A Musical Triptych: Panel Two

Circa Mid 2000s

On the very edge of the same Deccan Plateau is the city lovingly called the Queen of The Dakkhan, Pune. It’s a dainty place swarming with schools of Indian music, and thousands of savants of Hindustani music. In late December, the population of music lovers quadruples. It is the time that Sawai Gandharva is held. If anything deserves to be called the Woodstock of Indian Music, this is it. The festival was started and is carried on with the blessings of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, the greatest of them all.

Once it starts in the late afternoon, the festival goes on through the night, ending only with the mellow light of dawn. There is a never ending line of magicians marching onto the stage, and the crowd is the most music literate one you will find. Thousands of aficionados cheering on the greats is a sight I will not forget soon. The venue is the grounds of New English School Ramanbaug and giant tents are erected under which a swarm of people sprawls in relaxed poses. At the last festival I had attended, Pandit Bhimsen’s performance was in doubt, he is old, frail and has a fragile constitution. But, at the end of the third day, he tottered onto the stage and proclaimed, I will never not perform at this festival in honor of my Guru. And then he tested his voice, and before long, I was lost in a mystic journey into an otherworldly musical nirvana. A world populated with soaring pinnacles and grand canyons, with rolling valleys and gurgling mountain streams, with the clash of lightning and the lashing of waves. Only the thunderous applause of an inspired throng alight on their feet made me come crashing down onto the earth.