Thought for Food
A green mango found lying on the ground made its way to the dining table. Kumar Gandharva cut it open with a sharp knife, slicing it into long pieces. With an anticipative ‘aahaa’ and ‘waah’, he added salt and red chilli powder to the slices, and then served them to everyone at the table.
“His habit of appreciating even the littlest of things was truly extraordinary,” recalls his daughter, singer Kalapini Komkali, in the essay, ‘Bhanukul’s Kitchen Raga,’ in the latest edition of the online journal, oneating.in.
That one of the greatest exponents of Hindustani music could be so appreciative of a raw mango doesn’t surprise me. For food is often in harmony with music. An essay titled ‘Why Hindustani Musicians are Good Cooks: Analogies between Music and Food in North India’, written by musician Adrian McNeil in the journal, Asian Music (1993-1994), explains the link.
Joy and creativity
McNeil says that in both culinary and melodic recipes, it is essential to use the “correct ingredients” in “appropriate proportions” and to follow an “established methodology” for combining them. “In both instances, the end result is expressed through the aesthetic marker known as ras,” he writes.
No surprise then that Ali Akbar Khan was greatly admired not just for the way his sarod sang, but also for how his biryani tasted. In Zakir Hussain: A Life in Music (by Zakir Hussain and Nasreen Munni Kabir), tabla exponent Zakir Hussain recalls his short stay with Khan in the Bay Area of the U.S. “It was just he and I and his cookbook! He was a good cook and made delicious biryani, daal and chicken curry.”
Khan’s former brother-in-law, Ravi Shankar, had the able support of his trusted cook from India, Vasudevan Nair. In Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar, Oliver Craske recalls a recording of one of Shankar’s albums at George Harrison’s home in Henley-on-Thames. “At breaks there was sumptuous Indian food prepared by Ravi’s chef Vasudevan Nair, and the music reflects a relaxed atmosphere of joy and creativity.”
Many of the musicians didn’t just like to eat but enjoyed feeding others too. In The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan, biographer Namita Devidayal relates how, when Hariprasad Chaurasia was performing in the U.S., Vilayat Khan sent a message to the flautist, inviting him to dinner with the tantalising lure of some partridge curry he’d cooked. Chaurasia feigned illness, cut the concert short, and landed up at Khan’s house in time for dinner.
Hearty belches
The stories whet the appetite for food and music. Komkali’s essay, for instance, is full of flavours. “To this day, nothing has been able to compete with Aai’s aamti, which is a special sweet and sour dal, or her ghadichi poli, which, in other words, is a paratha made without ghee or oil, a specialty of Maharashtrian cuisine,” she writes. “Baba ate slowly, relishing every bite as he said ‘waah’…‘waah’ praising the smallest of detail that he might have liked about the food.”
Some of the best descriptions of food and music are to be found in Sheila Dhar’s Raga’n Josh. She writes about Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s open dismay at being served a meatless meal at a vegetarian home during a visit to Delhi. “The maestro scowled at the unfamiliar food and lowered the large and rather shapeless thumb of his right hand into each bowl in turn, hoping against hope that it would encounter a piece of meat on a bone,” she writes.
But before a concert, the singer needed something more nourishing. So he prepared a chicken curry — with six broiler chickens, khoya, almonds, ghee and all kinds of spices — over a charcoal fire. “Three or four hearty belches announced the end of this phase of proceedings and we finally set off for the site of the concert,” Dhar writes.
What can one say to that but ‘aahaa’ and ‘waah’?
Rahul Verma likes reading and writing about food as much as he does cooking and eating it. Well, almost.
