on 'Sunderdas'

Though technically, Anand Sharma's 'Sanjog' gets the credit for being my music directorial debut on theatre, but looking at the hard work and reasearch demanded by the job... I would say that 'Sunderdas' was my real debut as a music composer for the stage. This in no way eradicates the importance of 'sanjog' in my ouvre... in fact, the challenge of working on a score for a comedy... and that too with a classical structure was a brilliant aesthetic experience in itself, and I will always be thankful to Mr. Sharma for believing in me... a complete amateur (which I still am) for such a remarkable job, but at the same time... I can't deny the fact, that the complicated narrative and different cultural references which demanded to be manifested musically, interspersed with Dr. H.S. Shivaprakash's deeprooted love for music formed the essential grounds from which the music of 'Sunderdas' emerged was a unique experience of my life. The challlenges were enormous, for all of us. A class production, which had to justify the complicated tragic narrative of a historical conjugation... with the a kind of a theatre that is 'poor in means but rich in effect' had a lot of challenges to respond to.

We had all kinds of songs, Hindi( Kabeer's two songs), English (my own composition of an English choral piece), Oriya ( two songs, closest to my heart from the music of the play) and a large body of background score ( consisting basically of various ragas and some folk tunes). I remember those long, late night meetings with our director and several narrations of tunes which lead to our choices of the tunes that were to form the 'musical structure of the play'as Shivprakash would've placed it.

The singers & Satish Bhaiya on Harmonium were our basic assets... and for me the whole assignment was not just an academic practice, but a creative process, which I thoroughly enjoyed. After the success of our first show in J.N.U., we went to IGNCA with our production. This time, we also had Sandeep with us on Tabla. I remember one day, while discussing about the music of the play we were thinking of not using harmonium... and he said, 'the interest of the play and its music is far bigger than any personal interest.' it was a small incident... some time later, when Vibhuti, came up with an invitation for us to conduct a programme for the Krishna Bharadwaj Foundation, we again asked him to play Tabla for us. Since we had very little time to rehearse, things were not shaping up properly with percussion... and then, she was also supposed to sing a duet with her younger sister, who asked her tabla player teacher to accompany her. things went quite chaotic, as we were sad that Sandeep will not be happy with this (which was completely justified), but after he realised the situation, and how this teacher was helpful to us, he stepped back himself. When I was going to drop him back to his centre, I remember him saying, 'the performance is more important than any personal interest', and I was filled with appreciation for him....

Only then did I understand, what 'Sunderdas' was about, it was about rising above personal interests. At one place in the play, Sunderdas says that 'Anything that complicates human situation cannot be true religion', as long as personal interest plays a role, human situation is bound to be complicated.

Benil is ofcourse an effective actor, but only in the IGNCA show could I find a true understanding of his character, Sunderdas, in his performance. The tragedy came out acutely in his act and disturbed me exactly how it was supposed to... this is how character's are discovered perhaps... not by technique, but experience. ( though I'm too naive in acting to comment upon this)

The praises for 'Sunderdas' still encourage me... but I'd like to quote what Benil said after the show. His entry in the show was accompanied by an Aaroh in Raga Kafi which we used to sing. He pointed out, how the rising level of sounds in the aaroh gave him internal energy to come closer to the character when hwe enters. It's an important point to be understood by a composer when he is composing music for the theatre to use music as a tool for the transformation of actors to characters. this can only be done if music for theatre comes out from the story and not merely from composer's personal bias towards certain tunes.

I never worked again for a live music play after 'Sunderdas' because I never wanted to do a play without investing proper amount of time in it, but I still take that one moment, which Benil referred to as my model for all musical theatre. Talks are on between us to work together and explore some more dynamics and relationships between music and theatre (perhaps turning it into a performance) once we come back from Japan... but nothing can surely be said about it. I look forward to it as a learning experience....