Book Review - The Secret Master

Sumana Ramanan’s The Secret Master reminds me of the impulse that drove painting  on papyrus, etching on palm leaves, running quills on parchment.  Did those old world scribes ever think of lightening the load to please the reader? Or of any reader who was not a cognoscente, a sahrdaya, one with a heart akin to the one who wrote the text?

“A book is only as good as the reader”, they say. This book is definitely not for the casual, uninformed, page-surfing reader. It is difficult to thrust The Secret Master into a convenient slot. It hovers between biography and disquisition, demanding a great deal from its readers - alertness from ‘insiders’ in the field, and resolute attention from those who wish to learn more about the subject.

The book unfolds the story of Arun Kashalkar, the less known older brother of Ulhas  Kashalkar. Ramanan, a seasoned journalist, and music lover trained in the art form, wrote it after hearing the vocalist for the first time in 2016. At first she doesn’t trust her ears. She checks with a connoisseur to assure herself that despite his relative obscurity, the singer was indeed a great artist. And then, her act of writing becomes a quest to discover why someone like Arun was left in the shadows, while others, notably his own brother Ulhas, shone in the light.

However, Ramanan has chosen not to write a reader-friendly, personality-driven biography. Instead, she goes for a multi layered probe into a system of classical music, a centuries old tradition that has given her protagonist his identity. Presumably, the general reader would not be familiar with that world. Therefore, the author has taken it upon herself to prepare the ground for the reader by using two alternating voices – as storyteller and pedagogue.

Balancing the subjective response of a sishya and rasika with the objective scanning of a journalist (with inbuilt socio-political concerns) she inserts long expository passages about the origin and growth of Northern music, distinct from the Carnatic music of the South. She recounts the cultural history of the art form, inextricably intertwined with the history of changing political regimes. She traces its perpetuation and transmission through changing times, its stylistic variations in the gharana system, the evolution of the khayal gayaki, the ramifications of raga and tala, the difference between dhrupad and khayal and also between rural and urban settings. We meet past masters along the way and learn about their legacy.

The storyline takes in a large live cast of men and women - performers, teachers, disciples, connoisseurs, patrons, organisers big and small. We see them in classroom and concert dais, hear their words, absorb their opinions. Authenticity gleams in every phrase. After all, the writer is a disciple of her protagonist, and is further enriched by interactions with her gurubhais and gurubahinis from several age groups.

At first the overload staggers you. But as you turn the pages, you perceive the method in the maze. Ramanan nudges her readers through the plethora of facts, characters and scenes, to discover the hidden springs animating the system: on their own.

Too much? Yes. Technical jargon abounds, and can only be gibberish for the lay reader who bumps into passages like this one. “The mukhda “diliya na…” begins with the nishad, Ni, so you can end the aamad on Sa, which is adjacent to Ni, or even Ga, which has a consonance with Ni. But ending it on Pa will not sound as nice.”

But it is only fair to admit that sometimes, a sweet metaphor makes the medicine glide down.

“Paraj is one of those minority ragas whose resting place is the taar shadja, while kalingada’s is the shadja.

Ma dha Sa _ re Ni Sa_ Dha Sa Ni_ Pa dha Pa_ Ga ma Ga (Paraj)

Ma Ga Re Sa_ Ga ma Pa dha Pa_ Ga ma Ga re Ga (Kalingada)”

Arun liked to compare the effect of this raga to a woman wearing bangles of two closely related colours… from up close the individual pigments stand out, but from afar they appear like a single in-between shade.”

However, The Secret Master is not a manual or an academic treatise, nor a Joycean conundrum. No linguistic unpacking is required. In fact, the prose is unfailingly limpid, gleaming with lyrical images now and then, while remaining stoutly contemporary. This is how Ramanan describes the Kashalkars – the renowned younger brother Ulhas, and her guru, the reclusive elder brother Arun, singing together:

“I heard the common thread in their music bit also the differences. I decided to play my version of the parlour game. Ulhas-ji’s music was like a swan, gently undulating its graceful and curvaceous neck, gliding across a blue lake dappled with sunlight, before taking flight and flapping its fringed wings in the air. Guru-ji’s style resembled a gleaming black stallion, which begins ambling in a blazing green meadow, gradually starts trotting, speeds up to a canter and, before one knows it, is galloping across the landscape, its mane flying in the wind. The stallion or the swan? Music is not a zero-sum game. The stallion and the swan.”

The story begins with Ramanan falling into the ‘rabbit hole’ in a chamber concert. The septuagenarian singer is tall, fair, lean, beaky-nosed, like a sage in a startling kurta of cobalt blue. He takes his time to warm up, shapes a slow alap, accelerating the tempo stage by stage, teasing his tabla player with laya riddles, and finally losing himself in the swells of creativity. Ramanan is ‘hooked’. She decides to visit the secret master, to ‘unravel the ball of tanged mysteries’, as disciple, journaler and reflective writer.

Her tentative, slow motion description of this trip reveals her anticipatory jitters. She takes a local train, walks into the busy street packed with shops, stores, supermarkets, and down the side lane. She muses about the gentrification of the neighbourhood as she rounds the corner, and through the gate. She sees sandals and slippers lying outside the door. The tanpura sounds from within. She peers into the dim room. What she glimpses is  

“A tableau of a sage in his cave with his disciples.”

“Welcome,” the sage called out brightly. I stepped in.”

The passage outlines her approach to the entire subject - why has this amazing musician not been widely recognised? And celebrated as he should be? This question sets of trailing echoes. What makes for glitz and success in the art world? How do market trends generate market strategies? Does genuine worth guarantee commercial success? Does idealism foster isolation? And finally, what does a great tradition lose when its worthy practitioners are marginalised? “The sage in the cave” image refracts them all.

Nor is the listener, the rasika, absolved of all guilt.  A music lover admits, “We have all had a hand in spreading mediocrity. The terrible thing about this music is that it demands so much not just of performers, but also of listeners.” And here we sense a singular truth. When society fails to support genuine worth, the consequences are always damaging. This is obvious in politics, but not so clearly perceived in the cultural sphere where what is lost cannot be retrieved.

The narrative moves at its own pace, shunning the glib and the facile, while testing and taking in every idea with pauses and ponderings. There is no rush to arrive at conclusions; there are no satisfactory answers, pat or profound. But for the pensive reader, the probe can turn into anagnorisis.

We learn how the secret master learnt from eminent gurus, blended other styles, notably Gwalior and Jaipur, into his gayaki ruled by the Agra gharana. We see Arun arriving from small town in Maharashtra to Bombay, the big city, surviving as a clerk in a humdrum office. Eventually he opts for an unspectacular pursuit of concert singing, and teaching in the gurukul mode. Along the way we begin to suspect that his quiet resignation is not passive, it is an uncompromising commitment to his own aesthetic and ethical values, as a musician and as a human being.

Arun explains how he did want to perform but didn’t know how to find the opportunities, especially as he belonged to a generation of artists who were not expected to possess these skills.

“I didn’t struggle financially, we had enough for two square meals. I did suffer mentally though. I knew I had trained for decades under great gurus, and deep down, this must have troubled me. .. But after a certain age and stage, I felt that it was not dignified to approach organisers… I have never bothered about money.”

His wife shook her head as if to say, “Don’t I know that.”

“My gurus did not advertise themselves or try to network with influential people… I have no regrets. I have never stopped investing in my music. My search has been artistic, like that of my gurus.”

And there you have it – the entire book in a nutshell.

Arguably, since classical music cannot avoid being elitist, how can the life story of an ageing musician -recognised only by a niche coterie- have any contemporary relevance outside that close circle?

The answers are simple. First of all, Arun Kashalkar’s life has the novelty of being hitherto unknown. Secondly, in disdaining the star system driven by personality cults, where popularity dictates performance, controlled largely by uninformed patronage and biased platforms, Arun Kashalkar gains all the romance of the hero who is a misfit. He is true to his art, unbothered by worldly success. He exemplifies the ideal of resistance. And we all know that both these values remain indispensable for the survival of humanity. Moreover, Arun Kashalkar is not an isolated example of a great artist shunned by the mainstream. Nor is he unique in resisting commercial pressures. In fact, he represents all those who remain uncompromising in their values, wherever they are, in whatever they do. He validates their steely fortitude. The local artist turns into the glocal archetype.

There’s more.  The Secret Master raises inter caste and inter religion issues that have gained a new kind of urgency in today’s socio-political milieu. Hindustani music is often lauded for being free from religious intolerance and discrimination. There are irrefutable cases to prove how pandits and ustads had co-existed in amity, with disciples who may belong to creeds other than their own.Ravi Shankar and Vilayat Khan may have been legendary rivals, but their rivalry had nothing to do with caste or creed.

In the book, this truth is implied, subtly and powerfully, and right from the start. The khayal Hazrat Turkman celebrating a Sufi saint, becomes almost a refrain, reminding readers of the syncretic heritage of Hindustani music.

Seeing so many musicians of her time discarding this eclectic heritage becomes a deeply disturbing experience for the author. When she raises this issue, Arun Kashalkar blandly says that he is not interested in politics. But he does continue to sing Hazrat Turkman. Ramanan also records how his singing drew an awed response from the legendary Alladiya Khan’s grandson, “Look! He is singing our music!” In earlier, more liberal times, he may not have thought of “our” music as distinct from any other stream of music.  

The book draws a portrait of an overlooked artist against an overburdened backdrop. It does this with the kind of restraint as dynamic as the passion that propels the protagonist’s journey and the scribe’s quest. The density is demanding, just as demanding as the kind of music that it speaks of – not for quick consumers - but for sahrdayas, whose hearts and minds are actively engaged in receiving it.

The Secret Master invites you to open doors and windows, to see and to explore, to question, to challenge yourself, and most of all, to reflect without and within.