Against the dying of the raag

After his prayers,Khan sits down with his harmonium,hookah and paan and sings the morning raga,Raag Bhairav. The notes flow,interrupted by bouts of breathlessness. But he goes on,meeting the swaras gently,almost caressing them. The sounds of a morning awakening to life the tick-tock of the clock,the buzzing of mosquitoes,the cry of a child and the shrill protest of a pressure cooker are drowned in his rich and textured voice. And then his voice takes flight,leaving the words of the bandish behind,and racing with the faster taans: gamak,layakari and firat,the signature style of the Gwalior gharana he belongs to. As he draws to the end of his 45-minute performance,you have witnessed something special.

For,Khan is 102,the oldest dhrupad artist in India,who cannot move without a wheelchair but is willing to fly to Delhi for a concert,and is a regular on the Hindustani classical music circuit. His memory fails him sometimes,but he can easily give contemporary singers a run for their money with his sonorous voice,and a style that is a throwback to a golden era when no two gharanas intermingled their styles,when artists stuck to the straight and narrow of tradition and yet produced a feast of originality. Allah has gifted me with something unique the power to sing even at this age. I want to keep singing till my last breath, he says,between puffs of his hookah. He will leave for Patna in a week for a performance,one of many concerts in the music season that is warming up. I get tired now and cant take the pressure on my ears when I am in an airplane. But since it is a faster means of transport,the organisers convince me to come. They put me on stage and request me to sing. How can I even think of saying no to music? he asks.

Old photographs of legendary singers his uncle Yusuf Khan and grandfather Chand Khan,considered descendants of Tansen stare down at us in the room in which Khan does his riyaaz. He speaks with a childlike eagerness,of watching live performances by Vishnu Digambar Paluskar,the father of Hindustani classical music,and meeting Ustad Alauddin Khan,founder of the Maihar gharana.

He takes us back to his childhood in Raebareli in a family of vocalists,and his first steps towards music. I began learning when I was 12 from my uncle and guru,Yusuf Khan. He did not allow me to go on stage for the next 22 years. Stage par jaane laayak bhi to hona chahiye, he would say. He began by teaching me the base note,sa,and did not allow me to learn anything else for the next two years, he says.

Like many students of his time,Khans taalimwas dominated by a temperamental guru. He recalls a particularly harsh punishment for missing a note during a performance. He beat me up in front of almost 200 people. Aisi khaal udedhi chacha-jaan ne ki aaj bhi galat sur gale se nahi nikalta hai He nearly skinned me alive,and to this day,I dont miss a note,not even by mistake, he says. A meeting he remembers with reverence is one with Ustad Alauddin Khan. Once,after a performance,a lanky man,dressed in a white dhoti,came up to me and congratulated me. He then added: Mujhe Alauddin kehte hai. Alauddin Khan. I wanted to touch his feet but he hugged me, says Khan,who remained friends with the maestro until his death in 1974.

Though respected in the community of classical musicians,Khans style and the genre in which he specialises dhrupad were too traditional for him to become popular with audiences. In his nearly 70- year-long career as a professional musician,he created over 1,500 compositions in a variety of ragas. The major part of his career was spent in Raebareli,where he lived and taught music. Twenty years ago,he moved to Kolkata after the academy offered him a house and promised to pay for his needs. It was another dhrupad singer,Vijay Kichlu,who spotted him at a concert in Raebareli and persuaded him to move to the city.

And he continues to teach here. I make sure that I teach my students music the way I learnt it, says Khan,as he cajoles a student to sing a difficult taan in Raag Puryadhanashree. Ravi Mathur,director of the academy,tells us of a recent performance by him. There was almost 4,000 people in the audience,and they were all stunned by his power-packed khayal. He totally nailed it.

The man who once practised a single note for two years till he perfected it,often remembers the time when music was without gimmicks. What a time it was. Each raga was sung with such depth that the musician evoked every little shruti in it. Aaj na to seekhne wale hai,aur na hi sikhane wale Now,there are few to teach,and fewer who want to learn.

These days all I hear is noise.