Dhrupad festival in honor of Vidur Mallik at Jai Singh Ghera

Shri Pandit Vidur Mallik

Vrindavan, 2014.07.05 (VT). In a special commemoration of the contributions of Pandit Vidur Mallick, Jai Singh Ghera was once again host to an event celebrating the dhrupad style of Indian classical vocal music. For three days, from July 4th to 6th, many of the top artists from the Darbhanga gharana performed at the Dhrupad Dham Samaroh. The program was filled with the Pandit's students, many of whom are his own family members, including his three sons and several grandsons. Indeed, since many of the Malliks now have international careers and have made their homes in different places, the progam had something of the joyful atmosphere of a family reunion.

Ramkumar Mallik in concert with his son Samit Kumar

and Ananda Kumar Mallik on pakhawaj.

The Darbhanga gharana tradition of dhrupad singing which was formed in the Darbhanga royal court in the 18th century. With Indian independence came the end of royal patronage, forcing artists to take their talents to the public, and Pandit Vidur Mallick (1936-2002) was the pioneer of this effort in the Darbhanga school. In close relation to the Sri Chaitanya Prem Sansthan, Vidur Mallik founded a Dhrupad Gurukul named after his father, Pandit Sukhdeo Mallik Sangeet Samit, in Vrindavan. In 1983, Panditji also accepted the position of Dhrupad Acharya in the Brajakala Gurukul run by Sri Caitanya Prem Sansthan. This significant effort was an attempt to rejuvenate the classical forms of dhrupad, which have their origins in the Radha-Krishna bhajans of Vrindavan’s own  Swami Haridas and developed in the court of Akbar by the legendary Tansen. Many of the performers participating in the Samaroha have also been teachers here in Vrindavan at one time or another in their careers.

Ramkumar Mallik and his son singing yugal bandhi.

Acharya Ritwik Sanyal

The concert opened with Brij Bhushan Goswami, was followed by Pandit Sukhdev Chaturvedi, who introduced his performance with a heartfelt homage to Vidur Mallik. Chaturvedi is tall and good looking, and has a very powerful presence. Like all dhrupad performers, he seems to have a sense of humor and a sense of the enigmatic and mysterious in his performance.

The father and son team of Ramkumar Mallik and Samit Kumar Mallik performed a powerful yugal performance.

I particularly enjoyed the performance of Acharya Ritwik Sanyal, who was trained in the dhrupad style of vocal music of the Dagarbani. Sanyal is a Professor and Head of the department of vocal music and Dean at the Faculty of Performing Arts at Banaras Hindu University. His style is sweeter and softer than the more masculine vir rasa approach of the Mallik family. He finished with a rendition of Jayati Sri Radhe, which was especially appropriate for a concert in the Dham.

I am not very knowledgeable about dhrupad as far as its intricacies and parts are concerned. I like to sit and meditate on the overall effect of the sound. Indeed, leading dhrupad maestros remark that rather than to entertain the audience, its purpose is worship. The nature of Dhrupad music is spiritual, seeking not to entertain, but to induce deep feelings of peace and contemplation in the listener. In the past, before electricity and Western-style concerts, where people sit in chairs at considerable distance from the performers, small groups of afficionados would gather to hear this music, which has always been a spiritual and meditational exercise. It seems impossible to return to that past, which probably exists even now in private settings. For that reason I was more than a little troubled by the rather inconsiderate Dura Darshan television team from Lucknow who seemed determined to make more noise than the musicians.

The Ganges gurgles Namo NaMo

I am sitting in the “private” bus  stand in Hardwar.

It is just an embankment away from the Ganges waterfront. The entire walkway with steps leading down to fast moving water is built of the red sandstone common in India. You see it in buildings like the Red Fort and the old temples of Vrindavan.

A boy was throwing a long string with a magnet attached to the end to catch lost coins in the current. I threw a few in to see if he could catch any. Not a one, I am afraid. His little brother, perhaps three years old, wearing only an orange T-shirt, was looking on wide-eyed at the strange game.

Finally, when I saw that big brother was not going to get any of my paisa, I put a two-rupee coin in the smaller one's hand. He looked back at me, his clear eyes with their large black irises enlarged in amazement. He turned and threw the coin into the river. This time his brother caught it.

I come back to the bus stand and start writing. I just read that Andrew Greeley, the priest novelist, "never had an unpublished thought." And Yglesias is boasting how he can do a review of a book in four hours and publish 93 different pieces in one month. So why not start writing in the bus stand?

It may be called a private bus stand or whatever, but all it is is a dirt parking lot with a bamboo hut for ticket takers, a few makeshift dhabas, or open-air roadside restaurants, a couple of donkeys, plenty of garbage strewn about. But living in India, you take garbage for granted after a while. It is ubiquitous, part of the scenery like grass and stones. The Hardwar ghats, a fairly recent endeavor by the looks of it, also have the look of decay--neglected and grubby, like the windows of a greasy spoon diner.

There are many sadhus, most of them looking worse for the wear. Who knows what these sadhus are? If we saw such people in the West, we would just take them for homeless itinerants without giving them any thought whatsoever. And to be honest, it is not much different here. The sadhus who wash up in Hardwar or Rishikesh or Vrindavan come here for the same reason that the widows come.
There are people who come to holy places to give in charity to those who had come to the end of their chances and figure that giving themselves up to the grace of God in the Holy Land was an okay option.

There are some who do some religious activities, some who do more for show, and others who just don’t  bother and hang out all day long, smoking ganja and bidis and tracking down the best places to get a free meal. Their look is designed to show they don’t care about their appearance, though perhaps they will bother with a splotch of red on the forehead or a spread of ash across, or perhaps more elaborate sectarian markings.

They do not shave their heads. The shaved-headed types most likely have a place indoors to sleep tonight and will get up in the morning early to bathe in the Ganga and participate in some group activity in one of the ashrams or maths. They will be rounder; these street sadhus are thin. But this here bus station is in the low rent part of town. It is the public park, and is well used.

Along with the ghat, which stretches at least a couple of kilometers, there is a small green belt. The River Ganges was actually engineered for a number of reasons by the British. The ghat passes along the main channel around which the town has grown, but this is not in actual fact the original bed of the river. That is about three or four hundred meters to the east of here. Between the canal and the old riverbed runs the main highway from Delhi to Dehradoon, and this strip of land is supposed to be forested, preserved and protected. It is slowly being eaten away by shanties and parking lots like this one, but at least an attempt was made to create an aesthetically pleasing public space. And let me assure you, that is a rare thing in India.

It is called rajas and tamas. Who can translate? Rajas is what is pushing everything, whirring and whirling with action, with desire, with a need to grow, to be bigger and better, to succeed, to build, to show the world that we are worthy!

Tamas is the sigh of despair, thanatos, the person lying by the Ganga waiting to die. The empty water bottle cast carelessly on the ground.

Rajas is the other bank of the river, over by Har ki Pauri, the main ghat which you usually see in pictures of Hardwar, thronging with pilgrims. That is where during the Kumbha Mela the sadhus from the main Akhadas, the prestigious Nagas, line up to bathe in the Ganges, naked and ash covered, dreadlocks like Medusa's serpents.

Har ki Pauri still has its old temples, but it now also boasts glass-windowed restaurants, where visitors from Delhi or Chandigarh, taking a break from the city, come to eat fast food and stare through the glass windows at the Ganges flowing past.

That’s the Hardwar the economic thinkers think is best for Hardwar. And in this world, who wants anything else? Why shouldn’t the religious centers be tourist sites? Why shouldn’t they build skyscrapers that serve no other function than to be tall and say, “God is here” rather than "there"? So people will come and see whether God really is there or not. And some will say, such things could only come from God, but most will come to gawk without really any thought at all. As long as they can sleep in an air-conditioned room with fresh sheets and towels. These people do not give skinny sadhus coins.

And it’s better of course if there are not too many beggars. The Indians can deal with it, but we want foreigners.

The guys in the ticket lean-to are all happy that Narendra Modi won the election.

In the ashram, one of the workers celebrated with samosas and mango juice, which I ate just before leaving. On the tuktuk from Rishikesh we passed a little group of forty or fifty people wearing orange hats and waving flags with the orange and green lotus of the BJP. There is a very loud koyil in one of the eucalyptus trees here who also seems to be celebrating.

Nearly everyone is happy with Modi. The mood is upbeat with the great victory. Many people really think that he is a savior. The country is fed up with the Gandhis. There is a kind of visceral antipathy to Sonia Gandhi that has become pervasive, something like the way certain sectors of America dislike Hillary Clinton. Sonia supposedly tried to keep out of it all, but it’s just like being in the Mafia; it’s the Gandhi family business, running India.

But they got creamed really badly this time around. It is like the country doesn’t want to see a Gandhi ever again. Except for the black sheep Varun, who ran for the BJP, abandoning the Congress years ago along with his mother. Still in politics, just a different party.

Everybody thinks Modi will be a savior. He will eliminate corruption. He will bring the “Gujarati model” of development to the whole country. The holy river Yamuna will miraculously be relieved of its burden of Delhi sewage and industrial effluent. Its water, which is wholly diverted for agriculture before a last trickle reaches the megapolis capital, like the gasp of a dying child, arrives there only to receive this black bounty from the overburdened city. For has not Modi already cleaned the Sabarmati in Gujarat? Why should he not succeed? If he has the will, he will find a way. And he has the will.

But what is that way? Well, it sure is development. There is nothing else on the program. It is development and stop corruption. Let the country become wealthy, let it win respect on the international stage, let it show the world that it too is capable, that Hindus, in particular, are world class people. That is the mood.

That is the mood of Baba Ramdev, the sadhu king of Hardwar, maharajah of people's yoga and packaged ayurvedic medicines and organic food. He started his own political party, “Bharata Svabhiman” (India Pride) and was damned well going to get sucked into politics, participating in Ana Hazare’s anti-corruption crusade, even getting roughed up by the police when they decided his huge yoga program in the Ramalila Maidan was turning into an anti-government political event. He slowed down a bit since then, but this time around gave his full backing to the BJP, as did every other major sadhu in India. But that is to be expected.

I ask the young guys who work here, "So you guys are happy Modi won? Why?"

One replies with panache in English, "He is like Hitler!"

I was a little taken aback, but I said mildly, "Not everyone thinks that is a good thing."

"But, I mean," he and the others quickly stepped in to clarify, "I mean that he makes decisions quickly. He is decisive. He leads. He will not let Pakistan or America dictate to him what to do. He will clean things up."

The Ganga too is gurgling, "Namo NaMo."