Singing it Right

TEST DRIVE

Battling butterflies in her stomach, our correspondent dons the avatar of a ghazal singer for an evening

I have always loved singing, and this led to my parents getting me trained in classical music as a kid. It did come to good use as I opted to spend an evening at the InterContinental Eros in Delhi as a ghazal singer. I met the team of musicians with whom I was going to perform at the the Singh Sahib restaurant in the hotel. This is where our audience of diners would sit. I met my team of musicians for the evening. We greeted each other with the customary aadaab. Our small team consists of Raja Ali on the harmonium who is also the head musician, Mohammad Mobeen Ahmed on the sitar and Shaqeel Ahmad on the tabla. The tehzeeb is unmistakable with these seasoned musicians. Priya Wankhade, the lead female singer of the group, was given an off today because yours truly was taking centrestage!

Becoming a ghazal singer for an evening sounds quite exciting but performing in front of an audience is no easy task. While we waited for people to enter the restaurant we tuned the instruments and kept our copies of ghazal lyrics handy.
It was soon 8.30 pm and here I was all set to start off my first song for the evening. That is when the butterflies in my stomach went into a tizzy. I should have had the pineapple juice offered to me when I entered the hotel. My polite refusal, with “Mera gala kharaab ho jayega” was not a wise decision especially now all I could say pleading for water was “Mera gala sookh raha hai!”

The word ghazal means, ‘to converse with the beloved’ in Arabic. Here the beloved were a group of hungry diners. Raja Ali knew it was difficult for me to begin, so he sang the customary traditional ‘vandana’. It did help me relax a bit, I then took a deep breath and began with Jagjit Singh’s ghazal Jhuki Jhuki si nazar bekaraar hai ke nahi. A few people from the audience seemed tickled by the choice of song, and smiled at me, I smiled back, but couldn’t linger on the attention. I had to look back at the diary for the lyrics.

While orders for tandoori chicken and paneer korma made their way to the kitchen and liquor made an appearance on the tables, I started on the second song, again a Jagjit Singh number— Hoton se choo lo tum, mera geet amar kar do. Now with their orders arriving at the table, few people were interested in the music. It felt a bit discouraging and I remembered what the food and beverage manager said to me before we began, “You can perform as long as my guests don’t run away!”

I tried to get my audience back with the popular Bollywood ghazal sung by Lata Mangeshkar, Aapki nazron ne samjha, pyar ke qabil mujhe. And well, this time I did get a few approving nods. Then I tried to touch on something more unconventional. I sang a Sufi number, Mere Maula karam ho karam, which was planned to be the last number of the evening. Half way through the song I realized that there was absolute silence around me, no clatter of fork and knives, no din of conversations. I sang this one with my eyes shut. I don’t know who was looking and who wasn’t and this time I did not care. I ended the evening with a Ghalib couplet: Hazaro khwahishe aisi ki har khwahish pe dum nikle, bahut nikle mere armaan phir bhi kam nikle ( A myriad desires were ours, for each we’d life forego. Many longings were fulfilled but too few even so.)

The crowd then finally applauded and there were a few song requests too! The evening was finally a success.
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One of my stories in Indian Express where passion and profession was merged into one