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Book Name:An Unheard Melody: Annapurna Devi—An Authorised Biography By: Swapan Kumar Bondyopadhyay Publisher: Roli Books Pages: 190 Year 2005 Price: Rs.295 ISBN: 8174363998

Once upon a time there was a lady in white who at the break of day would begin to play music. Her music was so melodious that the early morning birds would hush their dawn squabbling to listen to her playing. She was the daughter of Baba Allauddin Khan and the sister of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. She was also the only female surbahar player in the country, an inheritor of the Maihar-Senia Gharana. Annapurna Devi received her talim from her father and was well on the way to becoming a legend when she fell in love with her father’s student, Ravi Shankar.

It could have been a fairy tale or an eternal duet between two maestros – certainly they played together in public, but somewhere at the height of the glory something happened and the relationship snapped like a broken string. There were whispers – as there were bound to be given the quality of the two musicians and given the fact that they were man and woman, husband and wife.

One whisper, propagated by Annapurna Devi’s disciples claimed that Ravi Shankar was jealous of her talent and had tried to bind her to a vow of eternal silence. The author of this, the first authorised biography of the reclusive lady, is one of her disciples. He writes "For Ravi Shankar, it was worse. He was ambitious and ego-centric, he would not allow anyone to rule the world. Truly, he was the sun and loved to shine alone in the sky. So perhaps he decided to take her away from public performances."

Of course whether she played better than her husband did is a matter for speculation – no one can be quite sure which of them was better, especially since no recordings remain of their jugalbandis.

The other whisper was that Ravi Shankar had fallen in love with someone else. "Ravi Shankar wondered why people did not accept that it was possible to love more than one woman at a time. He could do it. He had learnt from his own life that love was of different kinds - love for one's wife, love for a friend and love for the other woman," the book says. "Each love was complementary to another. It was a search for fulfilment. It was a pity that Annapurna failed to appreciate this. She was an artiste with a large heart, so why was she so guarded in matters of love?"

Annapurna Devi never divulged what exactly it was that had happened, but she withdrew abruptly from public life. There was a dead son to add to the tragedy. Though Bandhopadhyay claims that his book is a search for the elusive musician and her contributions to the rich heritage of Hindustani classical music, he succeeds only in reiterating the rumours and is unable to shed any light on the affair.

Admittedly the task of delving into Annapurna Devi’s life was not that easy. Bandhopadhyay says he initially thought of Annapurna Devi as a woman whose difficult life had turned her into a cloistered individual with a strong hysterical, almost suicidal bent of mind. It was not easy, he writes, to get into the home of an artiste whose door carried bell ringing instructions and a warning that the door will not be opened on Mondays and Thursdays..., he says but 12 years of knowing her completely changed his opinion.

There are rare insider glimpses that only strengthen the legend. Annapurna Devi reportedly conducts her famous classes usually after midnight, initiating each student into Raga Yaman, the tune she played so often with Ravi Shankar, and following it thereafter with lessons tailored to individual temperaments. Hariprasad Chaurasia, also her student, taught her how to drive, but despite that sign of modernity, she has never owned a passport. Belying the rumours that she was a Meena Kumari like wraith lingering in the shadows mourning her lost love, she married a second time in 1982, one of her students, Rooshikumar Pandya, who was a good 13 years younger, in a registered ceremony.

Privacy is the characteristic that is highlighted. The lady keeps very much to herself. To one of her students she observed, "Riyaz is a private thing. It is like taking a bath. You wash yourself and remove the dirt from your body and make it clean. No one has ever heard my riyaz." Unless perhaps it was the birds in the garden early in the morning.

Drawing on interviews with Annapurna Devi and her family members, admirers, critics and students, Bandyopadhyay offers an absorbing portrait of a brilliant individual who shuns public performances, devoting her time instead to music, students and to keeping her father's legacy alive. There are rare photographs to add to the music lover’s pleasure. One wishes however that this book had new light to throw on one of the most important surbahar players that this country has produced.

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