KHAYAL

An Epistolary Bandish in Maru Bihag

A few sentences on Vasantrao Deshpande’s masterful rendition of Likh Bheji Main Patiyaan

Remembering a piece I wrote for Véronique Lerebours’ blog back in 2011, I now think about how little music I had heard, though at the time it felt like I was uncovering, discovering, and, at times, unearthing new music from the depths of the internet (I still do that, but YouTube has made it easier now). The piece was called *The Romantic Raga, spelled with two a’s, as in Raaga. You’ll excuse this because that was the phase when I was writing cuz for because* without any shame. Anyway.

In the piece, I write about how a few bandishes or, in fact, sets of bandishes, had captivated me because of their lyrical beauty and the renditions’ musical technicalities. I briefly mention renditions by Ajoy Chakraborty, Iqbal Ahmed Khan, Rajan & Sajan Mishra, Jasraj, and Roshan Ara Begum, but completely miss mentioning Prabha Atre and Vasantrao Deshpande, both of whom took Maru Bihag to the limits of beauty.

After many weeks, I got back to listening to Khayal today, and stumbled upon a recording of Vasantrao Deshpande’s on YouTube, where he is singing two bandishes, the first one is

उन ही से जाय कहूँ मोरे मन की बिथा

दरस बिन कछु ना सुहावे अँखियन नीकी प्रीत गुनवंता

And the second bandish is why I have named this piece as I have. It talks about the practice or feeling of writing letters to one’s beloved. Once upon a time, romance did take the form of letters. Pining took the form of poetic prose and, often, of poetry itself. Here, in this bandish, it’s not just poetry; it is also set to a set of notes that capture the feeling of this whole scene. It’s sort of like some languages, like German, have words that explain a whole human experience. This rendition of Maru Bihag captures the romance in a similar way.

लिख भेजी मैं पतियाँ तुम्हरे कारन जुग सी बीतत मोरी रतियाँ

जा रे जा कगवा इतना मोरा संदेसवा लिए जा जरत मन जोवत बाट तुम्हरी ये अँखियाँ

Who knows, maybe the heroine of this love story is singing the bandish immortalised by Prabha Atre.

जागूँ मैं सारी रैना बलमा रसिया मन लागे ना मोरा

We are fortunate to have several recordings of Vasantrao Deshpande singing the same two bandishes at different phases of his career. No surprise that they all sound beautiful.

• Recording №1 (~51 minutes, the one that prompted me to write this blog, c. not mentioned in the recording)
• Recording №2 (~7 minutes, drut bandish only, c. 1960s)
• Recording №3 (~46 minutes, from Diwakar Tole’s archives, c. it feels like slightly late in his career, but not mentioned in the recording)
• Recording №4 (~28 minutes, c. not mentioned in the recording)
• Recording №5 (~40 minutes, probably the most famous of them all because it also has video, c. released in 1982)
• Recording №6 (~38 minutes, at a concert in Pune, c. 1974)

Listen to some of these recordings, and if you’re as captivated as I was, I’m sure you’ll be yearning for more, so I’ll leave you with some more interesting recordings/playlists of Vasantrao ji

• Farhan Amin’s beautifully curated playlist of Vasantrao ji’s recordings
• Sureshchandra Nadkarni interviewing Vasantrao Deshpande for Akashvani — look for his explanation about Bilawal Thaat ki Gunakali
• Vasantrao ji’s recordings from Diwakar Tole’s personal archives
• Two compositions in Paraj and a dadra with Zakir Hussain and Sultan Khan, c. 1983
• Vasantrao ji singing something in Marathi in Bhairavi

Happy listening!