Rita Ganguly

Let us hear a little about your background.

My father, K.L. Ganguly, was a freedom fighter. He was among those who founded the newspaper National Herald. My mother Meena was a homemaker. I grew up in Lucknow in an ambience soaked in music and dance. When I was four years old, my parents had organised a cultural programme where Sarojini Naidu was the chief guest. I performed an impromptu dance. She was so impressed by my performance that she insisted I accompany her to perform at every cultural event she went to. I went to Viswa Bharati University in Santiniketan when I was 12 to learn history, music and dance. So I began as a dancer and music came later on.

But unlike your older sister the late Gita Ghatak, a doyen in Rabindra Sangeet, you chose to perform outside Bengal. Why?

Viswa Bharati took me closer to Bengal, and it was necessary because by birth, I am a Bengali. I have sung my bit of Tagore songs and liked it. But as my upbringing had been in Lucknow, I considered myself more Indian than Bengali. Bengali music was never an option. I believed even at that young age, that confining myself to Tagore’s music and songs, I would have restricted my reach within Bengal, whereas my dream was to spread my music across the country, at the national level.

What styles of dance did you learn at Viswa Bharati?

I studied Kathakali and Manipuri at Santiniketan and later trained under Kathakali legends Kunju Kurup and Chandu Pannikar. I became a danseuse and learnt modern dance from Martha Graham in the United States, going on to perform Kathakali at the Bolshoi theatre in the former Soviet Union. My training in dance caught up with me many years later when I was already an established vocalist. I introduced the first course in India at the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi called ‘Movement and Mime’, and taught the course for three decades and also brought about a revival of classical theatre at the NSD.

How did music catch on and become integral to your life?

Music strayed into my life like an accident of fate. In the 50s, I was giving dance performances everywhere. I was performing Kathakali at a dance show in Delhi. During the performance, the accompanying vocalist forgot some lines of the song so I began to fill in. After the performance, the great Kathak exponent Pandit Shambhu Maharaj ji came backstage to compliment me on my voice and persuaded me to learn music from him as he too, was a trained vocalist. This changed my life forever.

You studied music later under Siddeshwari Devi. How did this happen?

Once, during my music lessons under the tutelage of Pandit Shambhu Maharaj, Siddheswari Devi heard me singing. She loved my voice and offered me a national scholarship to study classical music. I travelled right across the country with her, imbibing as much of music as I could during my sojourns at different concerts and conferences.

How did you become a disciple of Begum Akhtar?

This is yet another story that fate decided for me. Once, when I was at a concert with Siddheswari Devi in Lucknow, Ammi (Begum Akhtar) heard me singing. She wanted me as a student. But to become her student, I needed the permission of Siddheshwari Devi who was not at all on good terms with Begum Akhtar at the time. Ammi wanted me so badly that she visited Siddheshwari Devi at her Delhi residence around eleven in the night. “Look who has come to your door after 30 long years” said Ammi to Siddheshwari Devi. My gandabandhan ceremony happened that night itself. Once more, my life took a different turn.

You have trained in music under different gurus. How did their teaching styles differ?

Personalities are distinct from one another. I have learnt different things from different gurus – Shambhu Maharaj, classical dhrupad from Gopeshwar Bandopadhyay, thumri from Siddheshwari Devi and so on. I have learnt something from each one of them. Having said that, I insist that Ammi will always be more relevant than the rest. For me, she is unique. This is not to belittle the other gurus, but this is because I spent the longest time with her, not only as her disciple, but she was in many ways, my friend, philosopher and guide. Begum Akhtar remains the queen of ghazals. Not many people know that even the king of ghazals, Mehdi Hassan, used to look up to her and often called up to pay his respects from Pakistan. I have tried to carry Ammi’s legacy forward for 40 years and got solid support from everywhere.

It must have been difficult for you to come out of the tragedy of losing her?

Her influence on me was so deep that it took me eight long years to come out of her aura and come to terms with my own music. She taught me not just music, but also how to compose music, how to perform a single bandish in three different ways. Ammi insisted that her disciples should create their own styles instead of imitating her. She taught us to create and define our styles not only through riyaaz and training, but also through extensive and intensive research. For example, if I was to render a ghazal around the concept of ishq meaning love, Ammi would expect us to read at least 20 different poets and shayars who have written on ishq to get at the core of how to express the emotion while rendering a nazm or a thumri or a ghazal on this subject. This means that one had to learn to read, write and understand Urdu. Ninety per cent of what I learnt was on stage. I would sit behind her while she sang. Then, during one performance, she told me not to sit behind her but beside her, because I needed to be confident enough to hold the stage not behind her, but beside her!

You are the key to her centenary celebrations in 2014. Are you happy?

I am thrilled. One is the programme I initiated and organised at The Nehru Centre in London held in November. In October, the book Ae Mohabbat – reminiscing Begum Akhtar, coauthored by me and Jyoti Sabharwal, the publisher, was released. The book is a wonderfully brought out tome filled with photographic reproductions of the Begum in her many avatars through her life. A road in Kolkata is being named Begum Akhtar Sarani. In Lucknow, the street she lived on will be named Begum Akhtar Marg. An unnamed road in Faizabad, where she was born will be named after her. The house she was born in will become a museum. It is adjacent to a garden created by Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula, which houses the mausoleum of his wife, which could become a good tourist attraction. If it could also become the home ground of an annual festival in honour of Ammi, then it would be an excellent source of revenue, foreign exchange and popularity, not to forget initiating visitors to this world of music.