No strings attached

If you pick up The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan , read it quietly, taking time off from the demands of daily life, so that you can immerse yourself in the mood of the story as it draws a series of portraits of the sitar maestro. The book traces the life of Ustad Vilayat Khan from childhood, through important milestones and life-altering moments, till the end.

It combines research and craftsmanship in a manner engrossing enough to appeal even to a reader who has never heard of Khan or listened to his music.

The Sixth String of Vilayat KhanNamita DevidayalWestland/ ContxtNon-fiction₹699

Even as journalist-author Namita Devidayal follows a thread that links Khan to places across the world, she adds her own embellishments to the narrative about a man whose life was “iridescent with illusion”, and who had the reputation of being someone “who spoke the truth only by mistake”! Devidayal’s attempts to find the man behind the musician take her to Kolkata, Delhi, Saharanpur, Shimla, Dehradun and to Princeton University, where she once was a student herself, though quite unaware of the fact that the maestro was then living there.

Despite making many detours, the central narrative focuses on Vilayat Khan the sitar player, his trials and tribulations in the early years of his training after his father’s death, and his growth and development into one of Hindustani classical music’s greats.

Devidayal adds to this her own knowledge of music as a trained singer. This is where the biography crosses over from being about one man and into an almost glowing vision of the power of music over those who delve into it. She paints a picture of a six-year-old Khan listening to his father performing at the Albert Hall in Kolkata, floating “between dream and reality, the two spaces linked only by sound”. When the loud applause makes his eyes fly open, he “sees a haze of yellow all around”. His father tells him it was the colour of Basant , adding, “You saw the raga.”

The other story that is entwined with the music is one that shows us a proud, almost vain man, fond of food and clothes, cars and women, unable to take any competition in his stride, be it in music or at cards. When an airline staffer at an international airport, on realising Khan is a sitar player, asks him if he knows the famous Ravi Shankar, he replies without missing a beat that Shankar had died just that morning. When he senses his younger brother, Imrat, who played the surbahar with him at concerts, was trying to emerge from his shadow, he feels resentful. This resentment finally expresses itself when he stops the car taking them to a performance at Buckingham Palace and curtly lets his brother get off, instead of persuading him to wear a tie as protocol demanded.

The third story that the author weaves into the book is of the changing face of music. Technological developments form the backdrop to the decades of Khan’s life. As are the contributions of musicologists Vishnu Bhatkhande and Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, each in a different way, to the first-ever documentation of the unwritten rules of Hindustani music.

It is a particularly useful thread, especially for readers unaware of India’s musical history.

Some aspects of the maestro’s life seem to link him to other musical geniuses. The presence of a strong mother who moulded and encouraged his talent in the absence of a father is reminiscent of AR Rahman’s life. Khan learning to play from a singer who taught him to sing through his instrument draws parallels with flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia learning classical music from Annapurna Devi. In Khan’s generosity in his later years, one can see similarities with Jagjit Singh’s endless ability to give to those in need.

Perhaps the same divine forces intervene in the lives of all great musicians, to bind them in unknown ways.

The way Devidayal exercises poetic licence adds just enough drama and action to the book, balancing the esoteric passages where she describes the music. It makes the book approachable for many who might otherwise baulk at picking up a biography of a man who was essentially a purist and thus known only to lovers of classical music. Besides Khan himself, the reader has an opportunity to meet other greats such as Yehudi Menuhin, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Amir Khan, Chaurasia and Amjad Ali Khan.

The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan is a valuable addition to the documentation of the lives of the finest musicians in India.

Sathya Saran is a journalist and editor based in Mumbai

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