Tyeb is no more

...Don't know why I am occupied with dying so much. Neither is death new nor am I the only one who has seen or heard of people dying... Tyeb Mehta, Ali Akbar Khan, Habeeb Tanveer... they were not my relatives, yet the occurrence of their death lingers in the mind as much as any relative's death. (Just noticed that all three names above are Moslem, although I think Tyeb was not a Moslem, but a Parsi? I have recently learned that he was a Muslem from Gujarat) what does it matter anyway? It does not matter at all. Years back I'd heard a khyal by Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan in Bhoop. I remember the words of the tchota khyal," Deva Maheshwara Mahadev..." Also Pandit Bhimsen Joshi's "Kareema naam tero" in Miyan ki Malhar, or "Tu hai Mohammed sa darbar aur Nizamuddin sugyaani", in Suha kanada. The Shehanai of Ustaad Bismillah Khan saheb at Vishvanath Temple also testifies that India is about relating the most unrelated.Reconciliation is in its very genius, it seems. In Tamil Nadu they say 'adjust pannlam'. It is an expression used whenever there is a big faut pas. Everybody screws and everybody says 'adjust pannlam'. Done too much and every time it gets at you, even then, you think that the basic intention is to avoid an altercation, you accept. Shakespeare's Shylock would have been quite a frustrated jew in India. He is justified in his demand in 'merchant of Venice', just like Duryodhana of Mahabharata is not exactly 'wrong' in his demands. But there is something else that India seeks in justice. It is, rather than be correct and right, be compassionate and forgiving. In that sense, the Tamil 'adjust pannlam' is in keeping with the indigenous sensibility. ...Mind follows a thread and keeps on... sometimes death of someone you relate to affects you thus - it makes you wander the fields of profundities like a vagabond.