Shantanu Moitra - On the Wings of Music: A Book of Journeys

ON THE WINGS
OF
MUSIC

a book of journeys

SHANTANU MOITRA

with
ARUNA CHAKRAVARTI

HarperCollins Publishers India

To,
Ma, Baba, Sarada and Shubham

CONTENTS

Shantanu Moitra is a live antenna.

An antenna catches the vibes from everything that happens around us. Shantanu does that too. The whisper of the breeze, the humming of bees, the meteor that waltzes across space he responds to all these. The minutest vibration resonates in his mind. He takes so much interest in everything around him because he has an indefatigable attachment to life.

Shantanu composes music, reveals himself through his music. But now that he has spread his wings in the firmament of words, he is equally at ease in this world. His music conveys all that he wants to express. But people in general listen to music as an entertainment. Rarely do they have the leisure or the understanding to let music seep into their very souls where it could reverberate with the same intensity with which it was composed. So, Shantanu now brings his words to us. Instead of notations, this time he delves into words and characters. In this endeavour he is fortunate to have Aruna Chakravarti, whose works I have long admired, by his side.

Read Shantanus book, imbibe his experiences, discover him anew.

GULZAR

For a long time, newspaper headlines have confused me. Rape, murder, cheating, kidnapping, mistrust and political games thats all I get to read every day. What confounds me is that in my extensive travels, I have rarely come across these aspects that agitate our newspapers. What I have seen are joyous people in wonderful places who are selfless, honest and who always place you over I. I have seen the poorest of the poor sharing their meagre meal with me in the finest tradition of that hoary clich atithidevo bhava , or the guest is God. This is the India that I have seen and known. I have often discussed this dichotomy with Gulzar Saab in his quiet study, hoping that this great poet would have an answer.

Well, his answer was: If music was not helping me understand this dichotomy, I should probably write. I asked him: Can I write? Everyone can write, he quipped. Its like breathing. But more important than the words are the thoughts they represent. It took me some time to put my thoughts down and finally I started a weekly column with Hindustan Times. It was a new experience and I struggled because music came naturally to me, but words I needed to think about. Then there was that deadline thing too. But I kept at it and gradually worked around my fears. Words started to flow. A column soon became too small for my stories and I wrote a book in Bengali called Pherari Mon. The book was so successful that my friends in Mumbai asked me why I did not write a similar book in English. I approached Aruna Chakravarti, a renowned writer and translator whom Ive known for many years, to help me. And so, between the two of us, the book came together. Thus emerged On the Wings of Music. Each of these stories is a vignette from my life as seen through the eyes of a curious Bengali middle-class boy.

Often as I sit down to write a tune, I feel uninspired, because creation comes from a place which is pure, from a place that is good. Its the lack of basic human values which becomes difficult to comprehend in big cities like Mumbai where EMI governs our lives. In contrast, I am overwhelmed when a poor tea stall owner walks an entire night in the rains across a mountain range to return my wallet full of money that I had left behind in his shop. These are the stories that make me believe how wondrous our lives are, and, lo and behold, the melody starts flowing again.

These journeys and meetings have blurred the lines between home and the world for me and I have begun to get a glimpse of the meaning of vasudhaiva kutumbakam the world is one family. There are so many other worlds to discover how humbling this thought is bawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna.

SHANTANU MOITRA

When I was very young, we lived in Benares in a house facing the one in which Ustad Allauddin Khan lived. Ive been told that as an infant, whenever I cried or was fretful, I was taken to Khan Sahebs house where I would quieten down while listening to his music. It seems to me now that the melodies I heard then gradually entered my bloodstream and have, over the years, suffused my soul.

My mother was a Lucknow girl and a trained Kathak dancer. My fathers people hailed from the other side of the river, then known as East Bengal. When looking for a place to resettle after Partition, they chose Benares because it was the holy of holies for Hindustani classical music, a city where all musicians congregated. A strong love of music ran through my fathers side of the family, a love that went so far back that it had become a tradition. All my uncles were musical. Some sang, while some played the sitar or the sarod. My father was a very good sarod player.

However, banks that look green from afar arent always so when one comes close to them. My fathers infatuation with Benares eventually faded. He relocated to Delhi, a better place for education and employment. At first we lived in Patel Nagar, then, when I was in Class Six, we moved to Chittaranjan Park. And it was here that I first discovered what being a Bengali was. I experienced the joy and bewilderment of living in a single-language community. Everyone was Bengali, even shopkeepers and household helps. Durga Puja, Rabindra Sangeet, politics and adda sessions I was part of them all.

As a child I studied in a kindergarten (the concept had just about caught on) run by an Anglo-Indian lady and her daughter, Jo. One year, at a school function, Jo brought her friend Susmit Bose to play the guitar. It was the first time I had heard the instrument, and I was completely bowled over. Of course, part of the enchantment flowed from Susmit Bose himself. He was six feet tall with hair cascading to his shoulders and a dark, velvety stubble covering his cheeks and chin. He looked just like Jesus Christ. But the wonder of his music and the resonance of his instrument have stayed with me through the years.

It was the 1970s and the hangover from Woodstock hadnt eased its grip. We had joy, we had fun / We had seasons in the sun Jo and Susmit sang together. And I fell desperately in love with Western music. From that moment there was no looking back. From the world of Hindustani classical music, which had cocooned me from birth, I fell into another. From Dylan to all the folk music of the world, I wanted to experience it all.

When I was a little older, still in school but in the higher classes, I developed a passion for collecting old vinyl records. In those days an auction was held every Sunday in Chanakyapuri where the embassies were housed. People flocked to it to bid for the foreign furniture, carpets, crockery and cutlery put up for sale by embassy officials who were being posted out of India. I went there as often as I could and picked up old discs. Listening to them appeased some of the wanderlust that drove me into a frenzy. My father wasnt rich enough to send me abroad for higher studies, and I wasnt brilliant enough to merit a scholarship. But so what? As the music entered my ears, my imagination broke loose from its trappings and carried me on silken wings to the distant lands I yearned to see. I used to gaze at the pictures on the records and go trekking over strange mountains, cross bridges over alien rivers and tramp down unknown streets.