Bhimsen Joshi was not just a musical genius. Pravda Godbole speaks to music lovers and disciples to find that he could be very stubborn or as gentle as a child.
This is the story of how one Bharat Ratna met another. It was March 1939. Mahatma Gandhi was on a fast against British rule. Bismillah Khan had left his beloved Benaras to travel to Lucknow to record a Shehnai recital on All India Radio. When he reached the studio, a technician came out and said he would have to wait, as another recording was in progress. Khan asked who was the artist. “Someone called Joshi” was the answer. “Where is he from?” Khan asked, meaning which ‘gharana’. “Oh, it is the Pune ang,” replied the technician airily. Khan was confused; he had never heard of the “Pune gharana”. Curious, he sat down to listen. Bhimsen Joshi sang for just 20 minutes. But when the taans began unfolding, Khan thought he sounded familiar. When the recording was over, he asked Joshi who his guru was. “Abdul Karim Khan,” replied Joshi. “Oh, you are from the Kirana Gharana… arre yaar Joshi, aaja, gale lag ja yaar,” Bismillah Khan said. “And that’s how we would always meet: with an embrace,” he told an admirer, Sunita Budhiraja, later.
Those who have heard Joshi sing raag Maru Bihaag (“Rasiya ho na jaa”) or Bhairavi (“Babul mora naihar chhooto hi jaye”), the richness of his Dasvani repertoire (the immortal “Bhagyada Lakshmi Baramma” and “Daya Maado Ranga”) and his abhang (“Maze Maher Pandhari”) find it hard to believe that the voice has been stilled forever.
Born in Gadag, Karnataka, Joshi ran away from home when he was eight to learn music. His father was a Sanskrit pandit. Bheemu, as his “guru sister” Gangubai Hangal used to call him, did odd jobs, including being a domestic servant, to realise his dream. He spent time with musicians from Gwalior, Lucknow and Rampur, living with them, serving them and learning from them. In time his father located him and brought him back home, realising that his son was very serious about music. That was the turning point in Joshi’s life as his father took him to Sawai Gandharva who would later become his guru.
“Once he decided to do something, he did it, come what may,” says Pandit Suhas Vyas, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s contemporary and colleague. His friends and colleagues used to call him Bhishmacharya — after Bhishma in the Mahabharat.
The stubbornness was characteristic. Once, suffering from a sore throat, Joshi was advised to cancel a recital. But he would not hear of it. So he tried his own remedy — a fist-full of green chillies which he ate slowly. The pungency helped and he gave a fabulous performance.
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His disciples say glamour and popularity meant nothing to him. “He was as approachable and easy to talk to as anyone can be,” says Sandhya Kathavate, a noted vocalist. “I was about five years old and attending his concert, sitting in the first row. As soon as he began, I recognised the raag and said it out loud. Panditji heard me and sent for me in the interval. When I went backstage, he began chatting with me and asked me if I would like to accompany him on the tanpura. Imagine a man of his stature talking so sweetly to a little girl!”
From early on in his career, Joshi was invited to perform in various cities. So he bought a big car and started driving to his concerts across long distances along with all his accompanists. Soon driving became a passion.
But, he knew all of it was a result of his music. His constant quest to get better brought out a spiritual side of his art. “I have experienced that spirituality: sometimes as an audience and sometimes when I have shared the stage with him,” says taalyogi Pandit Suresh Talwalkar.
Inevitably, the high standards he had set for himself took a toll. Joshi took to the bottle. He thought he was being disloyal to listeners, so once, when he was a little worse for the wear, he began singing, stopped, turned his back to the audience and continued singing. That was his way of saying “sorry”. “‘Arrey Joshi, bottle chhod de,’ I used to tell him. But he would always say yes and never give up,” Bismillah Khan said about him.
The annual Sawai Gandharva festival in Pune was instituted by Joshi. During those four or five days, he would oversee every aspect of the festival, even taking a broom to sweep the floor. That was his way of honouring his guru. “He used to invite me often for concerts and I never said no, though I used to tell him, ‘Tu paise to dega nahin, lekin mein phir bhi aaoonga,’” Bismillah Khan once reminisced.