Father had a melodious harmonium of German reeds. In the dim light of a lantern, he played the Durga, Malkauns, Sarang, Bhopali ragas and soulful songs of distant dialects of Jaunpur-Jaunsar. Malkauns and Durga were perhaps his favourite ragas. He immersed himself in music as he sang the basic composition of Durga “Sakhi Mori Rum Jhum, Badal Garaje, Barse”, which is often taught in curriculum.
Hills usually have the custom of ragas with five notes. Their rhythm also matches the nature of the hills. Songs that are sung during festivals or by women as they perform their daily chores are mostly based on these ragas. Father’s notes would emerge from the harmonium like small ethereal clouds and waft around the misty glow that enveloped the home. It was still dark outside, glowworms twinkled through the black wind and Father draped the home with music as he sang the next stanzas: “Rain andheri kaari bijuri chamke, main kaise jaon piya paas (Lightning flashes in the dark night, how do I go to my beloved).”
Father’s harmonium was soulful and sonorous. Built of German reeds, as Father, a connoisseur of plush living, music and food, would say. It was manufactured by a Calcutta-based company. Its black wooden keys had worn down after repeated use. Father had played it in Radheshyam Kathavachak’s Parsi dramas such as Vir Abhimanyu, Bhakt Prahlad, Vilvamangal and Satya Harishchandra, which he directed, designed costumes for, decorated the stage for, and even played the role of Vidushaka in them. These plays that were staged in a big courtyard near our home also drew people from neighbouring villages.
After some years, when I arrived in Delhi, I suddenly felt that I have been banished from a raga. When I saw the last tree of my village diminishing away and crossed the thin river flowing down the village, the absence of that raga made its home within me. As if this raga had sustained my life and filled it with a deep echo. My home, it seemed, was perched on its foundation.
I looked for Raga Durga in Delhi, bought cassettes of Vinayakrao Patwardhan and Mallikarjun Mansur and the beautiful composition of Bhimsen Joshi that was somewhat different from the Durga I had been listening to — Ras kaan tu in slow tempo and Chatur Sughra Balmava in allegro.
Years later, I listened to the Durga of Kumar Gandharva: “Amona re”. The magic of this raga dawned upon me in multiple forms as I listened to it in the voices of Mallikarjun Mansur and Malini Rajurkar, and a modified rendering by Ali Akbar Khan on his sarod, where it got the new name of ‘Durgeshwari’. On each occasion I felt a stream of compassion flowing through its blithe compositions. Whenever I made a rare journey from Delhi to my village, on the way, the composition of Durga would suddenly come to me as if it was my final refuge, a nest that would immediately cradle me. At home, I often requested my father to play the raga on harmonium and sometimes he would oblige. Although, by then, his life had halted at an unexpected place; he was dejected by his only son’s aversion to the family and had stopped playing the harmonium. He had kept away the harmonium in a box. Had he hidden it from his glance, or secretly wished to make the box its coffin? The raga collapsed along with the disintegration, decay of the home.
Durga is a simple, melodious, pentatonic raga — Sa, Re, Ma, Pa, Dha. It does not have much space for variations, but Bhimsen Joshi was among the singers who rendered it with rare melody and complex ‘taans’ for longer durations. In 1991, I wrote a poem about my experience of listening to Joshi’s Durga. It ended with these words: “When everything was callous and there was no simplicity/When even the last tree was on the verge of dimming away/ And I rambled here and there thinking/ What it was that did not come to mind/ Whose absence did not cause pain/ Only then did I hear Raga Durga/ Floating like the relics of a civilisation/I moved on towards it/Its ascending scale rising like grass/ And descending scale flowing like water.”
Durga was like a civilisation – a restless raga that floated inside a thin layer of darkness and was composed of elements like water, trees, grass, river, rocks and birds. A raga that now survives in its remnants.
