A young lady in her twenties dismissed geet, ghazal, padam, varnam and khayal as boringly oldfashioned. Only MTV mattered. But hey, girl, everyone's singing the same song. You may add more explicit anger and more "in your face" lyrics, in English. But isn't it the same old love or lack of it - and the dynamics between these two states - that gets people to compose, sing and emote? So Courtney Love (to take a very random example of all the songs we, uh, watch from the West) keens: "I want to be the girl with most cake/ I love him so much it just turns to hate/ I fake it so real I am beyond fake/ Some day you will ache like I ache." Courtney's pain is real and we connect with it, sure. But is she hurting any more than the 13th century person who wrote this ghazal in manipravala (a line in one language followed by a line in another language, like a row of beads - in this case Persian and Brijbhasha): òf40óZehale miskeen makun tagaful duraye naina banaye batiya/ Jo main na dekhun piya sakhi ko, kaisekategi andheri ratiya?The manipravalist was Amir Khusro, appealing to his Beloved (Nizamuddin Auliya? God?) to get on with granting him darshan, because he was so miserable without it. He went on to change Indian classical music, invent the tabla and sarod and leave behind songs, riddles, jokes, legends and robustly sensual poetry: òf40óNa neend naina, na ang chaina, na aap aave, na bheje patiya (no sleep for my eyes, no rest for my limbs, you neither come nor send word).We can talk High Allegory till we turn blue as Krishna's toe, but at the end of the day, which one of us can resist the erotic beauty of such words? It's what our classical dance and music ooze so richly anyway, like honey from a comb. Perhaps it's something in our air and water that makes us so fond of poetical turns of phrase, something inborn in the rhythm of every Indian language?Even if it's a straightforward holler for help, it gets transmuted into a thing of beauty. Think of it. A woman, once the darling of her father's house, is being shamed appallingly in public. She's dealing with the double trauma of symbolic rape and the horrifying discovery that her five husbands, the family patriarchs, the Rajguru, all the powerful male figures whose dharma it is to protect her, are useless wimps. Only God remains to be appealed to. But Siddheshwari Devi's signature thumri renders Draupadi's grief with terrible beauty, taking it beyond the situation to a deeper refuge in God's mercy: òf40óMan Mohan murari/ Shyam sudh lo hamari/ Ab hout hoon ughari/ Yoon Draupadi pukaari. Many women have told me that they get goosebumps listening to this thumri, it is so full of yearning in the hour of human betrayal, to be sheltered and loved by Someone more pukka.Men, too, despite their villainous record, share this longing, as we all know. Everyone seems to have heard of Jayadeva and rightly so, because the Gita Govinda is so incontestably beautiful. But there was another man in the South, in the 17th century who felt and wrote as intensely. He was called Kshetragna or Kshetrayya, the Pilgrim, because he went on so many yatras. His real name was Varadayya and he was born in the Andhra village of Muvva near Kuchipudi. They say he was in love with a beautiful devadasi. He composed about 700 padams or love songs that enrich the repertoire of both Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi, exploring many complex shades of shringara rasa. His lyrics too, burn with the sweet pain of separation or love for someone you dare not say you love because they won't want to hear it. Actually viraha is pretty exciting - at least you feeling something, and if the Sufis are right, it may just sublimate into Something Better!
