The International Music and Arts Society sponsored an unusual lecture Imagined Journeys: Lalla Rookh and the Lure of Cashmere by Ms.Nirupama Rao. It is evident that her career in the Foreign Service fostered her eclectic interests, as the presentation encompassed poetry, music and art. Delightful excerpts from the opera Lalla Rookh compensated for the late start, but unfortunately the glitches in the slide presentation made for distracting discontinuity in the narrative.
Thomas Moore, a 19th century Irish poet, wrote the discursive poem Lalla Rookh. Its eponymous heroine, a fictionalised daughter of Aurangzeb, travels to the Vale of Cashmere to wed a Bokhara prince: though Moore never visited India and wrote it ensconced in a Derbyshire mansion!
But would a contemporary reader bother to plough through four books of iambic pentameter to encounter dated and irrelevant Orientalism? In a later interview, Rao admitted “No, probably not, but one should turn to it for the footnotes. They are a rich and fascinating mine of information, the result of so much research”. Moore’s main source was the Earl of Moira’s library, which probably greatly benefitted the Earl as well, since he went on to become the Governor General of India, the Marquess of Hastings.
Ms. Balal’s knowledgeable range of inputs and Mr. Nazareth’s humorous and more personal observations about opera made for a lively post-lecture panel discussion. But it was Rao’s expertise that contained some fascinating revelations. She followed Moore’s correct Arabic nomenclature for the seraglio: haram, which is wrongly pronounced harem/hareem in western languages. Haram’s original proscription was women’s apartments and the word gradually came to denote anything that is “forbidden” by Islamic mores.
The poem gave impetus to a romantic view of The Orient and particularly Cashmere, as Florence Parbury’s idyllic “emerald set with pearls” proved in 1900. Though the place has not lacked more recent admirers — as evident in Nehru’s quotations — they refer to indigenous Kashmir [now sadly a political hotbed] instead of the orientalised Cashmere.
Lalla Rookh did much to spark interest in the ‘mysterious East’ – which ranged from Africa [particularly north Africa, which inspired artists like Delacroix] to distant China [that name probably a derivation from a Middle Persian rendition of Qin] – resulting in travellers and artists of every description visiting anything “east of Suez”.
Even those who had never set foot in these lands, described or painted oriental scenery, giving their imagination and fantasies free rein. An example of the resultant pastiche is seen in a painting, The Vale of Kashmir, by the black American artist Robert S. Duncanson, showing palm trees swaying on misty mountains above a lake. [An interesting aside: Duncanson propelled himself from house painter and decorator to self-taught artist and though he had a break-through into the art world by having three portraits accepted at an 1842 exhibition, ethnicity prohibited his family from attending it].
The hazy mingling of eastern notions and cultures is also seen in Moore’s description of the Bokhara bridegroom: “as graceful as that idol of women, Crishna …. the Indian Apollo.”
In 1877, the ballet La Bayadere, a westernised and sanitized view of an Indian temple dancer, was perhaps inspired by the west’s first exposure to Indian dance in 1838, when a devadasi troupe performed in London and Europe.
In 1862, Felicien David’s very popular opera Lalla Rookh made it “The Sound of Music of its time”. Rao has long been fascinated by the poem and all its spin-offs. Her dream of seeing the opera staged was actualised in 2012 when she was the Indian Ambassador in Washington DC. In a serendipitous meshing of events, Anuradha Nehru of the US-based dance troupe Kalanidhi introduced Rao to Ryan Brown, Director of Opera Lafayette and the production was conceived in her office, and later staged at the Kennedy Center. Naxos recorded the music and the CD’s release in 2014 was dedicated to ao, a rare tribute.
Currently her pet project is to form a South Asian Symphony Orchestra. As Daniel Barenboim has already proved with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, music can foster understanding and amity between nations. “South Asian countries have strong western classical music backgrounds so I would garner their talent. You should hear some Sri Lankan singers, they have gorgeous voices! There is tremendous talent here as well, but it has to compete with the very strong traditions of Indian music, just as Pakistan has its Sufi tradition and Bangladesh its Bengali one, particularly Rabindra Sangeet. Whereas western music in Sri Lanka has no such competition. I would also draw upon musicians from the Indian diaspora who have done remarkably well”. Success in such an orchestral venture would further enhance Rao as Bangalore’s cultural asset, besides nurturing another field of her interest, international harmony.
