Tag: Pandit Rajan Mishra

‘Instead of Temple, Idols, Improve Health System’: Pandit Rajan Mishra’s Son

Padma Bhushan awardee Rajan Mishra passed away last month at Delhi’s St Stephen Hospital due to COVID-19 related complications.

New Delhi: The son of Hindustani music vocalist Pandit Rajan Mishra, who passed away last month at Delhi’s St Stephen Hospital due to COVID-19-related complications, has called on the Central government to improve the country’s healthcare system “instead of the temple, idols and the new residence of the Prime Minister”.

Padma Bhushan awardee Rajan, along with his brother Sajan Mishra, was a renowned classical singer and one of the foremost exponents of the Benaras gharana.

Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, a fellow musician and close friend of Rajan Mishra, first tweeted out an appeal for a ventilator in Delhi when the city was reeling under oxygen scarcity and steep spike in the number of COVID-19 cases. “Padma Bhushan Pandit Rajan Mishra (classical singer) urgently needs Ventilator (sic). At present, he is in St Stephen hospital, Tees Hazari, Delhi. Please help immediately,” Bhatt said on Twitter. A few hours later, he informed followers about Mishra’s death.

“He died of a heart attack around 6.30. We were trying for a ventilator but nobody supported us, nothing in any hospital. Later, the PMO reached out to help but he had left us by then,” Mishra’s son, Rajnish, told PTI.

Condoling his death Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “I am saddened by the death of Pandit Rajan Mishra ji, who left his indelible mark in the world of classical singing. Mishraji demise, who was associated with the Banaras Gharana, is an irreparable loss to the art and music world. My condolences to his family and fans in this hour of mourning. Om Shanti!”

Also read: For Pandit Rajan Mishra, Music Was Both Extraordinary and Ordinary

After Mishra’s demise, the UP government announced that a 750-bed temporary hospital, the Pandit Rajan Mishra Covid hospital, developed by DRDO would start functioning soon.

“If a person like Panditji, a Padma Bhushan awardee, who could have survived if he had got the facilities, did not get them, then what about the common man?” Rajnish Mishra said, speaking to The Telegraph on Wednesday.

“I am happy that people will be treated in my brother’s name…. As soon as it (appeals to arrange a ventilator for Rajan Mishra) was made on Twitter, BJP spokesman Sambit Patra called me up and said that 95 per cent of the arrangements had been made to admit him at Gangaram (hospital), just bring him. Sanjay Singh (Aam Aadmi Party MP) had arranged an ambulance which was ready outside, but he had the (heart) attack so quickly, ” Rajan Mishra’s brother and singing partner Sajan Mishra said.

“Father is not coming to see the hospital now nor is Ramji coming to see his temple in Ayodhya. At present, the country needs a hospital with good facilities,” Rajnish said, speaking to Dainik Bhaskar. “Therefore, instead of the temple, idols and the new residence of the Prime Minister being prepared, with thousands of crores of rupees in Delhi, the government should improve the health system. I will request the government to pay attention to the common man and his health. When someone passes away, it hurts a lot. We should all feel that pain.”

Also read: On Display in Delhi Now, a Central Vista to Criminal Negligence

“There is no point in giving a person awards or build memorials after he has died. He is not here to enjoy that,” Rajnish said and added that facilities should be provided to to people “when they are alive, whoever they are — VIP or not”. “We are all aware that the healthcare system of our country is completely shattered. If you have money to build temples or the PM’s house or Rashtrapati Bhavan — these can wait. Right now, the money needs to be invested in the healthcare system so other people are not affected the way our family was,” he said.

The central government has been pushing ahead with the Rs 20,000 crore Central Vista redevelopment project which aims to rebuild several government buildings and construct a new parliament despite mounting criticism about the expenditure involved in the project. Leaders of 12 opposition parties have written to the prime minister seeking a suspension of the Central Vista project and a diversion of the monetary resources involved in the project towards the fight against coronavirus and a free mass vaccination campaign.

“All the unnecessary expenditures, including the construction of lavish Central Vista, must be halted and all available resources must be diverted to urgent COVID response,” said a statement by Vikalp Sangam, one of several civil society groups and organisations across India that have appealed to the Union government to halt the Central Vista project.

Pandit Rajan Mishra: A ‘Sahaj’ From the Banaras Gharana

Over a career spanning more than five decades, Rajan and Sajan Mishra crafted a unique form of sahgayan, something which went beyond jugalbandi that truly represented a confluence.

Born on Hanuman Jayanti in 1951 into a family of musicians from Varanasi, Pandit Rajan Mishra inherited the rich tradition of the Banaras gharana of Hindustani music. Along with his younger brother Pandit Sajan Mishra, he debuted on the stage in 1967 at Sankatmochan Mandir. Over a career spanning more than five decades, they crafted a unique form of sahgayan, something which went beyond jugalbandi in the sense that it truly represented a confluence rather than just duet singing.

Rajan Mishra was initiated into ta’lim by his grandfather’s brother, Gayanacharya Bade Ramdas Mishra and was subsequently under the rigorous tutelage of his father Pandit Hanuman Prasad Mishra and uncle Pandit Gopal Mishra. With a tremendous resolve for riyaz combined with reflection, he was able to mould his voice into a rich and sonorous whole, capable of conveying command on his art along with an aesthetic sensibility reflective of bhava, that ever so fleeting notion in Indian art forms.

According to his own admission, “One of the best things about their teaching was that it helped broaden our perspective about music right from our childhood. They told us that we ought to listen to Ustads from different gharanas, and try to learn good things from them.”

Eminent music critic S. Kalidas reminisces, “I first met Rajan bhai in 1972 at Siddheshwari Deviji’s house and heard him and Sajan bhai on stage a little later. Rajan bhai was a formidable musician and had a wide repertoire. Over the decades, he imbibed elements from Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Amir Khan and Pandit Bhimsen Joshi as well. In a way, one can say that the uniqueness of his repertoire was the uniqueness of Banaras itself in the sense that the city was a melting pot of influences and the sources of knowledge were also multifarious.”

Representatives of the sixth generation of musicians within a family that has been serving Hindustani music for over 300 years, Rajan Mishra and Sajan Mishra benefitted tremendously from the presence of stalwart musicians in Varanasi as well as through witnessing performances of and interacting with legendary Ustads who would visit the city to regale discerning audiences. The intense self-reflection and meditative approach that goes hand-in-hand with Khayal singing was indeed a part of Rajan Mishra who was a treasure-trove on ragas and compositions reflecting the entire gamut of the rasa theory of Indian music.

The beautiful relationship between the brothers always came across on stage as well as in interviews, personal interactions and light moments. Rajan Mishra said that “it is this affection which gets reflected in our singing…”, while expressing warmth towards his younger brother who, by his own admission, moved behind him as his elder brother’s shadow, complementing his thought process and adding an evocative echo, as well as a seamless expression of a synchronised thought process.

Spirituality occupied an important place in the life of Rajan Mishra, not merely by virtue of the fact that he was born and raised in the city of Lord Vishwanath. It was the Namdhari Satguru Jagjit Singh Maharaj who guided him to adopt music full-time and offered patronage during the nascent stages of the career of Mishra Bandhu. Their lifelong bond is on display in one of the finest renditions of Raga Chhayanat, followed by the rare Raga Kusum Kedar in the presence of Aftab-e-Sitar Ustad Vilayat Khan in this recording from 1999 at Sri Bhaini Sahib.

At the same time, it is noteworthy that Rajan Mishra studied Osho with rapt engagement and often meditated on aspects of his teachings. During an audience, Osho asked Rajan Mishra what he thinks is the counterpoint to “swara” (musical note) and it became a lifelong quest for reflection when he received the answer as being “silence”. This makes so much more sense to this author as he reminisces their concerts he attended since the late 1990s and used to get struck by the pauses between a seamless thought process flowing from Rajan Mishra to Sajan Mishra and vice versa.

Rajan Mishra had a charming personality and was renowned for his sense of humour. Along with his younger brother, he would have people in splits narrating instances from their childhood, Varanasi, and their shared passion for wrestling, cricket and films. Perhaps it was this joviality in Rajan Mishra’s nature that kept the tradition of joint family alive from his father’s and uncle’s generation to his own and to his sons and their children who continue to share the same roof and eat food cooked in the same kitchen. The brothers realised a lifelong dream with the establishment of “Viram – The Gurukul” outside of Dehradun and it is noteworthy that their home in Delhi’s Ramesh Nagar is named “Swarangan”. Two bodies, one soul – with the departure of one’s body, one just hopes that the merged soul continues to sing through the body of Sajan Mishra and the family legacy continues richly through their sons Ritesh, Rajnish and Swaransh Mishra.

Irfan Zuberi is a student of Hindustani music and an audiovisual archivist.

For Pandit Rajan Mishra, Music Was Both Extraordinary and Ordinary

He was special in a Banarasi way, for believing that everything is ultimately a kind of play.

There are so many more conversations I still have to have with him, many more times of just being in his presence. I will always be in dialogue with him, always in the middle of a music lesson.

I would enter his room in Delhi, in the home he has shared with his brother, my younger guruji, Pandit Sajan Mishra. He would be sitting quietly in a white kurta-pajama, his silver paan box comfortably close, lost in a cloud of thought. He was the kind of person who wouldn’t fill the air with unnecessary sounds. He would take a moment to acknowledge you, and when he would, it would be the quickest, sharpest of looks, the smallest of smiles – often just an “Aur?” and a glimmer of the eye.

You can hear that glimmer in his singing. At the beginning or end of a phrase, it takes the shape of a curve of the voice, a tiny flourish of the note. It imbues irony into the gravest of phrases. It is a frame, a hint, a warning. A gesture that he knows that this too is performance, just another expression of the words he is singing: Jag sapne ki maya… or Jag jeevan thora…

He was special in this Banarasi way, for believing that everything is ultimately a kind of play. In his own words, he didn’t think of himself as a great singer, but as a vessel, and so only capable of play. During his lessons, he would tell us, his disciples, “If you want to sing, you have to turn yourself into water…” How can you sing about a woman yearning for her lover if you don’t let go of your self and feel yourself to be that woman, mind and body? Even if you are a man, you have to become that woman.

Listen to the metaphors that came to him, that he gave us while training us. Once, having improvised a phrase, seeing it take shape before his eyes, he paused and said with amazement: Dekho, hawa me ganth bandh rahe hai… (Look, I’m tying knots in/ with/ out of the air).

Another time, having delivered an exquisite phrase for us to follow, and us having failed disastrously, another pause, this one withering, and then, with a sarcastic laugh, to an invisible audience: “You go to the market to buy something, but when you put your hand in your pocket, you see that you don’t even have any money!” As much as he was a serious, meditative person, he had light-filled, laughing eyes; he would burst into peals of silent laughter, shoulders shaking.

Another time, in the middle of teaching, reminiscing about a performance as he often did, this time about Pandit Kishan Maharaj’s accompanying theka: Aha… Aisa lag raha tha jaise ki khichri me ghi mila rahe hai! (He was playing as though stirring ghee into khichri.)

And yes, for him, music was like ghee and khichri, extraordinary and ordinary. Extraordinary for its necessity and pervasiveness, like breath. A thing of everyday life. A thing of worship. The thing you do everyday that turns you into a sorcerer and a servant. A mundane thing of practice and routine, what makes everyday everyday. The hardest thing in the world, that proves life is too short for perfection, that always keeps arrogance at bay. An easy thing, because all it is is a thing of beauty and a reflection of the soul – all you have to do to find this beauty is to recognise and become one with yourself.

But also, a thing that is never yours. He would often pause in the middle of singing, at home or in performance, as though he had seen something amazing take place, outside of himself, and utter, Aha… or Kya bat hai. It is fitting that he had a musical partner, his brother, both a double and an other, almost a twin in the sense of being his second body and voice on stage, but with a distinct personality. Their voices layering, echoing one another, playing with each other, one filling the silence of the other, making sound and silence together. What is so amazing about them is the way silence is as much a part of their music as sound. He believed in listening, and would tell us this in his lessons: Beech beech me ruka karo, apne ap ko suno, tanpura ko suno… (Pause, be silent, listen to yourself, listen to the tanpura…).

Rajan and Sajan Mishra performing in Bhopal, 2015. Photo: Suyash Dwivedi/CC BY-SA 4.0

He had beautiful hands that seemed to conduct both sound and silence, that moved like water as he sang. For me, he had the same aura as his father, my first guru, Pandit Hanuman Mishra, sorcerer of both the sarangi and the voice. When holding a long note, his hands would naturally fall into the gesture he inherited from his father, of pulling the bow of the sarangi. He was always aware of himself as not just a practitioner, but as a kind of practitioner of archive, a wielder of more wisdom, not just musical but also philosophical and practical, than he could ever claim to master, given to him by the gurus whose pictures he had framed along the walls of his ancestral house in Banaras. These figures were not just gurus in name, but also individuals, humorous, hot-tempered and stubborn, each with their own stories that he revelled in repeating. And they were also god-like, in their abilities, moods, many faces. Kya buzurgo ne dekha hai rag ko… he would say with awe and appreciation. A raga is a thing to behold, a vision, but also to hold, by the hands, like a beloved in flesh and blood.

That was the sense of respect and intimacy he inherited from his father and mother, his extended family, and from Banaras, where he felt truly at home, a sense of groundedness and mutuality that does not seem completely of the modern world. The music he made was special for sounding, always, like a dialogue, with himself, his partner, his listeners, with music itself.

Most of all, I want once more to enter that courtyard in Banaras, stone-paved and framed with blue windows, where his father sat facing the ferns, and where he sat, relaxing or resting, waiting for that right moment in the evening to rise and go to the music room, to tune the tanpura to Bihag or Kaunsi Kannada, to get carried away in an ocean of beautiful sound.