Stars Cast Spell On Kerala’s Piper And Karachi’s Sitarist

Kodakara Sivaraman Nair took a brief break from his Kerala village to visit Delhi in 1986—the year Ustad Rais Khan subsequently left native India and settled in Pakistan. The fact apart, this sentence borders on absurdity, but doesn’t exactly prompt one to smile today if you knew both artistes. For, they both died recently in a span of one week.

Piper Nair, who was a participant at the country’s Republic Day pageantry in the capital 31 years ago, is an obscure figure vis-à-vis Khan saheb, a renowned sitarist. The septuagenarian from God’s Own Country blew the ethnic kurumkuzhal at temple ensembles during summers, while Rais was an internationally acclaimed instrumentalist of Hindustani classical. There was a huge gap in their eminence as musicians even as they were contemporaries—technically. In fact, the Malayali was just a few months younger to the Madhya Pradeshi. Nair’s end came abruptly—and definitely dramatically amid cultural festivity—while Khan had been ailing for while, probably readying to face death.

Little Rais’s birthplace of Indore was a princely state by that name under British India when he was born in the early winter of 1939. Eleven years younger to his famed sitarist uncle Vilayat Khan (who died in 2004 at age 75), Rais began gaining name as an instrumentalist as an exponent of the Mewati gharana that has geographical origins in Rajasthan though is considered an offshoot of the Indore school of the Hindustani system. The start of the mastery was courtesy the training under his sitarist father Muhammad Khan, who was good in playing the more challenging rudra veena as well. Rais’s mother, elder to Vilayat, was a vocalist.

At just the age of five, Rais gave his debut public concert. His sitar recital was before of the Governor of Bombay Sir Maharaja Singh and his wife at Sunderbhai Hall in downtown Churchgate. Rais, also a vocalist, was only 16 when he represented India at an International Youth Festival in Warsaw. More steps to glory happened, and the artiste gained immense fame abroad and within his country. Rais also performed by the Potomac at Washington, while back in India he also dabbled with popular music by collaborating with iconic film singers such as Mohammed Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. On a parallel plane, his sitar fused the aesthetics of dhrupad, khayal and thumri genres of classical Hindustani, while also going for a blend of schools such as Gwalior and Etawah.

Then, at 47, the master went for a decision that altered his artistic career. He chose to migrate to the neighbouring Islamic state. The reason for the change of residence (in Karachi) was personal: he had seven years before that married (for a fourth time) a Pakistani—popular singer Bilqees Khanum.

Only after changing nationality did the sitarist apparently realise the folly. As a cultural observer in Pakistan noted recently, “Rais Khan's worst mistake was surrendering the Indian citizenship and accepting the green passport that has no worth at any country's visa section.” For, as the writer Mohammed Shehzad notes in an obituary in leading newspaper Daily Times, the country had been “inherently apathetic about performing art”. Khan saheb never faced any intimidation as a classical artiste, but in his 31 years of life in Pakistan he would not have performed as many concerts, adds the writer about the master who died on May 6, not long after that country conferred him with the prestigious Sitara-i-Imtiaz award.

The sitarist did occasionally visit India from Karachi. At a 2014 concert in Delhi, he looked jovial and rendered a classy Hindustani raga with verve as well as introspection. The motley October crowd at India International Centre warmed up to his ragas that for them perhaps sounded like his being wistful of the Indore days.

Down south the peninsula in Thrissur district, Kerala was celebrating its last temple festival of what is called the ‘season’. On forenoons and late nights of all its eight days of ulsavam, the Koodalmanikyam temple in Irinjalakuda would hold elephant-lined processions with traditional orchestras called melam of 120 artistes, anchored by the piper at the centre. Sivaraman Nair, holding the little pipe that resembles the shehnai of northern India in both looks and timber, was the conductor of the Panchari ensemble in multiples of six beats and lasting for almost four hours. 

On May 14, two days before curtains were to ring down the festival, the piper was found lying motionless on the floor and close to the bed of the rest-house where he was earlier seen sleeping after having led the morning’s melam procession. Just a couple of hours before he was to lead another ensemble treat at the sprawling Bharata temple, the 76-year-old piper suffered a cardiac arrest, casting gloom across the premises of the shrine and Kerala’s art world in general.

 “When it was Sivaraman Nair anchoring, the melam would be safe,” says renowned chenda player Peruvanam Kuttan Marar, who was mostly the lead drummer at the Irinjalakuda temple this year as well. “I have had the fortune of facing him (in the opposite row) at major heritage melams such as at Thrissur Pooram, Peruvanam Pooram and Tripunithura Poornatrayeesa ulsavam.”

While one more monsoon spell will turn the leaf between temple festival seasons in Kerala, Hindustani music in faraway Pakistan hopes for a fresh shoots in the classical idiom after the exit of a master sitarist.