Sunday, December 16, 2001		Article

NO, it was not Rafi singing the original song..but there was a quirk in the soulful melody rendered by that particular participant of the T.V. programme Sa Re Ga Ma that twisted our hearts into such knots that tears sprung into our eyes. There was much of Baiju Bawra in him.. I concluded while trying to sum up the total personality.

I have never judged a book by its cover — genius comes wrapped up in the oddest of parcels — so neither of the watching music-lover duo of my sister and myself gave even a second glance to the dishevelled shirt tucked untidily into sloppy pants of the U.S-based singer Sanjeev, unlike his fellow participants Ninad and Parthiv in their conventional crisp kurta pyjamas of classical singers. I only knew that while Parthiv’s classical rendition was just that — a superb classical rendition, when Sanjeev sang Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s Aae na Baalam, we were all too choked to think. He sang like one who had risen from shattered pieces, and was just about holding together.. all the hurt poured into his songs.. as strong as he himself looked fragile.

Whether it was the bhajan from Baiju Bawra, almost-never-heard-on-radio-or-elsewhere ending with the ominous sky-reaching cry Jis ghar mein sangeet nahin woh ho jaye shamshaan or Man ki pyaas bujhaane aayee.. we were never objective enough to notice and evaluate the intricacies of technique. All the songs were flawless.

Today, on our umpteenth viewing of the re-run of that episode of Sa Re Ga Ma Classics, when Begum Parveen Sultana (from the jury) chickens out and gives the mike to Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia, who visibly shudders and grimaces at the prospect of announcing the "verdict" and hands the mike to Anil Biswas to announce the name of the winner.. my heart still sinks.

The first time that we had heard the verdict "Parthiv" we thought Dada was absent-mindedly mispronouncing Sanjeev — calling him "Prodeep" in his Bengali accent. Today we all know that all those illustrious luminaries of the music-world had heated discussions before they pronounced Parthiv the winner.. and one understands the relay-with-the-mike, the prospect of hurting some more who already looked so dented. Begum Parveen Sultana mentioned his classical training edge. (Sonu Nigam, the then anchor, is more blunt and says he is plain lucky). It is Jagjit Singh’s words that work like balm on our blistered sensitivities, "I beg to differ a little.. but I do not believe in this "classical-music-training-edge", There is either good music or bad music".

For me, music that brings tears to my eyes is very good music, indeed. I do not care if Sanjeev was U.S-settled, spoke American English and did not wear a crisp kurta-pyjama. His Urdu and Hindi were flawless and his values seemed more Indian than any other Indian. Anybody who can sing a bhajan with tears in his eyes has his Indian values very intact.

But there was this quirk in his personality. He clapped like a crazed person when Parthiv’s name was announced and hugged him long enough to surreptitiously wipe his tears on Parthiv’s crisp kurta, before bursting into another totally unwarranted applause. But Sanjeev Rao Bhadrang never participated in another Sa Re Ga Ma after that. The last one saw him, he was sitting in the audience in a programme taking place in the U.S. and the cameraman obviously remembered him because more than the participants the camera zeroed in on Sanjeev and family in the audience. The four different repetitions of that particular Sa Re Ga Ma Classic, I have seen in four different places and they have all begun with the unanimous cry of surprise. "Oh! It is the Sa Re Ga Ma in which Sanjeev lost!" The dishevelled Sanjeev, with scant control over his emotion and his appearance and in such magnificent control of his voice and song is a celebrity in at least five households.. even if he lost.

Reminds me of another so obviously brilliant singer called Mehboob, whose relegation to second position had brought about protests from places as far-flung as Doha. But Mehboob compromised his folly and in his next appearance brought himself down quite a few rungs to the average singers’ level and instead of a rare Rafi gem Chiragh dil ka jalaao sang average new numbers and if not a victory, won himself quite a few commercial breaks.

Genius, especially when it borders on the quirky, is perhaps hard to swallow. Perhaps, it frightens us to be moved to tears.. and that by a fragile, dented-looking human being. We weep when we hear Baiju Bawra’s Jis ghar mein sangeet nahin woh ho jaya shamshaan.. but once again we hand victory to Tansen.

For Baiju Bawra, we have only tears.