https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aslwbA_ToU8
Time and again, I go back to this priceless Youtube Resource: a vintage Doordarshan program which has the great author and academic Dr. Veena Deo interviewing the legendary vocalist and composer Ganesh Balawant Nawathe better known as Pandit Jitendra Abhisheki. The towering dignity of the guest and the hostess, prudent and pithy questions, profundity of the answers, and the seamless flow of the Q &A interspersed between live renditions of a few iconic Abhisheki compositions comprise a royal treat, worth its weight in platinum in this intellectually deprived age of shallow-n- hollow celebrity interviews broadcast on every screen, web and electronic alike.
Today, we have a plethora of artistes rendering ‘Guntata hridaya he’, ‘He surannno chandra vha’, ‘Kaivalyacha Chandanyala’, ‘Sarvatmaka Sarveshvara’, ‘Kata rute kunala’, and ‘Maze jivana gane’ but most of them miss the soul in the ‘showcasing’ of talent, and God save us from certain ‘celebrity disciples’ of Bua who burst at the seams of their discernibly limited vocal range and end up raising their pitch to a level of decibel universally defined as noise pollution. It is so heartening to note that Bua’s son Shaunak is a sweet exception, kudos to his sincere, detached, and freewheeling musical probe which does not seek refuge in the inheritance, nor does it stake a claim to the throne.
Talking of the Youtube video, such is the richness of its content encompassing several iconic individuals and their works, which either find explicit mention in this interaction or come to my mind in circuitous fashion. I thought it was time for a tribute piece on two dynamic duos:
Abhisheki bua and Balakrishna Bhagwant Borkar (Baki baab)
A seeker of the sublime, and the pole star of Hindustani Classical music, Abhisheki Bua was a a synthesiser of diverse musical traditions including the western operatic style. He won the coveted Homi Bhabha fellowship which launched his stint as a music teacher at sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar's US-based center of leaning. Bua almost single-handedly revived Marathi Natya Sangeet with his innovative compositions in productions including ‘Matsyagandha’, ‘Katyar Kaljat Ghusli’, ‘Yayati Aani Devyani’, and ‘Lekure Udand Jahali’.
Borkar, the great poet, polyglot, and revolutionary from Borim, Goa, whose verse has immortalised everything Goan, which for him was a universal metaphor for existential questions of life, death, and beyond. His last wish summed up the man he was: ‘the sea has fed me all my life through its fish, now they should be permitted to feed on me in return.’
No wonder, Bua and Bakibab, both die-hard Goans, had a most fruitful collab of both heart and mind which have created such gems as ‘Nahi Punyachi Mojani’ and ‘Randraat Perili Me.
’Go Ni Dandekar and Dr. Veena Deo: Like father, like daughter
There are not many instances of filial devotion rooted in a studied refusal to be consumed by it. Dr. Veena Deo, daughter of Gopal Neelkath Dandekar, had loads of this rare quality which made her a thought leader in her own right.
Go Ni hardly needs any introduction given his astounding body of work including 26 novels, 10 plays, 12 travelogues, two collections of short stories, 11 religious works and biographies, 17 children's books, screenplays for ‘Pavanakathcha Dhondi’, ‘Jait Re Jait’, and ‘Devkinandan Gopala’. Having said that, he was a man of wider interests including trekking, stonemasonry, and photography. He was also well versed in devotional works of the Bhakti tradition as also Vedanta philosophy. To this day, he is revered for his unique literary synthesis of the human condition spanning diverse landscapes, cultures and dialects.
His daughter Veena was not merely her father's daughter. She was a versatile literary figure in he own right who wrote essay collections such as ‘Kadhikadhi’, ‘Parton Pahe’, ‘Strirang’, ‘Vibhram’, and ‘Swansiche Divas’, all incisive works shaped by her inheritance but not defined by it.
She taught Marathi at Shahu Mandir College in Pune, retiring as head of the department, and obtained her PhD for research on the adaptation of Marathi stories and novels into drama, a choice of academic specialisation that is quietly apt.
It is in her stewardship of her father's legacy, however, that the quality of detachment becomes most visible and most admirable. She organised over 650 public readings of her father's novels, celebrating his work and memory, and was instrumental in launching initiatives like the Mrunmayee Awards, the Fort Literature Conferences, and photographic exhibitions. Six hundred and fifty readings: a number that staggers the imagination when one considers the sustained effort, logistical patience, and decades of quiet advocacy. And yet there is nothing of the self-promoting literary executor in this record.
A lesser temperament might have covetously guarded the estate, controlled access, and rationed the inheritance. Dr. Veena did the opposite: she made the work available, portable, democratically accessible, trusting the literature to do its own work.
Her memoir ‘Smarane Gonidanchi’, a remembrance of Go. Ni. Dandekar, and her biographical work ‘Ashak Mast Fakir’, which depicted her father's life and earned her the State Government Award for Outstanding Literary Creation are perhaps the most revealing documents in this regard.
A memoir written by a daughter about a famous father is one of the most treacherous of literary forms: it tends irresistibly toward either hagiography or, in its more fashionably revisionist mode, towards a kind of patricidal score-settling. Smarane Gonidanchi and Ashak Mast Fakir navigate this minefield with the sure-footedness of someone who knows the difference between love and objectivity, but not as antonyms.
To me, she was also the embodiment of pristine 24-carat Maharashtrian beauty. They don’t make them like her anymore.