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Literary Review
Remembering Sheila Dhar
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PARTHO DATTA pays tribute to a woman who, through her writing, built bridges across various divides.
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I WAS first introduced to Sheila Dhar by her editors and close friends Anuradha Roy and Rukun Advani. They were soon to persuade her to wield the pen once again for their new publishing house Permanent Black and that is how The Cooking of Music came to be written. In 1995, just before our first meeting, I had published an enthusiastic but rather tetchy review of her memoirs Here is Someone I Would Like You to Meet in the Indian Review of Books, Chennai. Influenced by the politically correct demonology around Indira Gandhi, I had voiced some reservations even though "Mrs.G" had only a brief and non-political appearance in the book which was mainly devoted to recounting tales about idiosyncratic music maestros. I think she forgave me, but not before I had passed a test. Soon after the meeting she rang up and casually asked me to name my favourite Kesarbai Kerkar recording. I remember mentioning the rather rare and not much heard 78 rpm "Durga". This is not a raga for which the Jaipur maestros are famous, but Kesarbai's perfectly proportionate rendering has never been bettered. There was a whoop of approval from the other end. It was also her favourite recording. I had passed the exam.
Every time I think of Sheila Dhar two extraordinary qualities come to mind. One was her ability to communicate. In her memoirs and the book published recently, one can see that rarest of gifts — the ability to translate as esoteric an experience as classical music into luminous and accessible prose. In fact what she did through her writing was to build bridges — between an ancient, hallowed and fierce tradition and modern sensibilities. Classical music aficionados can be infuriatingly conservative, opaque and snooty. The tyranny of grammarians in a tradition that sets great store by orally transmitted knowledge is also absolute. The interested amateur is likely to be repelled and hurt by this attitude of closed-shop trade-unionism. Yet reading Sheila Dhar, even a tone-deaf person could feel the delight and excitement that music enthusiasts experience when they hear an uplifting melody. Her essay "Hindustani Music: An Inward Journey" (reprinted in Cooking) is an outstanding example of this attempt at sharing the magic. Written as a succinct and lucid introduction to the philosophy and performative values of classical music, it is one of the few essays I know that takes into account the contributions made by active listeners. The essay is hugely enabling precisely because it does not treat the ordinary listener condescendingly. It reiterates the importance of listening and not just performing as an equally valid experience. Written originally for a volume brought out during the Festival of India, it caught the attention of Kathleen Raine the English poet and editor who was so impressed that she had it reprinted in the famous philosophical journal Temenos. Sheila Dhar once told me that she had put more work into this four-page essay than anything she had written including her memoirs.
Her other endearing quality was the capacity for friendship. She liked younger people and was always interested in their activities. It never ceased to amaze me that in a culture like ours where the relationship between generations is still marked by deference, supplication and obedience, Sheila Dhar was completely democratic. Her enthusiasm was boundless. Soon after meeting her, I discovered that both of us had independently come to regard Chetan Karnani's Listening to Hindustani Music (1976) as one of the most significant books on music criticism in India. We knew that Karnani was Professor of English in Jaipur. Soon after, Sheila Dhar got to work, contacted friends in Jaipur and ferreted out Karnani's address. A plan was hatched to hire a car and go off to the Pink City on a musical expedition. However, before any of this could happen, Karnani arrived in Delhi on work and I still remember the memorable lunch that Sheila Dhar gave all of us on that occasion.
She had a fund of anecdotes and her good-humoured mimicking of personalities is justly famous. Her friend the writer Kumar Mukherjee has devoted a whole chapter on her in his book of music memoirs Majlis published in Bengali. One could listen to some of her stories about the music world again and again. One description which I never got tired of hearing was about the brash, confident and young Sheila breezing into the AIR studios to find a large moustachioed gentleman tuning his tanpura. She ignored him and went on to record her programme. Much later she learnt that he was the great Ustad Wahid Khan, the khalifa of the Kirana gharana whose singing style she followed. She had let go a rare opportunity of meeting him. Sheila Dhar was among the few who realised that the legendary stories and anecdotes that circulated in music circles were not to be dismissed light-heartedly. She always said that it is through these stories that this ancient tradition is trying to convey precious musical values to the present generation.
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