greater fleshing out of the incident. In fact, the first round of our conversation followed the structure he had laid out. It is only in the second round when I started asking 'unlisted' questions that the grandson started prompting her with replies and obstructing her natural flow. You couldn't wish him away or ask him to shut up. 

Before the encounter itself, as we sipped tea and waited for Gangubai to get ready, Manoj Hangal was curious to know if his grandmother too would get the Bharat Ratna. He wondered if Bhimsen Joshi's Maharashtra connection had landed him with the big honour. He was in a hurry to get the government to start a music university named after her. He knew time was ticking away and his grandmother in her 90s was falling ill quite often. He wanted more space for the museum to display her awards and photographs. He kept a count of how many ministers, chief ministers, prime ministers and presidents had called on his grandmother. He was aware of the media attention Gangubai was getting and he also seemed to be staging events to keep her in the news. All I heard from Manoj was not stemming from an innocent pride in the colossus, but there was a cold calculation entwined. It saddened me immensely as to how in her old age Gangubai had become a prisoner of this young man's pettiness. 

All this was some what pardonable. Most people who aid and guard celebrities display these tendencies and Gangubai with her illness and advanced age was, after all, helpless. But what was unpardonable was the manner in which Manoj, in recent years, had caused a blemish on the secular tradition of Gangubai's music. She belonged to the musical tradition of people like Abdul Karim Khan and Abdul Wahid Khan who founded the Kirana gharana. They were her most revered gurus. The photograph of Gangubai in a gentle sisterly embrace of Shehanai maestro Bismillah Khan, taken by my friend Saggere Ramaswamy in 1993, in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, is such a powerful image of what we perceive as her true cultural affiliation. Manoj sullied this tradition by identifying himself with Hindu fundamentalists in Hubli and by wittingly or unwittingly dragging his grandmother's reputation into it. When the Sangh Parivar stoked communal flames in 1994 to 'reclaim' the Idgah Maidan, Uma Bharati and other RSS leaders reportedly took shelter and operated out of Gangubai's house. Six innocents were killed at that time. Later, in 2004, when a non-bailable warrant was issued against Uma Bharati by a Hubli court and she had to step down as the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Manoj Hangal appeared as her local counsel. He is also said to have launched a Hindu lawyers association in the communally-volatile town.

To be fair to Gangubai, she made no public statement supporting Hindutva, but neither did she condemn it. Her mysterious silence about the activities taking place in her house remain a troubling question. With all her gregariousness, would she not have entertained her guests? It is difficult to reconcile her great music, that transcended many boundaries, with this episode. Was this the only discordant note in her life? Interestingly, Gangubai's 75th birthday felicitation volume (in 1986) was edited by S L Bhyrappa, a Kannada novelist and Hindutva ideologue. Was it her innocence that ensured she did not see through the ideology of hate and exclusion? Or, did she have some sympathy for it? We don't know the answers. She certainly had no anecdotes to offer on this. No interviewer posed these questions to her nor does any obituarist mention this jarring association.

With the lady having gone, it is perhaps better that I maintain a status quo on the issue and end with an anecdote that is my personal favourite: On her masculine voice, the most illustrious Kannada poet D R Bendre once said that a 'cursed gandharva was caught in her throat.' Typically of Bendre he did not explain why he thought the Gandharva was cursed.