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LOUNGENew Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Bangalore Saturday, April 19, 2008 Vol. 2 No. 15

FROM THE FACTORYFLOOR TO A DESK JOB

INDIA’S VERTICALTAKE­OFF

Christopher Pearsall earned $170,000 (Rs76.50lakh then) in 2004, a sizable sum for a blue-collarmillwright at a Ford Motor truck plant in

Norfolk, Virginia. But he toiled 12-hour days, seven daysa week, most of that year in the noisy and dirty factory.He sometimes dreaded going to work. Today, the34-year-old Pearsall is a $60,000-a-year product managerfor Concursive, a business software developer that’s alsoin Norfolk. He wears slacks and polo shirts on the jobrather than coveralls. Despite his lower pay, hesays he is much happier at the desk job. >Page 4

Fo r n e a r l y a s l o n g a s I c a nremember—from the early 1970s atleast—we have taken it for granted

that Indians do not know how to runairlines. When foreign visitors came to ourcountry we warned them about IndianAirlines. The flights will be late, we said.Expect the most minimal standards ofservice. When we needed to travel abroadwe steered clear of Air India. Everythingabout the airline was wrong. >Page 6

Recently, I came across a rather unusualsight: a couple engaging in a lip-lock inbroad daylight right by the escalator in

Garuda Mall, Bangalore. My mother, who waswith me, turned away and said, “Chee, chee,w h a t i s t h e w o r l d c o m i n g t o ? ” I g e n t l yreminded her that the world as we know itwould be finished if humans didn’t kiss. Not toput too Darwinian a point on it, Mom, I said,but kissing is a superbly effective way to selecta mate and pass on your genes. >Page 5

THE GOOD LIFESHOBA NARAYAN

PURSUITSVIR SANGHVI

MANAGING YOUR CAREERJOANN LUBLIN

THE SCIENCE OFKISSING

FOOTLOOSEDelhi’s weekend sports draw? It’s noton the cricket pitch or the polo field>Page 9

AN ODE TO ADOLESCENTFANTASYClichéd, sexy enchantresses populateSalman Rushdie’s new novel; the bestparts leave them out entirely >Page 18

DON’T MISS

For today’s business news> Question of Answers—

the quiz with a difference> Markets Watch> Capital Account columnWSJ

DRESSED FOR THE PARTThey may just be in the background ofa scene, but film directors struggle tofind extras who look the part >Page 15

BUSINESS LOUNGEWITHSIVARAMAKRISHNANSOMASEGAR >Page 10

THE

SHEHNAI’SFADING LILTA visit to the birthplace of UstadBismillah Khan reveals the saddecline of the shehnai and the wayof life it represents >Page 12

Sanjeev Shankar serenadesthe Ganga at the Assi Ghatin Varanasi.

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LOUNGE COVER L13SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 2008 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

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B Y S A M A N T H S U B R A M A N I A N

samanth.s@livemint.com·························VARANASI/OLD BHOJPUR (BIHAR)

On a r a g g e d p i e c e o fcardboard, in a disinte-grating shop in God-

h u l i y a , a p a r t i c u l a r l y c o n -gested part of Varanasi, sitsMohammad Safi. In a city thatwas once home to Ustad Bis-millah Khan and more than adozen shehnai makers, Safiis one of the only two remain-ing craftsmen of the instru-ment—both ageing, both with-out apprentices to carry thecraft forward.

From this l i t t le shop, formore than half a century, Safihas made shehnais—for Bis-millah Khan, for Pandit DayaS h a n k a r a n d h i s t w o s o n s ,Sanjeev and Ashwini, and forshehnai players from cities asf a r a w a y a s M u m b a i a n dC h e n n a i . S a f i ’ s f a t h e r a n d

grandfather made shehnaisbefore him, just down the roadin another shop. “There wasalso an old woman in KoilaBazaar,” says Safi, a shrivelled,white-haired man of 85. “Butshe died. So, now it’s just meand Khalil in Daranagar.”

Safi, in a once-white shirtand steel grey trousers, sitsamid a mess of files, cuttersand long, heated irons. To oneside, in a gloomy alcove, arethree bicycles and a dusty LMLscooter with a punctured tyre.On a mat is a dried clutch ofslender grassy weeds calledn a r k a t , u s e d t o m a k e t h eshehnai’s reed.

The narkat can be procuredonly from a particular pond inOld Bhojpur, a village in theBuxar district of Bihar. Lyingnext to Safi are three 8-inchshehnais—one a prototype,and two that he is making toorder. It is the first order hehas received in a month.

It takes Safi two-three daysto make a shehnai, and eachsells for Rs500. “When Bismil-lah Khan was at the height ofhis popularity, some touristswould buy souvenir shehnais,b u t e v e n t h a t h a s s t o p p e dnow,” he says. It is not sur-prising then that Safi has aday job; he is the founder of,a n d t h e m o v i n g f o r c eb e h i n d , t h e B h a r a t B a n dParty. Behind him stands asteel shelf full of drums, trum-pets and grimy white banduniforms; a yellowed photohangs on the wall, showinghim and his son Mehboob infull band regalia.

Mehboob, the eldest of foursons, helps out at his father’sshop occasionally, and he says:“My sons aren’t interested inthis at all. They want to dot h e i r o w n t h i n g . ” A v o c a lonlooker offers: “Everythingchanges. Many people thinknow that to sit in a shop like

t h i s , d o a j o b l i k e t h i s , i sbeneath their dignity.”

WHEN THE MUSIC FADESThe decline of the craft of mak-ing the shehnai has mirroredthe decline of the art of playingit. “The shehnai is not like thetabla or the sitar,” says SanjeevShankar. “It remains restrictedto families, and people outsidethe shehnai-playing familiesdo not want to learn it.”

Shankar comes from a familyof shehnai players going back450 years. His own shehnai,which he carries in a laptop

case, is 80 years old, and wasmade by Mohammad Safi ’sfather for Pandit Anant Lal,Shankar’s grandfather. Shan-k a r h i m s e l f w a s i n c l i n e dtowards the sitar until he wasnudged back towards his fam-ily instrument by Pandit RaviS h a n k a r . “ M y g r a n d f a t h e rshifted to Jalandhar in 1949and, during his stay there, Pan-dit Ravi Shankar heard himplay, wondered what such agood shehnai player was doingin Jalandhar, and invited himto New Delhi.”

Even back then, Shankar

a d m i t s , t h e r e w o u l d h a v ebeen only a dozen top-flightshehnai concert artists acrossIndia; that number has halvednow. Shankar, 30 years oldand the author of a doctoralthesis on the shehnai, saysmany of his younger peerssimply do not pursue the artlong enough to reach concert-level proficiency.

Shankar also pointed to theshehnai’s waning classicism;t h e r e m a y s t i l l b e s h e h n a iplayers around, in New Delhifor example, but they are whathe calls the “Ek-Do-Teen” type,

who play only at weddings andmake, by his estimate, Rs20-25l a k h p e r w e d d i n g s e a s o n .“Maybe shehnai-playing is nota dying art, but it is not a thriv-ing art either,” he says. “It isjust stagnant.”

ASSEMBLY LINEFabricating a shehnai involvesa surprising number of peo-ple; shehnai-makers such asSafi do only the basic assem-b l y . H e l a t h e s t h e w o o d e nbody at home out of Burmat e a k , a t t a c h e s t h e f l a r i n gmetal pyala to one end and,with hot irons, burns sevenholes through the wood.

“But, you can never immedi-ately play a shehnai that youbuy,” says Shankar. “We take ithome, and with our own hotirons and files, we fine-tunethe finger-holes till it soundsperfect.” That perfect soundm a y n e v e r m a t e r i a l i z e . A thome, Shankar has every oneof the 500 or so shehnais hehas ever bought, but only threeor four are good enough top l a y i n a c o n c e r t . “ T h erest—well, they just sit there

and gather dust.”The mouthpiece, or reed, of

the shehnai is another matteraltogether. For more than 200y e a r s , e v e r y r e e d o f e v e r yshehnai has been made out ofnarkat. Nothing else will do.In a spirit of experimenta-t i o n , S h a n k a r o n c e t r i e dother materials. “There was ap a l m - l e a f r e e d , b u t i t w a ss h r i l l a n d l o u d , ” h e s a y s .“Then there was this Ameri-c a n g r a s s , w h i c h s o u n d e dgood for only two minutesbefore going flat. Narkat isthe only thing that works.”

T h e n a r k a t i s c u t o n c eevery year, in March or April,dried for a whole year in OldB h o j p u r v i l l a g e , a n d t h e nsold to Varanasi ’s shehnaim a k e r s f o r R s 1 5 0 p e r f i s t -thick bundle. Safi dries thenarkat some more on the roofof his house, for six months toa year. Once they are brittle,pale brown, hollow sticks, hesells them to shehnai artistssuch as Shankar.

“We make our own reed outof these,” says Shankar. Thisi n v o l v e s s e a r c h i n g f o r t h ethree or four promising narkatstems out of 200, cutting theminto 2-inch reed segments, andalternately soaking them inwater and drying them in thesun. “We also polish its insideby putting a metal stick into itand rolling the reed around it.”

F i n a l l y , S h a n k a r b e g i n stesting each of these 40-oddr e e d s i n h i s s h e h n a i . “ W eplay them for six months, tob r e a k t h e m i n , t o s e e h o wthey sound,” he says. “Out oft h o s e 2 0 0 s t e m s , w e w i l lprobably get two good, con-cert-worthy reeds. I f we’re

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THESHEHNAI’S

FADING LILTIts magic has few takers today. Avisit to the birthplace of UstadBismillah Khan, the greatest shehnaiplayer of them all, reveals the saddecline of the instrument and the wayof life it represents

MUSIC

Shankar callsthe weddingshehnai players‘Ek­do­teen’types who makeupto Rs20­25lakh per seasonin New Delhi

Torch­bearers:(left) SanjeevShankar (standing)and “Murali”Manohar Lalpractise withinearshot of the KaliBadi Temple inVaranasi.

Living legacy: Nayyer Khan, son of Bismillah Khan, plays his father’s shehnai.

Swansong:(right) Mohammad

Safi and his sonMehboob at Safi’s

shop; (below) abundle of

narkat stemsused to make thereeds (bottom) of

the shehnai.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT

BHAIRAVI AT KALI BADI CHOWKI

In front of Varanasi’s Kali Badi Temple stands one of theold residences of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar. A decrepit

building the colour of milky tea, it has a garden that tends toovergrowth and a chowki—a broad arch topped by a singleroom—standing guard over its gate. From that room, lookingacross the property, one can spot the house where PanditRavi Shankar was born in 1920.

“For around 200 years, at the time of the evening aarti atthe temple, the Maharaja would install a shehnai player ontop of the chowki ,” says Sanjeev Shankar. That practice,along with its royal patronage, may have discontinued, butVaranasi’s shehnai players still come here to practise;Shankar remembers coming here as a child with his father.

Today’s unbilled performer is Manohar Lal, knownaffectionately as “Murali” because he also plays the flute. Lalis 45, and Shankar strongly suspects that the ownership of thechillum lying in one corner of the chowki, until recently, laywith him. In a white kurta-pyjama, a woven brown coat, anda brown scarf tied around his head, he climbs the stairs,unfurls a mat, shoots us a grin and sits down to play.

During intermission, Manohar Lal tells us about the sixgenerations of shehnai players in his family. He also tells usabout his day job—selling balloons and toys. There’s nodemand any more for the classical shehnai in Varanasi, hesays. That seems even more of a shame when, after theinterval, Shankar and Manohar Lal make the chowki resoundwith the majesty of Bhairavi, taking it in turns to wander upand down the scale at leisure, each note sure and sweet,wafting out of the window towards the Kali Badi Temple.

Samanth Subramanian

A toy seller keeps tradition alive

Past present: Shehnai players still play at Kali Badi chowki.

Staying alive:Ustad BismillahKhan’s shehnai—70 years old andstill in tune.

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really lucky, we’ll get five.”From cutting the narkat tofinally playing the reed in con-cert can take up to four years.

Before every concert, themusicians go through a two-hour ritual of preparing theirmouthpiece. Shankar puts areed entirely in his mouth andthen moves it around as if hewere chewing gum, soaking itwith his saliva. He then slipsthe reed into a slatted piece ofb a m b o o , t o k e e p o n e e n dpinched, and leaves it for 30m i n u t e s . T h i s p r o c e s s i sr e p e a t e d t h r e e - f o u r t i m e sbefore the reed is pushed intothe shehnai. When he playsraag Bhairavi with a reed thatis not damp enough, the soundseems to be coming out of ashehnai with a woollen sockover its pyala. The entire pro-cess is an elaborate produc-tion. In fact, the shehnai mightbe the only instrument madeas much by its manufacturer asby its player.

THE SHEHNAI’S ROOTSOld Bhojpur consists entirely ofa si ng l e c r os s r oad , a ro undwhich is gathered a cluster ofhuts and shops. Narkat-seekersare taken to the hut of ParasChowdhary, one of the few menin the village who cuts and sellsthe grass to buyers. Chowd-hary is a day labourer, doingmenial work for money; hesays, vaguely, that he is 40, buthe looks at least 10 years older.

To get to the narkat, Chowd-hary leads a brisk 3km trampthrough fields of still-greenwheat, framed in the distance

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by power pylons. “Most of thenarkat has been cut already,”he says. “There will be someyounger shoots, though.” Hefinally stops by a river calledthe Nari, and says: “This is it.This is where I cut it.”

A little distance away, theNari flows into a lake, and it ison these muddy banks that thenarkat grows—tall, green ands l e n d e r — i n t h e m i d d l e o fthorn bushes. “Those bushesare a blessing. They keep thenarkat safe from foraging ani-mals,” says Chowdhary. One ofthe boys accompanying himslips out of his trousers andwades through the shallowriver to the opposite bank, tou p r o o t s o m e y o u n g narkats t e m s . T h e y r e s e m b l e ayounger version of bamboo,w i t h t h e o c c a s i o n a l t h o r n .“These are short now, but bythe time we cut them, they cangrow up to above your waist.”

Coincidentally, the greatest

s h e h n a i p l a y e r , B i s m i l l a hKhan, was born in Dumraon,3km from Old Bhojpur. Thehouse of his birth, down a tinystreet recently renamed Bismil-lah Gali , consists of an oldground floor surmounted by anewly bricked first floor. Thathouse has been sold, but Bis-millah Khan’s family still ownsa l i t t l e p r o p e r t y t w o d o o r sdown, with a cowshed and asmall house.

Mohammad Sultan Khan, aninformal caretaker for the fam-ily, wryly mentions how plansh a d b e e n d r a w n u p f o r amemorial to Bismillah Khan,soon after his death. “The gov-ernment sent an engineer and

he looked over the area, andthen drew designs and showedthem to us,” he says. “But thosedesigns are still only on paper.In Bihar, everything can beaccomplished on paper.”

Stretching back at least threegenerations, Bismillah Khan’sfamily used to play at the courtof the Maharaja of Dumraon.“They were from a particularcommunity of Muslims, butthere’s nobody in that commu-n i t y l e f t h e r e , ” s a y s K h a n .“ T h e r e i s s t i l l a M a h a r a j a ,Kamal Singh, but he is 80 yearsold. There’s no shehnai playingnow. That’s all stopped.”

Many years ago, in an easy,unforced practise of secular-ism, a member of BismillahK h a n ’ s f a m i l y p l a y e d t h eshehnai every evening at theaarti in the Maharaja’s templein Dumraon. The temple is acandy striped structure on thegrounds of the Dumraon pal-ace; other buildings of the pal-ace have been converted into abranch of the Punjab NationalBank and the Maharani Usha-rani School for Girls.

The 400-year-old temple stillfunctions, and to its left is a lit-tle pavilion. “You see thosethree arches in the pavilion,”the caretaker of the temple says.“Every evening, when he washere, Bismillah Khan would sitin the middle arch and play thes h e h n a i f o r t h e 6 p m aart i .When he left for Varanasi, hisyounger brother, Pachkoudi,continued the tradition.”

The temple, he says, hasbeen largely forgotten, scrapingthrough on the proceeds of theMaharaja’s estates. Its lus-ciously coloured wooden sup-ports, for instance, were judgedto be insufficiently strong as the

wood aged, so some pillar-shaped concrete eyesores havebeen added for extra strength.

As Bismillah Khan rose instature, he moved to Varanasi,where his family still lives. Hiseldest son, Nayyer HussainKhan, also a shehnai player, isnow 65, with watery eyes and al e o n i n e f a c e t h a t s t r o n g l yresembles his father’s. He stillplays Bismillah Khan’s shehnai,an instrument older than him-self , made in Koila Bazaar.“Khali l and Safi must havemade thousands of shehnaisover the years,” he says. “Butthere is nobody now who willmake them.”

The teak of Bismillah Khan’s15-inch shehnai has been worns m o o t h b y f i n g e r s o v e r 7 0years. A thick clump of reedshangs from its mouthpiece.Nayyer keeps it wrapped incloth in Bismillah Khan’s prac-t i c e r o o m — f l o o r e d i n r a wbrick, with a skylight on ones i d e , f o u r m o u n t a i n b i k e sstacked near the door, andblack banners displaying Ara-b i c v e r s e s f r o m t h e Q u r a nwoven in gold.

“Mecca is in the direction ofthat skylight,” says Nayyer.“That was where my fatherfaced when he practised.”

B i s m i l l a h K h a n , N a y y e rremembers, would sing a par-ticular song in the evening dur-ing Moharram, when all Vara-nasi would gather to listen. “Itwent like this,” he says, andstarts singing in a strong tenor.But as he sings, overcome bythe memory of his father, hebegins to sob, his voice chok-ing, and a single tear out of hisleft eye courses down his face,the face that looks so much likeBismillah Khan’s own.

In memoriam:(clockwise from left)Mohammad SultanKhan holds up atreasured photo ofhimself with BismillahKhan; seated underthe middle arch,Bismillah Khan wouldplay during aarti inthe temple opposite; aroom in the housewhere Bismillah Khanwas born.

Before concerts,musicians gothrough atwo­hour ritual.It might be theonly instrumentmade as muchby its maker asby its playerTHE SURVIVOR

The south Indian kin of theshehnai, the nadaswaram,

sources its reed from the banksof the Cauvery river, in thedistrict of Thanjavur. The processof making the nadaswaram reedis much the same as making thatof the shehnai, but the musiciansdo not make it themselves. InThanjavur, a cottage industry ofmaking these reeds still exists.“One of the most famousfamilies making reeds today livesin Tiruvavadudurai, the ancestraltown of the nadaswaram expertT.N. Rajaratnam Pillai,” says MylaiRajendran, a nadaswaram playerin Chennai.

The reed is made out of ariver grass called ‘naanal thattu’,harvested around the same timeas the ‘narkat’, betweenFebruary and April every year.The grass is dried and aged oversix months or a year, but insteadof merely being soaked in waterto soften it, the dried ‘naanalthattu’ is boiled in water or ricegruel. After repeating this processuntil it is pliable and soft, thegrass is ready to be shaped intothe reed, or ‘seevali’.

Rajendran buys 12 reeds at atime, for a price of Rs1,000,although he says that six ofthe dozen can be counted uponto splinter promptly. He playsthe remaining six for sixmonths before replacing themwith fresh reeds.

Over the last four years, some‘seevali’­makers have turned tothe Microcredit Foundation ofIndia to expand their business.“Right now, there are fourmembers of our microcreditprogram from the‘seevali’­making community,” saysSuguna Swamy, a consultantwith the Microcredit Foundationof India. “A couple of them are ontheir second or third set of loans.They have a hard life, and thesemicroloans have helped them tideover some tough times.”

Samanth Subramanian

In Tamil Nadu, a microcreditscheme has come to the aid ofthe nadaswaram reed

Few takers: Paras Chowdhary holds fresh, young narkat, uprooted from the muddy banks behind him.

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