Begum Akhtar

 

Begum Akhtar

How does music affect us? A question that is very difficult to answer. The answers must be different for different people. But one thing on which many may agree is that music, great music, often takes both the musician and the listener beyond time and space. This is especially true of devotional music, where the singer sings of and for God, as we say. Sufi music possibly tends to do this precisely, leading the performer and the listener towards ‘fana’, dissolution, or annihilation of the self. Here are a few lines from a Sufi poet (I don’t know who) that say something similar, though in a different context:

The more I polish the mirror of my heart

The less I see myself

The shadow becomes brighter and brighter

Until it disappears

I don’t know whether worldly music also affects its listeners  in the same way, but from the vast audiences that are held mesmerized by the modern performers one may conclude that something similar may also be happening there. Perhaps it’s the intrinsic power of music, the purity of notes and beats and their range, sequence, repetition, the tempo, the rise and fall, harmony and counterpoint combined with the performer’s passion that is more important than anything else. The experience  of ‘submergence’ must be universal, whatever one believes or does not believe in. And, Begum Akhtar, who sings mostly of worldly love and its pain and joy, can also affect one in the same way.

Here are two of my poems that try to capture this kind of experience of listening to music.

TO  BEGUM  AKHTAR

In this mortal world

Full of grim struggle

Where every human act

Chops time into tiny bits

The continuous flow of melody

From your lips

Heals all lacerations

And knits the disjointed time

Into a seamless whole.

The ethereal smile

Floating on your lips

Like a cumulous cloud

Binds us into a mesmeric trance

While the heavens sway

To the queenly sway of your head.

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 DISSOLUTION

The singer

A plump mass of flesh

Surrounded by her accompanists

Sat there on the stage

On her haunches, legs folded into each other

Her ethereal voice radiating through the air

She sang with such passion

It seemed her body was melting

Losing its fleshliness

Imperceptibly dissolving into a melody

That seeped through the bounds of the auditorium

Into the air beyond

Into the sky, and the infinite space

Across the solar system and the neighbouring stars

Submerging one galaxy after another

Until it permeated the whole universe

And then

There was neither the lady nor the accompanists

Neither the auditorium nor the audience

Neither the earth nor the sky

Neither the stars nor the galaxies

Neither the universe nor the melody

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