At many baithaks in 20th century Calcutta, the past, the present and the future of Hindustani classical music met their patrons one after another -- in full skirts, throats full of longing, glances of unambiguous nuance, and with the rendition of taan that seemed it could make the sky fall. A five-year-old Nilima Sen, whom India’s music world reveres as Naina Devi, sat listening on the lap of an elder one night as Ratanbai, Jaddanbai (actor Sanjay Dutt’s grandmother), Malkabai and Gauhar Jaan walked up to the stage to perform.
The unique understanding that flowed between those who performed and those who listened on such nights were, however, not to extend beyond the night. It was at least so for the women. The women of genteel homes were allowed the pleasure of a private concert but behind curtains. It was not expected of them to pick up the graces of Rasoolan Bai or Gauhar Jaan, now acknowledged as India’s first recorded artiste; to want to be performing artists was unheard of.
Born in a progressive Bengali household of Brahmo Samaj reformer Keshab Chandra Sen, singer and art administrator Naina Devi (she was the first director of Delhi’s Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra), most well known for her thumri renditions, had a rich life. It was the culmination of her many tussles with her own desires of being an artiste, her embrace of different cultures as well as of adverse circumstances. But through it all, she retained a generosity of spirit and always placed her art in the tradition and lineage of the women she had learnt from.
“When they sing the thumri they are not singing their personal pain. Attraction, devotion, unrequited love, lust, surrender, there is in these thumris all of that, and through all this to arrive at a middle ground, it’s only the tawaif who can open up a song in this manner as she has suffered all this,” says well-known dastango Mahmood Farooqui during a dress rehearsal where he puts up a dramatisation of Naina Devi’s sentiments.
Ahead of the performance of Dastan e Naina, based on the life of the legendary thumri singer, in association with the Naina Devi Foundation, The Morning Standard catches up with Farooqui on the areas of emphasis in his script, and his measure of her life:
What made you want to enact her rather than have a woman dastango from your team play Naina Devi?
It is a life that spans almost the entire 20th century and offers a great window into the development and evolution of music in that century. Therefore, I felt I should take it up. And since I was writing the script, I wanted to perform it too…. I don’t perform others’ scripts.
Please explain a bit about your structure and why you begin by talking of Shiva, then Wajid Ali Shah, then Keshab Chandra Sen’s household to first presenting Nilima (Naina Devi as a child) on a lap listening to an all-night mehfil where the stars of Hindustani classical music all come to perform one after another. Was there really a night like that or were you setting the stage to introduce the women in Naina Devi’s life?
I had to speak of music, and Lord Shiva and Wajid Ali Shah are both integral to different moments in the spectrum of Hindustani classical music as we understand it. And yes, there really was a night like that as described in Vidya Rao’s marvellous book, Heart to Heart: Remembering Nainaji.
Would you say Naina Devi’s life is somewhat like Meerabai’s? She is drawn to what is not deemed acceptable for her and for a woman of her station. And yet there is something quite proper about her, she disrupts nothing till her husband is alive, only after she is disinherited does she take up music, preferring to be more a teacher-mentor. Also, I wonder why you populated her life with the presence of so many women as if her life alone couldn’t have held a story?
Well, her story is full of influential women, her mother, her aunts, all pioneers, all educators of women, all leaders in their field. And then there were the glorious and wonderful performers, the nautch girls, the tawaifs whom she venerated, and I wanted to highlight the negligence they have suffered…as a performer I feel that empathy, that pain, that neglect, that disrespect.... There was also her Mejdi (her sister Sadhona Bose, a famous actor of the ’40s), Begum Akhtar, Rasoolan Bai, Siddheshwari Devi, all remarkable women, geniuses many of them, who have not really been given their due; so, since she was so taken up with them, wrote about them, served them it was only natural that I should bring them in...is she a bit like Meera? Perhaps you can say that...all who read and sing Meera have something of her in them.
What according to you is the legacy of Naina Devi? Is she better known as a mentor of Shubha Mudgal or Vidya Rao today?
The Naina Devi Foundation maintains a wonderful website containing her music, her writings. I don’t think it is correct to say that she is better known as the mentor of this or that singer, her imprint on post-Independence musical culture of Delhi, and of India in general is indelible and quite significant.
On what occasion did Naina Devi call herself Ninochka? Also if she did have her husband’s support in being a singer why did she become a radio singer only after his death?
As soon as she began her professional career on the radio after her husband’s death, she called herself Ninochka when she sang in English. She was 17 or 18 when she was married, her husband [Kanwar Ripjit Singh of the former Kapurthala royal family] was ten years older...she had his support but she could not sing professionally without putting him in tremendous pain and pressure, and jeopardising his already delicate ties with his father who was a very hard man to please.
Your collective has lately been focusing on a central figure to tell the story
A dastan on Mir Taqi Mir is coming up on January 22, Fahmida was done a while ago. It depends, sometimes we are commissioned, sometimes we choose to do work like that, but we also did a dastan on Jallianwala Bagh two years ago, and on Gandhi’s last days, and two stories from Vijay Dan Detha last year for the Prithvi Festival, but when you present a personality, you also end up presenting their times so there is a lot to cook up.
Dastan e Naina will be performed on January 17, 6.30pm, CD Deshmukh Auditorium, IIC. Entry open for all.