Kishori Amonkar

Gaanasaraswati Padmabhushan sreemati Kishoritai Amonkar sang the other evening at Kala academy. I missed another event I was invited to because I wanted to listen to Kishori. Given the choice of listening to Kishori Amonkar on one hand, and a few arty-farties on the other, the former is several times valuable, I thought. Kishoritai was bang on time! The programme was to start at 6.30. It started at 6.30 alright, but then, the flowery felicitations and other formalities took another 20 minutes or so. More minutes went in tuning the swaramandal and other instruments. Then Kishoritai was not satisfied with the acoustic arrangement. She kept on ordering the staff stage manager to shift this and that ; lower the violin out put and kill the boom. Then she made as if to start. Within the first two phrases she established the rukh(face) of Miyan ki Malhar. Then she stopped to order the poor stage manager again. She asked him to increase sharpness of the sound, which was promptly done by the tech-man. But Kishoritai was not happy. She wanted it sharper. The techie had gone to the max capacity sharpness level, so he told her, very guiltily I must say, that it could not be increased any further. Kishori seemed to understand the limitation of the machine and the helplessness of Kala Academy's technical staff, so she began the alaap. She was doing it so well, so beautifully and effortlessly that I caught myself shutting my eyes in anticipation of bliss. The very next moment I had to open them wide, almost in horror, because Kishori Amonkar had stopped singing abruptly! she was complaining now that she could hear only through one of her ears. She placed her swaramandal down and spoke to the audience in that packed auditorium. She spoke in Konkani. She said that as long as she could not enter 'that' mood, she would not be able to sing. She excused to be given the chance to re tune her instruments. "Would you please give me another twenty minutes?" she figure speeched her adamant plea. The audience responded with that peculiar inaudible collective murmur which is normally taken to mean yes. However, my own contribution to that peculiar inaudible murmur was this: madam, your problem may be simple. Why do you not see an ENT expert? And then I went some distance outside the auditorium to smoke a cigarette. When I returned, Kishori had started singing the Kyaal. It was not, I was surprised, Miya ki malhar, but what I heard was a striking Shankara. Yet the manner of singing Shankara was new to m. The blend of upper dhaivat and nishad in the descent, the avaroha,was superlative. The raga developed, and soonbegan galloping like a beautiful wild stallion in the wild. The taans were incomparable to any other woman vocalist I have heard. None among the living can sing quite like Kishoritai Amonkar. I am toying with the idea of forgiving her thiose pre-concert delays.