Listening to Hindustani Music

Chetan Karnani's "Listening to Hindustani Music" was the first of its type to be keyed to the LP records of the musicians so that the reader can access the music being written about. But he resorts to facile generalisations & is not quite accurate in a few places, besides being opinionated.

Sandeep Bagchee's "Nad" starts from the fundamentals & dives deep into the subject. Meticulously researched, the fundamentals are presented exhaustively, before analysing the unique "Gharana" system of both vocal & instrumental schools. The icing on the cake is however the eight popular Ragas selected for detailed analysis, each being illustrated with a recorded performance on LP, where the writer handholds the reader throughout the performance, as it were.

Rajiv Nair's "A Rasika's Journey through Hindustani Music" succeeds in transmitting his infectious enthusiasm for the genre to the reader. After a general introduction to the various forms within the genre, short bio-data of the leading practitioners are given, highlighting their specialities. But unfortunately, here also the author (like Karnani) allows his prejudices to get the better of him, depriving the reader of an objective value-based analysis.

Even though the following does not bear directly on the subject of this essay, it may help to set the record straight on the Ravi Shankar & Vilayat Khan controversy. (The following info. is from Namita Devidayal's "The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan.") Despite Vilayat Khan immodestly advertising himself as "The World's Greatest Sitar Player" in posters, his concerts in USA were never housefull, unless he was accompanied by Zakir Hussain. The fact is in the Alap & Jod portions of serious ragas, none were in the same class as Ravi Shankar, not even Nikhil Banerjee.

Film Studies: A Select Bibliography

Film appreciation as a course is offered in many western universities. In India also FTII, Pune offers such a course. There are many books specifically designed for such studies. However, there are many seminal books on this subject which are considered below.

The first & most important is the two volume set of "What is Cinema?" by Andre Bazin, published by the University of California Press. As Pauline Kael, another iconic film critic wrote, "What is Cinema" joins that small company of books on movies that do not exploit interest in movies but intensify it."

Rudolf Arnheim's "Film as Art" (from the same publisher as above) puts forward the provocative thesis that the peculiar virtues of film as art, derive from an exploitation of the limitations of the medium.

"Film: A Montage of Theories" edited by Richard Dyer MacCann is a selection of essays by Pudovkin, Hitchcock, Bergman, Zavattini et al on various aspects of film craft arranged theme-wise.

V.F.Perkins, in his "Film as Film", shows how a synthetic theory can shape raw cinematic experience & create a framework for constructive criticism. Also, most importantly, he points out the limits of criticism.

A more comprehensive volume than the above is "The Cinema as Art" by Ralph Stephenson & J. R. Debrix, which applies the philosophical concepts of time-space continuum & the nature of reality in analysing films, with over 300 examples taken from world cinema.

Notable film critics include Pauline Kael & Bosley Crowther (whose magisterial reviews in the New York Times could make or mar a film.)

Children in Upanishads

Even though the Upanishads are the apogee of esoteric wisdom, children do figure prominently in them.

In Katha Upanishad, Vajasrabasa, hoping for divine favour, performed a rite giving away all his posessions. But actually he was giving away only his useless cattle. Nachiketa, his young son, noticed this & asked his father "I also belong to you.  To whom will you give me?" His father, angered, said "I give you to Death." So Nachiketa went to the God of Death & waited for an audience. Death, pleased at his perseverance, granted him boons. Nachiketa asked that when he returned home, his father should recognise & accept him. It was granted & Nachiketa asked for knowledge of Brahman. Though Death was reluctant to impart this supreme knowledge, Nachiketa held fast, obtained it & returned home.

In Chandogya Upanishad, two children feature. Satyakama wanted to get spiritual guidance & asked his mother as to his family name. Jabala, his mother told him that she worked in many places as a servant & did not know who his father was, & could call himself Satyakama Jabala. He went to Sage Gautama & wanted to be his disciple. Gautama asked him his family name & Satyakama repeated his mother's words. Gautama was very pleased & said "Only a true Brahmin will be so truthful" & accepted him.

In the same Upanishad, when Svetaketu was 12 years old, his father Uddalaka asked him to go & acquire learning. So Svetaketu went to a teacher, studied the Vedas for 12 years & returned home a proud man. But when questioned by his father, it was evident that Svetaketu had only acquired conceit & not learning. So his father taught him the supreme knowledge embedded in "tat tvam asi" (Thou art that).