SIGHT & SOUND
The shehnai weeps
Amita Malik

I think many of us did not realise how much he had become a part of our lives. Speaking personally, as someone who was in the Capital on Independence Day in 1947, one heard him play at the Red Fort. He was always there on Independence Day, on Republic Day and on every national occasion.

The shehnai is an instrument for auspicious occasions — we hear it at every wedding. But maestro Bismillah Khan raised it to such sublime heights that it is difficult to think of anyone who can take his place. Proud to be an Indian, he revealed that when a mullah from Iraq reprimanded him for performing music that was un-Islamic, he sang him the single word Allah in Raag Bhairavi and then asked him for a reaction. The stunned mullah fell silent.

He also revealed, and I am quoting from Shekhar Gupta’s touching Walk The Talk again, that he and his brother had special sherwanis stitched in khadi for Independence Day. And for me, his most characteristic recent utterance, out of many, was when a reporter asked him for a comment following the terrible blast at a temple in Varanasi. The maestro smiled, and said, "They can’t do anything to this city because it is "Bana-Raas". It is difficult to translate raas into English, it is such an Indian term, but we all know what it meant. And it is in his beloved Banaras (call it by his favourite name) that he passed away, refusing treatment in Delhi, and was laid to rest near the venue where he used to play during Muharram, and also, endearingly, where he used to play football as a young boy. And the gates of the most famous temple opened after he played there. No more.

The tributes were many, the tears too were many. I think NDTV had the most on its records, including the memorable Walk the Talk, which was really conducted with him sitting, in a simple banian on a humble charpoy in the open. His reminiscences were fabulous, including his long friendship with Lata Mangeshkar.

And for tributes, I liked those on Rajat Sharma’s India Channel, which broke away, as many channels did not, from the customary tributes by netas, to interview artistes. These included a long tribute of reminiscences by Lata Mangeshkar and Birju Maharaj. NDTV India did the longest running commentary, both on the spot by Ravish Kumar and with follow-ups from the studio in elegant Urdu by Nagma. The nation truly mourned not only a great musician, but a very great human being, to quote the PM "who stood for the best in our composite culture".

And mention of Urdu brings me to some very happy news. Doordarshan is not very good at public relations and my cable operator has not yet got around to providing it. But it has at long last launched an Urdu channel.

And it took me back to the launch of AIR’s Urdu channel, which I watched from close quarters because my late husband, Iqbal Malik, was chosen to draw up its blueprint and then launch it with a band of devoted Urdu specialists.

Listeners in Andhra Pradesh, in West Bengal and other parts of India, not least of all the famous Urdu writers of the Hindi cinema, were happy that at last Urdu, very much an Indian language originating in this country, had at last been given its due. But the most surprising reactions came from Pakistan. Indira Gandhi had given strict instructions that there was to be no politics, except in the news. The flood of letters from listeners was astounding enough. More flatteringly, Radio Pakistan immediately reacted.

The programme of poetry had made a wonderful impact on Pakistanis, many of whom had been led to believe that Urdu was only their language. There was also a programme for the rural areas which was hastily emulated on Radio Pakistan, because farmers on both sides had the same problems and spoke the same language. One can only hope that we shall give the best of Indian culture, not least of all its classical music as well as that old eternal favourite, filmi geet, on the TV channel as well.

Some snippets of the week: The Star TV reporter who whizzed through the unique Ladies’ Market in Imphal (where only women have stalls) reported with her usual patronising slant that the woman who was at the rice stall belonged to a family whose many generations had been running the stall "from time Immoral (sic)". And the interview race between channels which started with Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai running simultaneous interviews with Sonia Gandhi when the new channels started, had a follow-up last week. NDTV’s Anisha Baig and CNN-IBN’s Rajiv Masand ran parallel interviews with Abhishek Bachchan. One wondered which had come first, the chicken or the egg. One suspects the chicken.