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Journalism of Courage
Last week’s chance meeting with Pakistani ghazal king Ghulam Ali proved full of felicity. Though it’s pleasant to meet someone whose voice melts your blues, such encounters can be terrifyingly iffy. I toiled to get a full sentence out of Abida Parveen a couple of years ago and felt like a total professional flop because all that the good lady would vouchsafe, charm I never so wisely, was “Wah!” — and roll her eyes. (She was chattier by far this time round, to inaugurate Muzaffar Ali’s Rumi Foundation and even told me — with a wicked twinkle, I’m persuaded — that she remembered me. I’ll bet, I was a gibbering wreck by the end of that “interview”).
Ghulam Ali, too wore a weary air and was very measured and practiced in his responses. Yes, he was a shagird of the Patiala gharana or what remained of it in Pakistan, having learnt from Bade Ghulam Ali Khan Sahib’s family in Lahore. Yes, he had often heard Khan Sahib sing until the fateful day he’d packed his bags for India. The reason seems pathetic now, given the wave of people-to-people affection crashing the border: Radio Pakistan’s then director would not let Khan Sahib sing “Hari Om tat sat” which was the first composition Khan Sahib had learnt from his guru and valued like a beej mantra. But we refrained from such sad topics. Instead, I asked him what my Urdu snob friends from the plains of Hindustan were keen to know: did Ghulam Ali feel his robust ‘Punjabiyat’ was a handicap in singing Urdu poetry? After all, the dominant Punjabi traits are success and high energy, whereas the Urdu ghazal is a loser’s plaint, located permanently in Mughal twilight amidst sad cypresses from which the nightingale sings plaintively to the rose. Quite so, he said, there was a high-voltage current from Punjabiyat that he brought unabashedly to his music.
Then, feeling a bit nervous and feeling silly about feeling nervous, I asked him what I’ve been dying to ask for ages. I could hear the ‘udaya’ ragas (early morning scales) in the Koran Sharif. What did he hear, as a musician and as a devout Muslim? Ghulam Ali’s soul seemed to look out at me then. “Bhairon, Bhairavi and Kalangra — the Arabic Bhairavi,” he said after the tiniest pause. He began to recite from the beautiful 76th Sura, Ad Dahar or ‘Insaan’, revealed in Mecca, which speaks of Man’s evolution through Divine Grace, of fruit-laden trees and the spring of life, of the peace, beauty and grandeur our natures can attain. Ghulam Ali gave me the affectionate Asian hand-on-the-head elder’s blessing. Listening to Ad Dahar bestows spiritual contentment, he said, and sent me off floating in the wonder of this sudden, splendid gift.
