Memories of A Melancholic Soul

Ae Mohabbat: Reminiscing Begum Akhtar (Stellar Publishers, Rs 695) delves into the life and times of Akhtaribai Faizabadi, better known as Begum Akthar. Ganguly writes about an enthusiastic young singer from north India who burst into the scene in the late 1920s and soon became the darling of the music world. “She juggled her multiple roles as a performer, lover, wife, mother, guru and friend,” says Ganguly. “But beneath the facade of fame, she was a deeply sensitive woman, facing loneliness, pain and anguish,” she adds solemnly.

Ganguly began her research into Akhtar’s life in 2000, when, on a Ford Foundation Fellowship, she documented the lives of tawaifs as a musical community, searching for a comprehensive repertoire of their music and, finally, recording over 200 hours of rare music. “Ammi has mistakenly been branded as a tawaif and a thief for decades now. In music circles, women have always been mistreated, misinterpreted. I wanted to write the story of her life from the perspective of a successful, working woman, much ahead of her times,” says Ganguly, who in 2002, wrote and performed a solo play called Begum Akhtar and toured extensively with it. The book is as much about Akthar as it is about the emergence of classical music in post-Independence India.

Ganguly’s sure that quite a few feathers will be ruffled, “So many of her disciples even claim that I wasn’t her student. That’s all right. It only lessens the burden of her legacy and allows me to record in whatever genre I want,” chuckles Ganguly, who is releasing a thumri album later this month. “Ammi’s greatest lesson to me was life, and how to look at it. She used to say, if you want to achieve anything in life, then make friends with loneliness, it won’t betray you.”