A Suitable Boy(190)
‘Bhai Sahib, these are not the prices of Subzipur but of Chowk.’
‘Very high, these prices of yours.’
‘Oh, we had a child last year ’ since then my prices have gone up.’ The vegetable seller, seated calmly on the ground on a bit of jute matting, looked up at the Ustad.
Ustad Majeed Khan did not smile at the vendor’s quips. ‘Two annas per pao ’ that’s it.’
‘I have to earn my meals from you, Sir, not from the charity of a gurudwara.’
‘All right – all right –’ And Ustad Majeed Khan threw him a couple of coins.
After buying a bit of ginger and some chillies, the Ustad decided to get a few tindas.
‘Mind that you give me small ones.’
‘Yes, yes, that’s what I’m doing.’
‘And these tomatoes – they are soft.’
‘Soft, Sir?’
‘Yes, look –’ The Ustad took them off the scales. ‘Weigh these ones instead.’ He rummaged around among the selection.
‘They wouldn’t have gone soft in a week – but whatever you say, Sir.’
‘Weigh them properly,’ growled the Ustad. ‘If you keep putting weights on one pan, I can keep putting tomatoes on the other. My pan should sink in the balance.’
Suddenly, the Ustad’s attention was caught by a couple of cauliflowers which looked comparatively fresh, not like the stunted outriders of the season. But when the vegetable seller named the price, he was appalled.
‘Don’t you fear God?’
‘For you, Sir, I have quoted a special price.’
‘What do you mean, for me? It’s what you charge everyone, you rogue, I am certain. Special price –’
‘Ah, but these cauliflowers are special – you don’t require oil to fry them.’
Ishaq smiled slightly, but Ustad Majeed Khan simply said to the local wit: ‘Huh! Give me this one.’
Ishaq said: ‘Let me carry them, Ustad Sahib.’
Ustad Majeed Khan gave Ishaq the bag of vegetables to carry, forgetful of his hands. On the way home he did not say anything. Ishaq walked along quietly.
At his door, Ustad Majeed Khan said in a loud voice: ‘There is someone with me.’ There was a sound of flustered female voices and then of people leaving the front room. They entered. The tanpura was in a corner. Ustad Majeed Khan told Ishaq to put the vegetables down and to wait for him. Ishaq remained standing, but looked about him. The room was full of cheap knick-knacks and tasteless furniture. There could not have been a greater contrast to Saeeda Bai’s immaculate outer chamber.
Ustad Majeed Khan came back in, having washed his face and hands. He told Ishaq to sit down, and tuned the tanpura for a while. Finally, satisfied, he started to practise in Raag Todi.
There was no tabla player, and Ustad Majeed Khan began to sense his way around the raag in a freer, less rhythmic but more intense manner than Ishaq Khan had ever heard from him before. He always began his public performances not with a free alaap such as this but with a very slow composition in a long rhythmic cycle which allowed him a liberty that was almost, but not quite, comparable. The flavour of these few minutes was so startlingly different from those other great performances that Ishaq was enraptured. He closed his eyes, and the room ceased to exist; and then, after a while, himself; and finally even the singer.
He did not know how long he had been sitting there when he heard Ustad Majeed Khan saying: ‘Now, you strum it.’
He opened his eyes. The maestro, sitting bolt upright, indicated the tanpura that was lying before him.
Ishaq’s hands did not cause him any pain as he turned it towards himself and began to strum the four wires, tuned perfectly to the open and hypnotic combination of tonic and dominant. He assumed that the maestro was going to continue his practice.
‘Now, sing this after me.’ And the Ustad sang a phrase.
Ishaq Khan was literally dumbstruck.
‘What is taking you so long?’ asked the Ustad sternly, in the tone known so well to his students at the Haridas College of Music.
Ishaq Khan sang the phrase.
The Ustad continued to offer him phrases, at first brief, and then increasingly long and complex. Ishaq repeated them to the best of his ability, at first with unmusical hesitancy but after a while entirely forgetting himself in the surge and ebb of the music.
‘Sarangi-wallahs are good at copying,’ said the Ustad thoughtfully. ‘But there is something in you that goes beyond that.’
So astonished was Ishaq that his hands stopped strumming the tanpura.
The Ustad was silent for a while. The only sound in the room was the ticking of a cheap clock. Ustad Majeed Khan looked at it, as if conscious for the first time of its presence, then turned his gaze towards Ishaq.