To my ears, the sound of the Urdu language and the ghazal were the most enticing when I was in my teens, even though I could not understand most of the words. I had no idea that the couplet had a form, and that it was necessary to tune in to the conventions of the ghazal to truly appreciate it.
We studied Hindi and English in school and spoke a broad, not very elegant, Hindustani at home. But, despite my ignorance, the recitation of a ghazal always transported me to a romantic world of make-believe which I preferred to all others. The heartbreak of unrequited love, the incredible selflessness of the lover who gloried in the pain that connected him to the beloved, the perfumed gardens where the rose and the bulbul conversed about life and the spinning planets of the universe – all merged into an illogical resplendence that was quite addictive.
I could easily get my “fix” by chanting some memorised lines and pronouncing the special q, z, gh and kh sounds of Urdu with dramatic exaggeration. Even though the meaning of what I recited was a mystery to me, I could summon up the atmosphere. My friends envied the access they thought I had to the glamorous world of Urdu poetry.
Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, as she was known then, was the authentic symbol of that world and her voice was the most effective magic wand there could be for me.
Many genres of Indian singing entail softening or modulating the voice in an effort to create delicacy and beauty, but this was not her way at all. She seemed to collect herself like an archer taking aim, and hit each note dead centre with great energy, allowing the surplus charge of sound to spill over naturally. She was genetically so tuneful, so “sureela”, that the directness and honesty of her voice-throw sometimes resulted in a characteristic break (or “patti”) in her voice which “killed” connoisseurs and was hailed by listeners as an inimitable core of beauty in her music.
Her audiences always waited for such euphoric moments in each recital and greeted them with sighs of rapture. She never tried to produce this effect. It happened spontaneously, almost absent-mindedly, but the effect was electrifying. The impact of her voice on the note produced sparks, as when flints are rubbed together. Her famous patti became the envy of all her contemporaries, and as a ghazal singer she had no equal. Even her rivals had to concede this.
I loved her voice and needed no special education to be enchanted by it. But to understand the art of ghazal singing at its most evolved form was another matter altogether.
I never set out to learn the structure and dynamics of the couplet. But comprehension was forced upon me as a by-product of the simple and most enjoyable process of listening to Akhtari Bai with full attention over a period of years. This also revealed to me some finer points of her craft, notably the skill with which she could combine and balance music, words, and meaning in a single creative impulse.
Purists have a point when they say that music is articulate only in its own language and in no other. Pure music is not concerned with the meaning of the words that accompany, embellish, or assist it in any fashion, however poetic or moving those words may be. And yet the harmonious coexistence of poetry and music runs through the fabric of the Indian tradition as exemplified by the bhakti saints, Sufis, and folk singers.
In these instances, music can owe a good deal of its poignance to the words it clothes, but that does not change the fact that words and meaning are extraneous to music. The ghazal too is a self-sufficient literary form with an integrity of its own. If it has vitality and enduring value it should need no aids or props from the world of music.
The greatness of poets like Mir, Momin, and Ghalib owes nothing whatsoever to music. In fact, originally the ghazal, which literally means “addressing the beloved”, was never meant to be sung or set to music. The practice of reciting in “tarannum” (melody) is still frowned upon by orthodox literary connoisseurs because the intrusion of melody, which sneaks in with a small demand of its own, blurs the word structure and disturbs the natural flow of the line.
Akhtari Bai sang the ghazal with such insight and sensitivity that she created a new area where poetry and music were simultaneously enhanced.
Her first principle was to leave the greatest poetry alone, so that her music would not flounder under its heavy weight. This principle was obviously and sensibly borrowed from the thumri form where the poetry of the text is suggestive and ambivalent by design so that the interpreter can choose freely from a multiplicity of possible meanings. Guided by this experience, Akhtari Bai usually picked lightweight ghazals that could be easily moulded to a musical purpose without damage to either.
Her most popular ghazals, “Ae mohabbat tere anjaam pe rona aaya” and, an earlier hit, “Deewana banaana hai toh deewana bana de”, are examples of this. Even when she chose to render verses of indifferent literary value, they leapt to instant fame while the bulk of the output of their authors sank into oblivion. Aspiring poets vied with each other to get an entry into her repertoire because it guaranteed recognition.