Ishaq was quite popular in spite of his slightly sarcastic nature, and had a number of good friends. He was always willing to take the errands and burdens of others upon himself. After his father’s death he and his sister had had to support their three young brothers. This was one reason why it was important that his sister’s family move from Lucknow to Brahmpur.
One of Ishaq’s two friends, a tabla player, now made the suggestion that Ishaq’s brother-in-law change places with another sarangi player, Rafiq, who was keen to move to Lucknow.
‘But Rafiq is a B-plus artist. What’s your brother-in-law’s grade?’ asked Ishaq’s other friend.
‘B.’
‘The Station Director won’t want to lose a B-plus for a B. Still, you can try.’
Ishaq picked up his cup, wincing slightly as he did so, and sipped his tea.
‘Unless he can upgrade himself,’ continued his friend. ‘I agree, it’s a silly system, to grade someone in Delhi on the basis of a single tape of a performance, but that’s the system we have.’
‘Well,’ said Ishaq, remembering his father who, in the last years of his life, had made it to A, ‘it’s not a bad system. It’s impartial – and ensures a certain level of competence.’
‘Competence!’ It was Ustad Majeed Khan speaking. The three friends looked at him in amazement. The word was spoken with a contempt that seemed to come from the deepest level of his being. ‘Mere pleasing competence is not worth having.’
Ishaq looked at Ustad Majeed Khan, deeply disquieted. The memory of his father made him bold enough to speak.
‘Khan Sahib, for someone like you, competence is not even a question. But for the rest of us…’ His voice trailed off.
Ustad Majeed Khan, displeased at being even mildly contradicted, sat tight-lipped and silent. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts. After a while he spoke.
‘You should not have a problem,’ he said. ‘For a sarangi-wallah no great musicianship is required. You don’t need to be a master of a style. Whatever style the soloist has, you simply follow it. In musical terms it’s actually a distraction.’ He continued in an indifferent voice: ‘If you want my help I’ll speak to the Station Director. He knows I’m impartial – I don’t need or use sarangi-wallahs. Rafiq or your sister’s husband – it hardly matters who is where.’
Ishaq’s face had gone white. Without thinking of what he was doing or where he was, he looked straight at Majeed Khan and said in a bitter and cutting voice: ‘I have no objection to being called a mere sarangi-wallah rather than a sarangiya by a great man. I consider myself blessed that he has deigned to notice me. But these are matters about which Khan Sahib has personal knowledge. Perhaps he can elaborate on the uselessness of the instrument.’
It was no secret that Ustad Majeed Khan himself came from a family of hereditary sarangi players. His artistic strivings as a vocalist were bound up painfully with another endeavour: the attempt to dissociate himself from the demeaning sarangi tradition and its historical connection with courtesans and prostitutes – and to associate himself and his son and daughter with the so-called ‘kalawant’ families of higher-caste musicians.
But the taint of the sarangi was too strong, and no kalawant family wanted to marry into Majeed Khan‘s. This was one of the searing disappointments of his life. Another was that his music would end with himself, for he had never found a disciple whom he considered worthy of his art. His own son had the voice and musicianship of a frog. As for his daughter, she was musical all right, but the last thing that Ustad Majeed Khan wanted for her was that she should develop her voice and become a singer.
Ustad Majeed Khan cleared his throat but said nothing.
The thought of the great artist’s treason, the contempt with which Majeed Khan, despite his own undoubted gifts, had treated the tradition that had given him birth continued to enrage Ishaq.
‘Why does Khan Sahib not favour us with a response?’ he went on, oblivious to his friends’ attempts to restrain him. ‘There are subjects, no matter how distanced he is today, on which Khan Sahib can illuminate our understanding. Who else has the background? We have heard of Khan Sahib’s illustrious father and grandfather.’
‘Ishaq, I knew your father, and I knew your grandfather. They were men who understood the meaning of respect and discrimination.’
‘They looked at the worn grooves on their fingernails without feeling dishonoured,’ retorted Ishaq.
The people at the neighbouring tables had stopped talking, and were listening to the exchange between the younger and the older man. That Ishaq, baited himself, was now doing the baiting, attempting to hurt and humiliate Ustad Majeed Khan, was painful and obvious. The scene was horrible, but everyone seemed to be frozen into immobility.