Free Scenes From Early Life by Philip Hensher

songs, by Nazrul as well as Tagore. She was quite a different person in these lessons, humble, respectful; she took comments and advice from the two musicians very easily. They seemed more like honoured guests in our house than people who were paid to teach my aunt. I always hoped that they would sing the song about the flower. It was my favourite.
    The flower says,
    ‘Blessed am I,
    Blessed am I
    On the earth . . .’
    The flower says,
    ‘I was born from the dust,
    Kindly, kindly,
    Let me forget it,
    Let me forget it,
    Let me forget.
    There is nothing of dust inside me,
    There is no dust inside me,’
    So says the flower.
    They would come to the end of their two hours. Once I had settled, I could listen very happily for all that time, so long as there was more playing than rehearsing, as I thought of it. Nadira would offer them a cup of tea, or a glass of water, and they would accept. If there were other people in the house, at this point they came to greet them. My family knew and respected both of the musicians, from many years back, and so did Khandekar-nana’s family. The tall musician would give an imperceptible sign to the short tabla player. They would get up and go. That was the end of their lesson. The whole family came to the door to say goodbye to them.
    2.
    In 1965 Altaf Ali was twenty-nine years old, and Amit Mukhopadhyay was twenty-eight. They shared a flat in a block owned by Mrs Khandekar, the wife of my grandfather’s best friend.
    They had met in the following way. The radio station in Dacca held concerts of Bengali music every Saturday night. The programme was very popular, and had resisted all attempts so far to remove it from the air. A large roster of Dacca musicians supplied the regular basis of the listeners’ pleasure. It was not always possible for musicians to play, however, in established pairings and groupings. Listeners would find their admired musicians combining in unfamiliar and unprecedented ways. This was one of the appealing things of the programme: the sense, like Bengali street life, that you never knew who you might hear talking together.
    Sometimes a sitar player would arrive without his regular partner on tabla. Sometimes a tabla player would say he had no idea what had happened to a harmonium player. Musicians are not the most reliable class of people, and if at worst they could be drunkards and gamblers by inclination, at best they were always open to a better offer from others. When a musician failed to turn up at the recording studio, he had often been offered a well-paid job at the wedding of a rich man’s daughter. The radio programme commanded a large audience. But it could not compete with the fees possible when accompanying a famous singer at a lavish Dacca wedding. The producers understood this. They were always ready to match up instrumentalists and singers who had only a small acquaintance. The musicians were ready, in their turn, not to make difficulties about this, although in practice the performances that were broadcast sometimes came close to catastrophe.
    Altaf and Amit met each other in just such a way. Altaf was expecting to see the same tabla player he had been playing with for the previous three years. But the producer came into the musicians’ room – a crowded, cramped room in the old British barracks that the radio station used. (The recording studio next door had its windows muffled with blankets and the door reinforced; still, some noises and voices of the city tended to seep into the programmes that were broadcast.) He hailed Altaf, and looked about the room. ‘This is Amit Mukhopadhyay,’ he said wildly. He was always in a hurry, referring frequently to the big black-bound book in which the logistical details of bookings and commitments were entered. ‘He’ll be playing with you today.’ Then the producer disappeared, without once looking up from the bound volume, or even over the top of his half-moon glasses.
    Altaf had not noticed the man.