The Rediff Special/Mohan Nadkarni

He has never cared to hog the limelight. Quite to the contrary, the limelight keeps hogging him.

A tribute to Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, the doyen of Hindustani classical music, on his 75th birthday, by Mohan Nadkarni, his biographer and wellknown critic.

A jubilee year is rightly and understandably an event for rejoicing as much in the life of an individual as in that of an institution. There is much fanfare, bon homie and camaraderie to mark its observance.

It is a different story, though, with Bhimsen Joshi, who turned 75 on Tuesday, February 4, 1997. Not much ado, glamour and glitter witnessed about his birthday. This was the case with him even when he crossed 60 or 70. Indeed, the maestro, who is numero uno among the male Hindustani vocalists of our time, strikes me as an exception in the galaxy of luminaries still dominating the musical horizon. Unlike many of the confreres, he has never cared to hog the limelight. Quite to the contrary, the limelight keeps hogging him.

And why not? Even at this age, he remains a star attraction whenever and wherever he is billed to perform -- both at home and abroad. Unlike, again, some of his confreres, but younger in age, he has studiously avoided being dubbed a cult figure. Like the phoenix, rising from the ashes, Bhimsenji has truly shown the triumph of his spirit with his recovery from a recent and prolonged illness. True to his name, he retains robust health with all faculties intact.

I first heard Bhimsen Joshi when I tuned in to the Bombay station of All India Radio one fine morning in February 1943. As I learnt later, it was also his first broadcast. Pure coincidence! Like me, who ever heard this broadcast must have, I am sure, felt that a brilliant star had risen on the musical horizon, that a generation of young, talented vocalists had really emerged worthy of wearing the mantle of old masters.

In retrospect, we find that few contemporary Hindustani vocalists have ever come to enjoy such tremendous popularity for so long as Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. True enough, he has few equals in the field -- fame wise or box-office wise. If one goes by the modest guesswork of a few ardent Bhimsen-watchers, he may well have given concerts exceeding five figures by now.

His phenomenal professional career, spanning more than five decades, convincingly shows that he has done something much more than fulfill the hopes and expectations raised by him in the early forties. It is also equally undeniable that in the course of his fantastic climb to greater and still greater heights, his approach to raga music has undergone many significant changes. These have predictably evoked diverse reactions from his audiences.

As one given to listening to Bhimsenji's music continuously for so many decades, I am inclined to see the changes in his gayaki not only in the context of his early life and the environment in which he grew and the influences and impressions that shaped his musical personality, but also against the background of the qualitative changes which came the wider musical scene after Independence.

Over the years, I have met Bhimsenji off-stage so many times that it is simply beyond me to enumerate them. It was during his lunch visit to my residence, in May 1982, that he discreetly suggested that I write his biography in English to mark his 60th birthday that year. The book, which has also had its Hindi and Kannada versions in the market, has come out with its updated edition by popular demand. While on this biography, I simply cannot resists the temptation to give summation of Panditji's early life and career.

Bhimsen Joshi, who hails from Gadag, in Dharwad district, in Karnataka, is the son of the noted educationist, Gururaj Joshi, whose Kannada-English dictionary is acknowledged as the standard work of its kind even today. Bhimsen's grandfather, Bhimacharya, was a noted musician of his time. But it was by listening to his mother's bhajans that he acquired a taste for music. the environment at home was predictably one of learning and scholarship, and the educationist father naturally wanted his son to follow in his footsteps.

Bhimsen's obsession with music posed problems for his parents in many ways. There were occasions when the child would quietly slip away from home to join and follow passing bhajan mandalis, only to be restored to his parents by many a good samaritan known to the family. Later, his passion for music grew so intense that he decided to run away from home, after accidentally listening to Abdul Karim Khan's commercial disc - the thumri Jhinjohti, Piya bin nahin awat chain.

In Bhimsen's own words, this was a turning point in his quest of a guru. (Incidentally, speaking of his escapade, he always hastens to tell his friends, in a humorous vein, that 'running away from home'; is also a family tradition set by none less than his father himself).

Leaving home in search of a guru, Bhimsen, then only ll, wandered from place to place. After unsuccessful sojourns at Bijapur, Pune and Bombay, he managed to reach Gwalior without any ticket. Throughout his journeys, he would regale his co-passengers and even the ticket-checking staff, with songs he had memorised from gramophone records.

At times, he moved clandestinely from compartment to compartment, breaking his travelling at intermediate stations and passing time on platforms in an attempt to give the slip to the ever-watchful railway men. It took him nearly three months to reach his destination.

But for one driven by a compulsive urge to find a master to teach him music, Bhimsen's sojourn in Gwalior did not satisfy him, even though he could benefit from the guidance of stalwarts like the sarod maestro, Hafiz Ali Khan, and Krishnarao Shankar Pandit and Rajabhayya Poochhwale, both veterans of the Gwalior gayaki. He then moved to Kharagpur, Calcutta, Delhi and finally to Jalandhar, in Punjab.

Ironically, even at Jalandhar, he could not find a master who could teach him khayal, singing although it has long been known to be a leading centre of Hindustani music because of its annual mammoth music festival. Though dispirited, he managed to learn the intricacies of dhrupad singing from blind musicians.

Bhimsen's homeward journey began following the sympathetic advice of Vinayakarao Patwardhan, the great scholar-musician and exponent of the Gwalior gayaki, who happened to be at Jalandhar to participate in the annual festival. He heeded the veteran's suggestion that he should go back home and try to seek tutelage under Sawai Gandharva, the most outstanding disciple of Abdul Karim Khan, who lived at Kundgol, a village not far from his home town Gadag.