Western Railway, Mumbai 2024

After years, I took a morning local train on the Western Railway of Mumbai towards South Mumbai. Once upon a time it was an everyday ritual, to be at my office in the Fort area by 9, and hence to take the same local, enter the same pool of people everyday, cut through the crowd on the footover bridge while scrutinizing the indicators, zig zagging then to my everyday spot on the platform and take position to board the train. A decade has passed since I returned back from the USA when I decided to work at another institution which no longer needs me to transact the train environment anymore. Instead it's the more unregular BEST bus network within which my new routine is intertwined.

In approaching the morning train that I had decided to catch tonrrach CST, by confirming on the mIndicator app, I had already set my body in clock the previous night. 7.17 am, CSTM from Goregaon. And should I have missed it, the day would drop like a domino. But i managed parsing through all hesitation of missing it over morning chores and intermediate connections. But so much had changed over the decade... The Goregaon station had expanded, new direct trains were added from the Western line to the Central, one could book tickets over the mobile phone, locate the buses on the Chalo GPS app, escalators were installed on the train platform, and yet, as one entered the simmering sea of bodies within the station, the mood seemed same.

A theatre. Descending down the staircase after checking the status of the trains, I see two young girls waving at another on the steps to call quickly for their third to board the train entering the platform, people quietly waiting on the seats for their train to arrive, others hurrying to get to their spots, school girls, working men and women, vendors with fresh produce, sellers...the station seemed like a set waiting to be performed by these actors of the city.

To be sure, the observation possibly felt beautiful given the moment of an November early morning - when the station was still waiting to warm up. I pick my compartment seat, release the shut window besides my seat together drawn to the yet available gaze of the platform across the track. Submerged in the pool of announcements, I am jerked into the journey of the day, sucked into the unfiltered sounds of the mobile speakers that are new televisions for those who labour the roughness of the city.

Drawings for Reference

Plan Friendship Centre

 

Gateway Hotel, Maheshwar

This gateway in Maheshwar has always fascinated me since it is not merely a gateway, but infact a four room hotel on the top. It has a staircase that goes on its side where you can climb up to its midlevel terrace and then go further up to access the rooms. 

The gateway is located in Maheshwar.

Floorings from Bikaner

 

Everyday Reinventions

Hyderabad, 2017

 

Cafe at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou

 

From an AC bus, Mumbai

Mumbai looked so different from within the airconditioned bus. Complete silence. Only around and smell of cool breeze. No external honking pressing again6theears, only twinkling building lights. Gliding by the newly repaired road, free through traffic, it felt ideal. The bus was smooth, electric operated, without gears. Thankfully the bus driver managed to ride without jerks, making the outside soft, smooth.

And so I wondered if the city I saw so far was my own internal projection? Or was it just turbulent to become calm. I don't know how long this calmness would last, but until it does, and all buses become introverted, this memory, i wanted to seal in my record. 

Of Being in Sur

In a documentary noted vocalists from the Gwalior gharana Rajan Sajan Mishra mention of one question their father used to ask them: 

"What is the opposite of sur?" 

Sur, in common parlance - is a note - an established harmonic frequency of sound between which the musician glides to produce delightful experience. 

"A quick answer to this question,"  Mishra brothers elaborate, "is besur meaning, off-note. However, we don't believe that is so. The opposite of sur is silence. Music is the play between sur and silence. If we dont allow silence, we cannot appreciate sur." 

The generosity of such a definition of sur certainly needs discussion. Now, sur is often understood as to be in sur. So the opposite of it could mean to not be in sur. One could approach the understanding of sur from speech too: For example, why is speech not considered music? Why is speaking not singing? In this line of thought, singing or music is that experience of hearing that glides between or through particular frequencies of sound. These frequencies are ascertained as harmonics of a base note in ascending or descending order, clearly distinguishable as different from the previous. We thus have 12 key notes - including harmonics and intermediate sharp/flat notes. A more trained ear would be able to decipher 23 - which demands immense hearing acuity. At a simply level then, to be in sur means to glide from one identified note to another through an aesthetic rule. Any sung or heard note, off the aesthetic register shall be deemed off-note or besur. Speech does not follow musical rules thus, but is not bereft of sur thus. We all speak in some pitch - however, our subsequent words are not uttered in complimenting musical pitches. Speech my have lyricality, but still, it ceases to be called musical, or surail (surila). 

To think of sur held in conjunction with silence rather than be-sur offers a fundamentally insightful way of thinking about music, people and the world at large. For music, it calls to identify each utterance as a musical frequency - in some scale. If not identifiable, it coaxes the listener and the musician to rethink their own knowledge so as to locate the sound in an appropriate scale. In such an understanding, Pt. Rajan-Sajan Mishra not only go past the binaries of sur-besur, but they suggest, in fact that every uttered word in a part of the world, in some sur - that exists in some scale - identified or unidentified. Such a reading speaks of the emancipatory potential of musical knowledge in its abstraction, making it inclusive through the transcendence of spoken language.  

What is there in enjoying (Hindustani Classical) music? Sometimes, I feel it's so simple - dwell on the glides and transitions between the different notes and what they make you feel. You suspend yourself in a pure abstract space - you are free to make your meaning out of it. A free wheeling journey that you can totally indulge in. Sometimes, it answers the internal questions in bypassing jargon of verbalism completely. If you are able to decipher, the tone, texture, quality, ingenuity of moving between the notes  will reveal to you the emotions that speech carries in its intonations, instead of words. And at times, the economy of words that dot the intonational will upen up multiple words between speech and silence. It is perhaps this interplay of sound and silence that defines the world of sur in the musico-philosophical conception of Pt. Rajan-Sajan Mishra.

Freedom Park, Lagos 2023

 

Notes on Play