Sunday, the 17th of July 2011, will always be enshrined in my memory as a day to cherish and savor. It was an evening when three of India’s greatest classical artistes unleashed their rarest talents and overawed an audience who were left to ponder over their greatness. Pandit Bickram Ghosh, with his electro-classical variety of percussion, and, Shobha Mudgal and Bombay Jayshri with their “jugalbandi” of Hindustani Classical and Carnatic classical music, literally set the stage on fire at the MLR convention Centre in Whitefield.
I had never attended Shobha Mudgal at a live concert, which was always a grievance to date. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to absorb every moment of this rarest of rare opportunities. It is not that I am very knowledgeable about the nitty-gritties of Indian Classical music, but when great artistes put forward such extraordinary renditions, they are a therapeutic treat to the soul and senses.
Pandit Bickram Ghosh was the first one to take stage however. He has always been an artiste who loves to engage the audience with anecdotes, little details about the number that he and his team is about to play, the “raagas” involved and so on. Yesterday was no different. He pumped us up straight away. That made the experience all the more exciting and sweet. He started with the “Dance of Shiva” which was based on “Raag Jog” and never looked back, until he signed off with a number that was part of his debut album with Sony Music in 2000, based on “Raag Banjara.” We clapped, we whistled, we moved with the rhythm and we enjoyed. His music was a confluence of the east and the west, classical and rock, orthodox and the abstract. I was attending Bickram Ghosh live after almost 8 years, and it left me speechless.
The ten-minute break between performances seemed too little to take us out of the awe that Pandit Bickram had put us into. Shobha Mudgal and Bombay Jayshri, in “jugalbandi”, were much more purely classical in their performance, serene, slow and soothing, but equally enthralling. They were more focused in performing themselves, and did not engage the audience too much. That was the biggest contrast between the two sets of performers. If Pandit Bickram set our hearts pumping, Shobha and Jayashri cooled us down, with their greatness.
The experience would not have been a reality if Kuhu had not informed me about the happening of the event, the venue, and the contact person for passes. Hence I am thankful to her as well. At the end of it all, we were left to remember, ponder, reflect and savor the performances of these magnificent sons and daughters of our proud motherland. In a nutshell, we were enriched by an ensemble of sheer brilliance.
