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National

The past in the present

Deepa Ganesh

Music and its memories sustain a doyenne

— Photo: Special Arrangement

Shared bonds: Bhimsen Joshi meeting Gangubai Hangal at her residence in Hubli in 2004, a file photo.

BANGALORE: For the doyenne of the Kirana gharana, Gangubai Hangal, memories are both bridge and burden. Lying in a hospital bed in Hubli where this correspondent met her last week, the 96-year old singer’s mind was swinging between the present and the past.

What is your name, she asks, over and over again; I have nothing to offer you, she frets. Her mind passes on to her childhood, the visits of Mahatma Gandhi and Tilak to her school, her late daughter Krishna, the poet Bendre.

A family member then announces that Pandit Bhimsen Joshi is in hospital too. Her memory shifts to Kundagol, where Bhimsen Joshi and she were once gurubandhus, learning music under the legendary Sawai Gandharv.

“Bhima is eight years younger than me, but he has stopped coming to the Kundagol music festival,” says Gangubai, referring to the annual music festival held in memory of their guru.

Gangubai remembers how she would wake up early and practise for three or four hours before starting the household chores, and then dedicate the entire evening to music. “Bhima used to work hard too… in fact, more than I did,” she says.

In dry Kundagol, it was Bhimsen Joshi’s duty to fetch unending pitchers of water for his guru’s house from a distant water tank. “Poor fellow, in the scorching heat, he would carry water on his shoulders… but as he walked he would constantly sing. How many times I’ve heard him practising the taans of Multani, Shankara…!” recalls Gangubai.

After class as Gangubai would get ready to return to her home in Hubli, Bhimsen Joshi would accompany her to the railway station. “It would have got dark and I being a young lady, my guru would never say no to Bhima. We would have barely got to the street, and Bhima would ask: ‘Akka, what did you learn today?’ I had to give him all the details. And then he would say, ‘Andu torsala (‘sing it for me…’).” And in this way they would exchange notes till they reached the station, till the train chugged away.

It’s time to leave. “Take this,” she pulls out a small box. “It’s powdered bade saunf.” She puts some on my palm.

“Have you written your address in my book?” she asks for the umpteenth time. Gangubai needs no addresses for the past, for that is where she lives and where she can easily find her way.

“You said Bhima is hospitalised, no…?”

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