I met him for thirty-three and one-third seconds. It was a Sunday evening in January 1983. Seated two rows in front of us at Netaji Indoor Stadium, he was there to witness the coming together of Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, who would be playing together in Calcutta after twelve years, a historic concert in the annals of Indian classical music and an occurrence so momentous in stature that my mother allowed me to attend even though it was barely a month from my class XII boards.
After Raga Imon, alaap, jor, followed by gat and jhala, the musicians took an unscheduled break. Shankar had descended from the stage erected at the centre of the stadium, and we noticed George Harrison leave his seat in the gallery.
My influential friend, who had snagged two VIP passes for the marquee event, joined me as I followed the Beatle down the ramp to the cafeteria. There he was with a cup, of tea I presume, while two men of distinctly large proportions stood guard. By then, around twenty of us had gathered there. We milled around him in the hope of exchanging pleasantries.
I think I'll start charging ten rupees for every autograph, he said, smiling as he went about signing on whatever we held out for him.
We'll give you twenty, I remember muttering.
True to form, I think I said the stupidest thing ever told to a Beatle. Who talks money when you are meeting George Harrison, the quiet one, for the first, and probably, the only time?
By then word had spread and more people began trooping in. It was my turn.
I held out a piece of paper and Harrison started to sign. My heart was beating fast. There was a bit of jostling. Suddenly, Harrison let his cup drop. It broke, spilling tea all over the floor, almost naturally clearing the way for him. He went up to his seat, leaving that piece of paper with me. I looked at it; my hands were trembling.
That evening Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan were accompanied by Ustad Allahrakha and his son Zakir Hussain on tablas. They played for over five hours.
It was a unique jugalbandhi, wrote Sankarlal Bhattacharya in the Anandabazar Patrika the next day, commending organisers Jalsaghar for the near-perfect arrangements: great sound that ensured every nuance of the sitar and sarod was experienced by the over 13,000 disciplined listeners, about 200 of whom were seated right in front of the platform for musicians to bridge the divide between Performer and Listener. It was 10.30 p.m. and many had got up to leave. Last bus worries notwithstanding, they stood near the exits, but could not leave. The music held them back. I recall vividly how at one of the many climactic moments of the concert, when the father-son duo had wrapped up a thundering sawal-jawab routine to a rapturous ovation from the gathering, Zakir walked up to Allahrakha and touched his feet. A gentle tap on his head and the hint of a smile from the old man that followed said it all. From the dark reaches of my seat in the stadium, George Harrison in silhouette, music and its all-encompassing ambitions of tradition and modernity unveiled itself to me at that moment.
Living on a college campus for around three years when I was around six-seven in the early '70s, I remember loving the Bratacharir Gaan that students would conduct a drill to every morning. Kaji Nazrul Islam's freedom cry of Kara Louhokopat, which they would often sing, was awe-inspiring and took on a new dimension, for me during the Bangladesh war. When we moved to our own home, Puja functions at the para would showcase some of the most important Baul and folk singers of the time, in addition to renowned exponents of Rabindrasangeet like Subinoy Roy. Prahlad Brahmachari and Purna Das Baul would sing late into the night as would Nirmalendu Choudhury, and later on his son. Their repertoire would inevitably include Gole male, gole male pirit koro naa, a naughty take on the eccentricities of love, and Amar jemon beni temni robey chul bhijabona on the dilemmas of getting your feet wet. In between, there was Mone pore Ruby Rai, The Ventures and Dhire se jana bagiayan mein on 45s & 78s.
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