A Quartet of Musical-Movies (Ch. 15)
Dearest readers,
The anticipation has, no doubt, tingled your senses, leaving you wondering where on Earth your next literary morsel from Ink-uilab has been. To the keen-eyed readers who might have noticed a delay in this dispatch, I say—let it go. Time is but an illusion, a fanciful social construct layered atop the unfathomable eternity of the cosmos. In lieu of an apology, I offer you an ancient grain of wisdom, harking from that primordial cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia (c. 3rd millennium BCE):
“Let me go today” is what a herdsman says; “let me go tomorrow” is what a shepherd boy says; but “let me go” is ”let me go” and the time passes.
Here’s the idiom in Akkadian Cuneiform (I’ve been looking for an excuse to use the Sumero-AkkadianCuneiform Uni-Code on this blog):
𒌓 𒁕 𒂵 𒁺 𒈾 𒃰 𒄰
𒌓 𒌋𒄞 𒆷 𒂵 𒁺 𒉺𒇻 𒌉 𒊏 𒄰
𒂵 𒁺 𒂵 𒁺 𒈾 𒀀𒀭 𒌓 𒈪 𒉌 𒅁 𒉌 𒉌 𒂊
[transliterated: ud-da ga-gen na-gada-kam / ud ul-la ga-gen sipad-tur-ra-kam / ga-gen ga-gen-na-am3 ud mi-ni-ib-zal-zal-e; Source: Collection III at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature] Akkadian aside, the issue with maintaining this periodical newsletter to keep me accountable and keep me writing is that when it works, I find myself writing a myriad of projects—none of which, regrettably, are this cherished newsletter.
Watching me scramble to meet these arbitrary monthly deadlines must be akin to viewing a one-man rendition of a Shakespearean comedy—a farcical feast for the audience, if a tragicomedy for the performer. To keep me chained to this chronological hamster wheel, do subscribe if you haven't:
Hindustani Classical Music, in Four Movies:
In the past month, I have been grateful for the opportunity to listen to the masters of the Bhindibazaar Gharana at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Bombay. As an avid listener with zero musical talent, these experiences have led me to ponder: What is it about Hindustani Classical—or indeed, any classical music—that ensnares the senses and captivates the soul? Is it the intricate raga, the rhythmic tala, or perhaps the sheer passion with which it is performed?
It was Vladimir Lenin who once profoundly remarked during a tete-a-tete recollected by Maxim Gorky:
But I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things, and pat the little heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. These days, one can’t pat anyone on the head nowadays, they might bite your hand off. Hence, you have to beat people's little heads, beat mercilessly, although ideally we are against doing any violence to people. Hm — what a devilishly difficult job!
This chapter of ink-uilab discusses Hindustani Classical Music through the lens of four films. We discuss the perfection and the purity of the artist in The Disciple; The never-ending quest of the listener to interpret and wholly understand music in Raag Sarkari; the act of recording and preserving music in In Custody; and the hypnotic hold of the Raga in The Music Room (Jalsaghar).
The Disciple (2020)
In a world dominated by cacophonous chartbusters and noisy Netflix shorts, The Disciple (2020) resonates with a mellifluous tenor, capturing the essence of artistry, the torment of tradition, and the allure of ambition. The film is a Marathi one, yet another audacious experiment by Chaitanya Tamhane's imagination. Tamhane's 2014 court drama, aptly named Court, was my first introduction to his work and is in its own right an exquisite exploration of jurisprudence juxtaposed with social realities. Both films have, thankfully, been widely commended by critics.
In the capricious cosmos of Indian classical music, where does one search for that elusive aria of artistic excellence? This is the perennial perplexity faced by Sharad Nerulkar, the forlorn protagonist and eponymous disciple of The Disciple. He has devoted his life to becoming an Indian classical music vocalist, standing on the bedrock of tradition, guided by old masters, his guru, and the paternal pillar of his father. But alas, Sharad treads through the labyrinthine paths of musical mastery only to find his soul ensnared in the fetters of doubt and disillusionment. We first encounter Sharad when he is in his sprightly twenties. In the inky solitude of late-night Mumbai, Sharad finds tranquility, as he listens to the recorded lectures of the mythical Maai — an iconic musician and guru. Maai warns, echoing the thoughts of countless gurus before her, that music is an eternal quest, often taking lifetimes to master. It demands an unblemished mind and an austere lifestyle—maxims that Sharad's guru, a disciple of Maai, reaffirms with oracular gravity.
Contrast these maxims to the setting of modern-day Mumbai. The sweltering crucible of cacophonous culture, where asceticism (in any form) seems as out of place as a Stradivarius in a punk-metal concert. Here, our Sharad endures the Sisyphean ordeal of serving his aging guru, tending to his every earthly need, all while his own career languishes in the limbo of the culturally vapid. His sacrifices stand in stark contrast to the milieu—a world that dotes on filmy pop and Tiktok loops over so-called genuine artistry. Even Sharad's guru, for all his unparalleled prowess, remains a whisper in the corridors of classical acclaim.
But this dilemma — the fear of being forgotten and the inquietude of imperfection — is not limited to Hindustani classical music. As a review puts it “The Disciple might be set in the esoteric world of Indian classical music but its concerns are universal – Sharad's struggle to negotiate between the loy demands of the tradition and the tough reality of survival in a city like Mumbai is the struggle of artists everywhere. He performs in non-descript halls and watches stoically as a young girl on a television talent show rises to fame. Every step of her ascent takes her further from her original self – in the last visual of her, she's on a gaudy set, painted with make-up, singing a forgettable filmy song. But she's made a mark. Meanwhile Sharad continues to over his hard-earned artistry to a handful of listeners. His uncompromising pursuit of perfection becomes harder to justify or sustain.”
From a visually stunning movie, one scene in particular sticks with me. The setting, the smoky Bombay night, and Maai’s musings combine to create an ethereal - almost fantastical - atmosphere. The scene actually reminds me of the photography of Dayanita Singh. Singh’s photos and Tamhane's filmography capture a timeless liminality unique to the city (or cities like) Bombay. This liminality is akin to the same feeling one would get during a 3 a.m. walk through a deserted city quarter, inhaling the smolder of kababs grilled the night before and smokers from the morning after.
In the moving finale of The Disciple, we witness a phenomenal rendition of Bhakti singing—a style we waxed poetic about in Chapter 6. The scene is a haunting coda to Sharad's arduous journey, reminiscent of the celestial cadences that once enamored him, the music from which is linked here.
Raag Sarkari (2012)
Raag Sarkari, or Bureaucracy Sonata is a short film by Vinay Shukla that deals with a surprisingly vast set of issues within a very short run-time. Amongst broader depictions of the Indian State, politics, and culture, the film beckons us to explore the depths of our souls as listeners.
Vinay Shukla, the brilliant mind behind this masterpiece, continues to grace us with his unparalleled storytelling, with the movie winning an HBO Best Short Film Award.
Shukla’s work, which I have admired since the mesmerizing Ship of Theseus (discussed previously in Chapter 12) and his biopic of Arvind Kejriwal. Shuklas’s latest 'While We Watched', is a documentary on the legendary Indian newsman Ravish Kumar and the trials and tribulations of being a journalist in a country that is becoming increasingly hostile to a free press. It is an urgent watch that somehow simultaneously depresses and inspires a viewer. For U.S. audiences, it has just been released on PBS (Watch it here). The team has unsurprisingly been unable to find distributors for the film in India.
Here’s a brief synopsis: From June 26, 1975 through March 21, 1977, a shadow draped itself across India. This period of “emergency,” where democracy took a reluctant siesta and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wielded the scepter of unbridled power. Amid this backdrop, the film introduces us to the symphony of a simple prison warden and the music teacher prisoner whose melodies ensnare him. The teacher, with his celestial voice, becomes the sun around which the warden orbits, a daily ritual that brings semblance and order in the chaos of the times. Every evening, as the sun bids adieu to the horizon, the teacher caresses the strings of a raag, and the warden attempts to unravel its mysteries. Yet, every attempt meets with a smirk, a chuckle - a gentle reminder of the eternal chase between the artist and the admirer. This playful dance of identification is both poignant and humorous, reminiscent of the sishya and the guru, much like Sharad's quest in his pursuit of perfection in The Disciple.
Here, the warden’s quest to accurately identify the guru's raag becomes emblematic of our own desires to not just hear, but truly understand the heartbeats within the notes. Can we ever truly 'grasp’ music without playing? To what extent does the listener shape the music - actively - even while in the audience?
I won’t spoil the rest of the movie for you. One of the perks of short films is that they’re widely and freely available online, so you have no excuse to not watch Raag Sarkari:
In Custody (1993):
In Custody (Muhafiz) is a 1993 film by the iconic Merchant Ivory Productions - the production house of the duo Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. The film was brought to life from the imaginative corners of Anita Desai's 1984 novel and won National Awards from the Government of India for Best Production Design and Special Jury award for lead actor Shashi Kapoor. Interestingly, In Custody was Ismail Merchant’s directorial debut, who had until this point operated as a producer bringing to life the vision of director James Ivory. Their filmography is frankly economic, and the expression "Merchant–Ivory film" has made its way into common parlance, to denote a particular aesthetic and style of cinema rather than their actual production company.
The story of In Custody revolves around Deven, a Hindi literature professor who gets an opportunity to interview Nur, a legendary Urdu poet. Deven sees this as a chance to revive his passion for Urdu poetry and to pay tribute to the great poet. However, as he delves deeper into Nur's world, he encounters the harsh realities of the poet's life, including his domestic squabbles and the commercialization of his art. The journey becomes a reflection of the decay of art and culture in the face of modernity.
The film delves not merely into melodies, but into the chronicle of their creation – an exploration of the recorder, the recorded, and most importantly, the historian. Here, the lore, curiously, is not etched in Hindi, the commonly assumed language of Bollywood, but in Urdu, lending it a poetic finesse and cultural depth. Frankly, my only real critique of the film would be the surprising lack of ‘original’ Urdu poetry in a film where poetry is at the heart. Rather, actual verses written by Faiz Ahmed Faiz are passed off the those written by Nur and are weakly translated in the subtitles.
What's truly gripping for me is the very act of recording – a moment captured forever, both in music and memory. Deven’s quixotic quest to record Nur's poetic verses becomes an act laden with symbolism as the ghazals themselves. The tape recorder, ever-present, becomes an emblem of the challenges of art preservation. From technological fiascos to Nur's own poetic lethargy, the struggle to commit these timeless verses to a corporeal medium mirrors the greater challenge of safeguarding a cultural art form in an era of unyielding modernity. The act of recording is a potent metaphor, capturing both the fugitive essence of the art form and the vulnerabilities of its practitioners.
Another masterful element of the film is the depiction of the ‘artist’. As for Nur, marvelously embodied by Shashi Kapoor, he stands as a tragic tableau of an artist in decline—a life splintered between two feuding wives and plagued by financial strife. Yet, in his weary visage, we glimpse the vestiges of a time when Urdu poetry reigned. As a New York Times review of the film describes:
“Lying on his side in a narrow bed is a corpulent, aging Indian poet named Nur. He is a curiously imposing figure, even with his back to the camera, and provides what may be the greatest role in the long career of Shashi Kapoor … Mr. Kapoor turns Nur into a present-day Balzac: fierce and wise, yet with all the signs of having lived a little too well.”
In sum, In Custody functions as a celluloid capsule—a memento mori, if you will—of a world confronting cultural obscurity. It raises disquieting questions regarding the artist and his craft, epitomizing the innate struggles in preserving art forms that are threatened by the insatiable and endless maw of contemporary life. Through its rich narrative tapestry, interspersed with the lyrical beauty of ghazals, the film leaves an indelible impression on the state and fate of Urdu poetry in India’s complex cultural landscape.
The few ghazals in the film are immaculate: a soul-searching melody rendered by Kavita Krishnamurthy and penned by Behzad Lakhnavi, its notes woven by the maestro Zakir Hussain & Ustad Sultan Khan:
Seemingly, the entire movie is available on YouTube (here). In addition, it appears like the Yale Film Archive has just recently acquired the James Ivory Collection. To make the best use of the resource, I’ve been planning to organize a watch party of In Custody in the original 35mm at some point this semester. If you’d be interested in joining, do let me know!
The Music Room / Jalsaghar (1958)
Unless this is your first Ink-uilab, you would be familiar with my devotion to Satyajit Ray and his cinematic masterpieces. The Music Room - arguably his best (and slowest) movie - is more than just a film; it's an intoxicating symphony of sights, sounds, and social-behaviors. Based on a short story by Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Ray presents a poignant portrait of pride, passion, and the inexorable march of time. While the movie was a commercial failure, it was considered a masterpiece by critics, Pauline Kael, the esteemed film critic described the movie as a “great, flawed, maddening film -- hard to take but probably impossible to forget. It's often crude and it's poorly constructed, but it's a great experience. Worrying over its faults is like worrying over whether King Lear is well constructed; it really doesn't matter”
The story revolves around the life of a zamindar (landlord), Biswambhar Roy, who is witnessing the decline of his aristocratic family in post-colonial India. Despite his dwindling wealth and the emergence of a new, wealthy class, our beleaguered zamindar, is ensnared in the seductive embrace of sonorous symphonies. He clings to his past glory and is obsessed with his music room, where he hosts lavish musical soirées. This sanctuary, dripping in decadence, represents the days when he reigned supreme. Emply and echoing, it reminds him of his diminishing dynastic dignity.
For our protagonist, music isn't just a muse; it's a statement, a stance, and a shield against the shadows of shifting societal status. Through lavish soirees, he attempts to drown out the cacophonous clatter of the nouveau-riche and seek social clout. It's an all too familiar dance of desperation, reminiscent of modern patrons who solely visit art galleries for selfies, turning timeless treasures into transient Instagram backdrops, diminishing Botticelli into a background.
The zamindar is the living, breathing, crumbling embodiment of an epoch on the brink of oblivion. He's as much in love with the enchanting ghazals as he is chained to the echoes of his erstwhile empire. The inexorable tide of time and change threatens to wash away his musical bastion, but our zamindar defiantly dances on, even as his purse and prestige perish. In its entirety, The Music Room is a melancholic meditation on metamorphosis, both personal and societal. It's a lament for lost legacies and a eulogy for an era eclipsed.
One of the highlights of the film is the features of some of the maestros of Hindustani Classical music. Ustad Vilayat Khan composed some of the music for the film. In addition, the scenes of the movie make up the few - if not only - visual recordings we have of these musicians at work. For example, the movie features Begum Akhtar (herself) singing Bhore Bhore Ankiya, and Ustad Salamat Ali Khan:
As always, some verses, in parting:
Last week I was engaged in a conversation about physicians who were writers (or writers who were physicians). A surprising number of great writers of literature were medically trained and/or practicing doctors, so much so that the term ‘physician-writer’ has a Wikipedia entry. The prominent names are Doyle, Keats, and the poet William Carlos Williams. One of my favorites, Bulgakov abandoned his medical practice to pursue writing. He recalls in his biography: “Once in 1919 when I was traveling at night by train I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper who published the story”. Anton Chekov, arguably one of the greatest physician-writers characterized the dialectic of his career as: “medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress … When I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other. Though it’s disorderly, it’s not so dull; and besides neither of them loses anything from my infidelity.”
Following the conversation, I found myself reflecting on contemporary ‘physician-writers.’ Some authors, like Atul Gawande and Siddhartha Mukherjee, turn to their experiences in the hospital-ward to write works of non-fiction. Khaled Hosseini practiced medicine for a decade until (and slightly-after) the publication of The Kite Runner. Other modern-day physicians write verse, like Amit Majmudar, Sarah Moin (who moonlights as my sister), and Mo H Saidi.
Saidi is a writer, poet, and obstetrician/gynecologist in the U.S. Born and raised in Ahwaz, Iran his writings engage with questions of history, faith, family, and reccurance.
Here is Reciting the Holy Book by Mo H. Saidi, from his collection Between A and Z:
Mother recited the Koran every night.
None of us knew what those words meant.
She persuaded us to pray every day.
She would frighten us,
“You’ll go to Hell otherwise.”
Near the mosque I was born.
Reciting aloud the muezzin kept us
awake all night. Mother said, this was
God’s call, and we would suffer
forever if we didn’t respond.
She paid us to recite the Holy
Book, "So you’ll go to Heaven,”
she’d cry out. When she saw
that we ran away instead
she prayed for us every night.
She brought a mullah who called
us pagans because we read Hugo
and Hemingway, played chess and listened
to Mozart. We kicked a ball
and played soccer in the courtyard.
Our father dismissed the bigot quietly
told us, “That is an ignorant fool:
go to school and read Hedayat and Ferdowsi.”
That mullah is now the Grand Ayatollah
who resides in the Shah’s palace.
Au revoir!
BM
(All errors are my own and a by-product of editing this during a Near-Eastern Literature seminar.)