‘My father had his own path, I have my own’: Mukul Shivputra

In the middle of the performance, Shivputra pulled out some tobacco from his orange cloth bag, rubbed it between his palms, placed it in his mouth and, unpretentiously, continued the thumri with the same intensity. In that moment, the formal setting of an auditorium almost transformed into an old-style baithak, its tehzeeb slightly more unceremonious than a public concert.

The audience, which also comprised a host of classical musicians, sat still, a little worried about Shivputra continuing the performance (there are stories of him leaving midway). After the thumri concluded, praises echoed from the back, ‘Gazab Mukul ji, kya baat hai’. Shivputra remained unfazed, not acknowledging any of the adulations. Before the centrepiece in raag Gara came up, he’d performed Sughar bar paayo, the famed Gunidas bandish in the moving evening raag Jogkauns. Soon the demands for Jamuna kinare and Udd jaayega hans akela and bhajans synonymous with Gandharva, surfaced. Shivputra said, “Madhyantar kar leejiye, uske baad do ghante aur baith jaayenge… Abhi main kulla karke aata hoon (Let’s go for an interval, after that, I’ll sit for two-three hours… I’ll gargle and come back)”. And he walked off the stage, leaving the audience confounded. He returned about 20 minutes later and sang short pieces in Pilu and Bhairavi. None by his father.

Kalapini Komkal with Mukul Shivputra in their younger days (Credit: Kalapini.com)

“Be it in a temple or at a concert hall, we sit down to venerate this extraordinary world of music. That veneration has various paths. My father, an extremely creative and brilliant musician, had chosen his, I have my own,” says Shivputra, a day before the concert.

We are at businessman and music connoisseur Ravi Jhunjhunwala’s Friends Colony home, where Shivputra, to everyone’s dismay, has just walked away into another room in the middle of lunch and is sitting in a corner, lost in thoughts. He looks older than his 67 years, his face revealing lines of age and ache. He agrees to coffee and conversation and for the next few minutes, speaks about life, music and everything within.

Shivputra does not come with a substantial back catalogue on streaming platforms but people have always acknowledged his virtuosity. With his name comes the romantic notion of a doomed artiste, being temperamental and a genius all at once. His hands have a visible tremor, a reminder of his alcohol dependence that led him to beg near the Sai Baba temple in Bhopal in 2009. The dishevelled image of one of the most-talented artistes of his generation had prompted the then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to take action. Shivputra was sent to rehab, brought out for concerts, and sent back again, without any proper care.

Shivputra learned the secrets of the swaras from his father. His quest for knowledge allowed him to build heavily on the foundation that Gandharva equipped him with, turning him into his own musician. What remains similar about both, however, is that the two artistes attempted to reflect heavily on the art and science of music — its past, present, and what it can be. “In Hindustani classical music, there are two distinct categories: music before Kumar Gandharva and music after Kumar Gandharva. He would introspect on music and this is what Mukul does, too. He sings less, but when he does, how brilliantly does he sing. You will see that while expanding on a raga, he can change it completely and that is not easy. Our music is extremely demanding. It does not allow anyone and everyone to mount it. But Mukul Shivputra, like his father, can really ride it,” said literary-cultural critic Ashok Vajpeyi, just before Shivputra opened his concert.

In a world of self-promotion, Shivputra discarded the need to please people; he continues to look within. “Dheere dheere thoda samajh aane laga hai (Slowly, I’ve begun to understand some of it),” he says.

In the history of classical music, the name Kumar Gandharva has been associated with evolution, with the idea of reviewing of strict musical aesthetics in the name of tradition.

Kumar Gandharva in concert (Credit: Express Archive)

Born in Belgaum, in April 1924, Gandharva’s full name was Shivputra Sidhramaiyya Komkali Math. His father, a priest at Shaiv Math, was a huge admirer of Bal Gandharva, one of the biggest names in Marathi natya sangeet; his Marathi songs often played at home. Gandharva heard and imbibed but began to sing only when he was eight. Strangely, the child could replicate any song that he heard. The head of his father’s hermitage gave him the name Gandharva — a connotation for celestial beings who serve as musicians to the gods.
The thriving world of music in undivided India suddenly knew of a child prodigy from Belgaum. At 10, he performed in Allahabad, with Ustad Faiyaz Khan, Pandit Omkarnath Thakur, Vinayakrao Patwardhan and KL Sehgal in the audience. Gandharva sang Ugich ka kanta ganjita, a Marathi piece on Ustad Abdul Karim Khan’s record. Those present were awestruck. After Gandharva’s performance in Kolkata, Faiyaz Khan said, “Mere paas koi jagir nahi hai beta, agar hoti toh aaj luta deta (I do not have any estate, child. If I did, I would have bestowed it on you).

Gandharva was 11 when he was sent to BR Deodhar at Deodhar School of Indian Music, Mumbai. Deodhar, master vocalist and educator, did not bind him to a gharana but let him absorb the treasures that each had to offer. Gandharva took the best from them and put it all into a single bandish. This was a radical break from the prevailing order of contemporary musicians such as Mogubai Kurdikar (Kishori Amonkar’s mother) and Mallikarjun Mansur, who revelled in the sophistication of a khayal singer. A purist’s nightmare, he broke away from the upper-class moorings of classical music.

At the school is where Gandharva met and fell in love with Bhanumati, a student, he’d also teach sometimes. The two married in 1946. But a few months later, Gandharva caught tuberculosis. At the peak of his career, his doctors said he won’t sing again. He moved to Dewas, in Madhya Pradesh, to recuperate and for about six years, bed-ridden, tuned his ears to bird calls, the sounds of nature, and a lot of folk music. “He is the one who highlighted that Hindustani classical music is seeped in folk music, in turn giving classical status to folk music. He’d say, ‘Raag toh nanga hai, kapde toh hum pehnaate hain (A raga is naked, we put the clothes on its back)’,” says Vajpeyi.

In 1952, Gandharva bounced back and began singing again. Shivputra was born in 1956. But Bhanumati died five years later, in childbirth, when she delivered their son, Yashovardhan. Gandharva then married one of his students, Vasundhara in 1962. Their daughter is vocalist Kalapini Komkali.

Gandharva now sang with one lung; the short but brilliant gusts of phrases in his music were a result of his diminished lung capacity. “But he kept creating new compositions, exploring various ways of singing a bandish, and not tying himself to anything. For those times, this was revolutionary,” says Shivputra.

When he was nine, Shivputra asked Gandharva to teach him, and he did. But this was also the time when he was busy with his concerts. Shivputra by then figured that the possibilities of the seven notes were infinite. At 17, he left home to learn from musicologist and his father’s friend Vamanrao Deshpande in Mumbai.

With this learning, came Shivputra’s quest for spirituality which led him to an ashram in Nemawar on the banks of the Narmada. “I was quite ambitious, even as a child and wanted to be a well-versed musician. I realised that talent could be natural, but how curious and hardworking one is, is what really mattered. My path was also led by coincidences, the people I met on the journey, the sanskaars that were imbibed. One’s art is a combination of all this,” he says.

He began learning from every source — dhrupad from KG Ginde, thumri from Baburao Rele, pakhawaj from Pt Arjun Shejwal, and voice training from Ashok Ranade. He also studied Sanskrit at Mumbai University under Marathi poet Vasant Bapat. His interest in Carnatic classical music and affection for the veena led him to Kalakshetra in Chennai, where he learned music from MD Ramanathan for a year, in 1976. “As much as I love it, I can never become a Carnatic classical singer. For that I’ll need to be born again. In Andhra Pradesh,” he says.

A year later, Shivputra returned to Dewas and did a few concerts. This is also when he met his childhood friend Suneeta, daughter of Gandharva’s harmonium accompanist Bandubhaiyya Chaughule. The two were married in 1977; their son, Bhuvanesh, too is a vocalist. But Dewas was never Shivputra’s happy place. Though Gandharva showered him with affection, he felt alienated by the family. He moved to Indore with his wife and young son after almost two years. But life had other plans. A tragic fire in the kitchen took Suneeta’s life. Shivputra never married again.

Devastated, he handed his two-and-a-half-year-old son to his father in Dewas and went back to Nemawar, for the next five years. It was his guru at the ashram, Vishwanath Prakash, who helped restructure his life, bringing music back, helping him sing for the radio. He began travelling to various parts of the country, and like his father, began exploring folk music. This is when he learned and sang in Malwi, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, and Bhojpuri at small, local concerts.

Somewhere in this mix, alcohol became Shivputra’s crutch, especially during legal battles over the family estate. Organisers, friends and family began distancing themselves. But some friends, though, like Vajpeyi, helped him find his feet again, and arranged concerts for him. “Manipulative people did not let him live but his art did not let him die,” wrote his friend and manager Priya Achrekar in a Marathi magazine in 2014.

Bhuvanesh learned from Gandharva, till he passed away in 1992, and then from Vasundhara, who died in 2015. Now he learns from Kalapini. Shivputra never taught him. In conversations with Dewas-based Bhuvanesh, he refrains from speaking about his father. But what does Shivputra think of his son’s music? “Bhuvanesh isn’t there yet. There is a lot of work needed,” he says. Shivputra so far has only been awarded the Kumar Gandharva Samman by Madhya Pradesh Kala Parishad (1992); there are none from the government of India.

Now, Shivputra is finally doing what he was meant to do — perform delightful compositions in brimming concert halls. The restiveness seems to have settled, but the quest to dive into the soul of compositions and note structures, learn more, sing more, analyse resolutely, is more alive than ever. “Eventually, these seven notes and their sanskaar… that is all that there is to life,” says Shivputra, before drifting away into another room. But just before that, with a toothless smile, he says, “Phir milenge”.