(First published in Aalaap Magazine in April 2014)
Haan kahun toh hai nahin
Na bhi kahyo nahin jaaye
Haan aur na ke beech mein
Mora satguru raha samaaye
‘Yes’ doesn’t quite
catch it
‘No’ is not quite
right
The space between
‘yes’ and ‘no’
Is where my true guru
hides
Near Mussoorie in June
2008, in the foothills of the Himalayas, in a small organisation called SIDH
located in the village of Kempty, a small event unfolded. It was tentatively
billed as a ‘Kabir workshop’. I was in residence there at the time, working on
a novel as well as giving workshops, and I was curious about how this workshop
would go. It included films and talks by a Ms Shabnam Virmani, besides music,
and I fully expected this Ms Virmani to come and give us lectures on Kabir -
since lectures and Kabir had indelibly become connected in my mind since school
days.
What I encountered was
something quite spectacularly different. The films were not what I (lazily)
expected documentary films to be. And to encounter Kabir in the voice of
Prahlad Tipanya was as revolutionary a revelation as making love for the first
time, or perhaps reading the Upanishads yourself, after hearing about these things for so long. There’s nothing like real
experience. I was practically meeting Kabir for the first time.
Since that first event
in Mussoorie, when the films were still rough-cut, several other Kabir
festivals, concerts, screenings and yatras
have taken place all over the country. Somehow the idea of journey and Kabir
have got inextricably linked in my mind. And this is not a little ironic, since
Kabir often pokes fun at all our restless perambulations.
Daudat daudat daudiya
Jahaan lag mann ki daud
Daud thake mann sthir bhaya
Toh vastu thor ki thor
The mind made you scamper
You ran, as far as the mind could fare
Tired of its flight the mind grew still
And the object was right there
What we were looking
for, what we set out in search of, he seems to say, was always right here. In
another place, he says to himself:
Kabir bahut bhatkiya
Mann le vishay viraam
Chaalat chaalat jug bhaya
Til ke ote Raam
What long wanderings,
O Kabir
Let the mind cease its
quests
Ages have passed in
this search
In a granule, Raam
rests
It’s a special feeling
when something precious comes to you without your seeking it. Perhaps that is
one meaning of ‘the thing’ being right here.
I struck up a
friendship with Shabnam in Mussoorie and got involved in some of the Kabir
Project’s subsequent travels. One of our first journeys together was a trip to
Chhatangarh village near Jaisalmer in Rajasthan to vist Mahesha Ram. In the
star-studded nights of the desert - clear, dry air, ample, cloudless sky - we
had the privilege of listening to this man sing, outside of a performance
context, in his own home, surrounded by his children who were learning from
him. And the rasa of listening fully
entered into the body. There was no showboating here - neither from the singer,
nor from the listener - and no egos to please - neither someone else’s nor your
own. Only the music, and an opportunity to be.
It was as if the voices and words of Kabir, Meera and other poets came to live
in that moment, inhabiting the throat of a singer who is a worthy inheritor of
a long tradition of folk music. Mahesha Ramji remains deeply inspirational for
us to this day.
Mahesha Ram in the mood
(Photo by Jackson Poretta)
More rollicking kind
of trips followed - heady yatras in Malwa and Bikaner, for instance, which had whole
busloads of people travelling from village to village for a week for nightly
satsangs. But years later, another very quiet and intimate journey touched me
deeply. The Kabir Project team went to the outskirts of Trivandrum in 2011 to
spend a week with Parvathy Baul at her house, which had an akhada for her practice and three dogs called Raja, Rani and
Kartik.
Parvathy is not only
music, but also a very deep personal practice. She is also silence. She is also
insight. She didn’t only sing; she also spoke to us. We talked to her about the
intricacies of the Baul path, the practitioner’s obligations and rewards, viraha (separation from the Beloved,
longing), seeking out the purusha and
the prakriti within, and so on. All
the songs that got sung and documented were very much embedded within this
context. Again, they were not just performance material in that setting - they
were living songs, bearers of subtle, profound and fragile meanings.
In the akhara with Parvathy Baul
(Photo by Smriti Chanchani)
In 2012 I moved to
Bangalore and formally started work with the Kabir Project. A much deeper
immersion took place. One could almost say - a transformation. I started
working with these poems and songs as living material - I started to translate
them. And in order to do that I had to learn to catch exactly what they were
trying to say. Many poems opened themselves to me through this process.
I also started sitting
in on Shabnam’s satsangs much more regularly. This informal space - where a
group of friends gather to share music and meaning - invites you to dive in, to
participate, to listen and to sing.
I, like the others, started singing along. Always having been really fond of
singing, I didn’t realise I could fall in love with it to this extent. And that there was this space, open and available and
inviting, to sing, to express, to become
the song. And that the songs could grow deeper with each bout of listening
and/or singing.
I have not stopped
singing since this time. The songs have not stopped speaking to me. This space
- mystic poetry in the folk idiom - is a powerful space because it is the
meeting-ground of melody and meaning. Neither is secondary - both are
preeminent. This is the space where rasa
(taste) turns into bhaav (feeling).
And it is a very
powerful moment when this happens, because, as one song says: “Bhaav bina
bhakti kadiya nai hove hai”. (There can be no devotion, without the presence of
feeling.)
It is the space, or a
moment, of a pregnant silence, when singing and listening, music and meaning, you
and me, become one.
Kehna tha so keh diya
Ab kuchh kaha na jaaye
Ek raha dooja gaya
Dariya leher samaaye
I said all I had to
Now nothing more to
say
One remained, no
‘other’ stayed
Like waves merge into
the ocean
(All translations by Vipul Rikhi)
