Padma Vibhushan N Rajam reflects on Banaras, music and a lifetime with the violin

In present-day Varanasi, where the overlapping strains of temple bells, the azaan and folk and classical traditions are increasingly filtered through hardened ideas of identity and belonging, a not-so-distant memory of shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan in a musical dialogue with a young BHU professor and violinist N Rajam almost 40 years ago, still evokes the cultural memory of a city somewhat receding from us. A city untouched by modern politics and held together by diverse cultural and musical traditions; the famed Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb that once imbued into music, language and the fabric of daily life.

The texture of that time is captured in a grainy video recording from the ’80s available on YouTube, where one sees Rajam play Maithili poet Vidyapati’s Piya mora baalak (My beloved is a mere boy), on the banks of the Ganga. It is the anguish of a young bride mourning her wedding to a child with no scope of companionship and no place for desire played in Pilu, a fluid raga with longing at the heart of it.

For Rajam, born and raised in a Tamil-speaking family in Chennai, this was her ode to the writing and composition of the 15th-century poet/composer still revered in the Purvanchali belt. Khan and tabla giant Pt Kishan Maharaj, sitting on either side of her, listened in sheer delight as Rajam, bent over her violin, took a deep dive into the popular folk piece. But her violin did more than just render a beloved melody. It echoed the quintessential Banarasi lehja, the unhurried grace of its cadence, in turn becoming inseparable from the city she had come to call home then. Khan is heard saying ‘wah’ at regular intervals. He joins her with his shehnai, extending the melodic thread. Khan had heard her play a solo at the university and was struck by the evocative nature of the young violinist’s music. That is when he decided to collaborate with her.

N Rajam with Ustad Bismillah Khan

“Though he was from a generation above me, Khan saab probably saw that what I was trying to do with the violin was in some ways similar to what he had already done with the shehnai. He had been playing khayal on the shehnai for years by then,” says Rajam, about the wind instrument that was associated with weddings, temples and folk music until Khan put it on the proscenium. “Playing with him, where he would just close his eyes listen, will remain memorable for me,” says 88-year-old Rajam.

Khan’s version of Banaras was always at the centre of his affections. He considered it responsible for his music. In Rajam’s playing, he, perhaps, heard his Banaras, which surfaced in the tenderness of every glide, pause and the delicate tonal shifts. This violin could sing. And Rajam’s brilliance lay in transforming the sound of the violin by adapting the technique of a European instrument, which she learned through the grammar of Carnatic music, to the demands of Hindustani vocal music. The result was a complete reimagination of the violin with a gayaki ang (the vocal style), which hadn’t been heard on the instrument before. Because no violinist had done this before her. Rajam’s effortlessness only revealed just how much labour lay beneath the process.

In Rajam’s hands, for over seven decades now, the violin has never sounded external to the Hindustani tradition. From complex classical ragas to thumris and kajris, she has absorbed them all into the medium. “Although the violin has been in practice in the south for about 300 years with a highly sophisticated technique, that technique was not sufficient for reproducing Hindustani vocal music on the instrument. I had to work very hard and do a lot of research. Even for a short phrase, I would struggle for months to get it right. The music was not just a reproduction of the existing ocean of Hindustani music; it needed to have life,” says Rajam in a conversation with The Indian Express a day after her lifelong reimagination of the violin won her a Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian honour, last month. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 1984 and a Padma Bhushan in 2004. “This award is a culmination of my life’s work,” says Rajam.

N Rajam with Kathak exponent Sitara Devi

In the ’80s, eminent musicologist and critic Mohan Nadkarni wrote of her, “As a soloist, she has come to be acclaimed as the first virtuoso to succeed in adapting khayal gayaki on the violin… What adds to her distinction is that she has contributed significantly to the field of musicological history and research.”

As we walk into Rajam’s Hiranandani Complex apartment in Thane, away from Mumbai’s usual rush and restlessness a few months before her Delhi visit, she hurries into the kitchen, her South cotton sari pallu tucked at her waist. From the living room, Rajam can be seen bent over a small aluminium kadhai, frying crisp bhajias as they crackle in hot oil, while moving quickly between the stove and the counter to prepare cups of freshly brewed filter coffee. She refuses all help and soon brings out the food and coffee herself. “You’ve come to my home for the first time,” says Rajam, checking mid-interview if our coffee is “good enough”.

Be it a cup of filter coffee or a phrase of music, Rajam’s instinct has always been to refine further. It also comes from developing a discipline in learning music under the tutelage of her taskmaster father and violinist Vidwan A Narayana Iyer since she was three. “He was a teacher par excellence. He knew how to get young children to learn. He taught a distinctive bowing and fingering technique to mimic the emotive pull of vocal classical music in the Carnatic system,” says Rajam, who was taught the same technique as her older brother and prominent violinist TM Krishnan.

N Rajam with granddaughters Nandini and Ragini

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“He was extremely strict and would not let my friends come home; there was no question of watching movies, no film songs on the radio. Prashn hi nahi tha bahar khelne ka (There was no question of playing outside),” says Rajam in remarkably Sanskritaised Hindi, shaped by living in Banaras for decades and a degree in Sanskrit. “My mother would argue with him and ask him to stop torturing the children. There was no exposure to the outside world. I only knew how to play the violin,” says Rajam, who auditioned for radio when she was nine and began playing professionally soon after.

When musicians visited Rajam’s home in Chennai, the children were expected to perform for them. Among those who visited was MS Subbulakshmi, who was struck by what she heard from the young Rajam. In 1951, Rajam was just 13 when she accompanied Subbulakshmi on a tour of Delhi and cities around, carefully following the Carnatic great’s vocal contours while holding her own. “It felt like touring with my mother. She was very loving,” says Rajam.

At 14, Rajam finished school ahead of schedule, having skipped a class due to her academic abilities. She was a year short of eligibility to join college and appear for intermediate examinations. Banaras Hindu University (BHU), at the time, allowed women students to study privately and appear for the examination. Determined that she continue her education and not sit idle, her father decided that she take up the option of Banaras, a decision that would shape the rest of her life. “My father also admired Hindustani music, especially due to his kinship with Pt Vishnu Digambar Paluskar. So he was quite excited that I was going to learn it,” says Rajam.

N Rajamn Being awarded the Padma Vibhushan from President Droupadi Murmu

(Express photo by Renuka Puri)

When Rajam visited Banaras, she carried her violin and a letter of introduction from renowned violinist Parur Sundaram Iyer for Hindustani vocalist and Gwalior gharana giant Pt Omkarnath Thakur, also the first dean of the music faculty at BHU. She played Thakur’s recording from one of his 78RPMs for him, one that she had heard and could not forget, the nuanced vocalisations staying with her. “When I played his piece to him, he was very impressed,” says Rajam. It was mainly because Rajam was not playing the usual gatkari style of violin modelled on sitar and sarod, in which a musician emphasises on the characteristics of the raga’s fixed composition. She was playing the way Thakur was singing, with the nuances of vocal music intact in her violin’s luscious tone. Fascinated, Thakur decided to teach her. What emerged here was a style of playing that broke new ground. In about three to four years, Rajam began to play in national programmes. She even accompanied Thakur in his Hindustani programmes, a unique privilege as only sarangi and harmonium players usually accompanied serious khayal artistes. “He was a loving fatherly figure but there were times when I would be a little scared of him. He would say, ‘Kyun? Main koi sher hoon? (Why? Am I a lion?). Then we would laugh,” says Rajam.

By this time, Rajam’s family had moved to Mumbai. She mainly travelled to Banaras to either learn or for her examinations. While at home, she would either practice or teach other girls in the neighbourhood to help her family’s financial situation. “I liked performing too. But I really enjoyed teaching. I still do. I feel like one among these kids,” says Rajam. Around the time she finished her graduation, a violin teacher’s position opened up at BHU. Two years later, she joined as a lecturer at the age of 21 in 1959 and spent the next 40 years teaching at the university’s music department and in the city she still recalls with fondness. She finished her Master’s in Sanskrit followed by a PhD with her thesis centred on a comparative study of Hindustani classical and Carnatic music.

As is the case with most innovations, Rajam’s playing also found criticism and was not embraced by everyone. In fact some critics and purists argued that her style was more of an intrusion of Carnatic ideas into a Hindustani idiom which had its own vocabulary and aesthetics. But if one looks plainly, it seems to be about a deeper unease of north and south Indian traditions seen as different entities.

“It was a very suljha huya technique that most people were easily drawn to it. Some did oppose and criticise but I think somewhere in their hearts, even they knew. It never bothered me, though. I was just too immersed and too sure of my art. I knew what I was doing; no one else was,” says Rajam, who married TS Subramaniam, grandson of Indian activist FG Natesa Iyer, one of the pioneers of Tamil drama and cinema.

Rajam retired from BHU in 1999 but by then she had already trained her daughter Sangeetha and granddaughters Nandini and Ragini, who often play together. Both brought out an 11-track original album titled Taraana (Universal Music), which was produced by Grammy-nominated Nick Patrick and where the two went on to blend Hindustani music with contemporary orchestrations.

“I am not a doting grandmother when I teach. Daily practice was a must and I have been quite strict with them,” says Rajam, who, along with her daughter Sangeetha, has also established a gurukul on the outskirts of Tamil Nadu. She feels institutional training still is unable to produce great artistes.

“When Bismillah Khan saab had heard me, he said that if I was a product of the university, “phir toh man gaye”. I later told him that I learned under my father and then under Pt Omkarnath Thakur. The gurukul system is what can bring out the best in a musician through focussed understanding of an art form. This gurukul is how I want to give back, where kids can come and learn for free,” says Rajam, who also teaches online and few other students. She, however, is still unaware of AI, algorithms and the concept of machine learning.

Her schedule for the next few months is choc-a-bloc with concerts. At 88, Rajam shows little sign of slowing down. She says there is much to discover still and draw from. “One has learned just about a fistful,” says Rajam. As for the city of Varanasi — the thread that runs in her life, in her music as well as this conversation — it may have changed in more ways than one today. But once upon a time, a chance encounter with its musical traditions, its porousness, its sense of freedom within inherited divisions, is what changed Rajam’s destiny. And in time, that of the violin.