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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:05]
B
Welcome to New Books in Literary Studies, a podcast channel of the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dr. Arnab Dutta Roy, Assistant professor of World Literature and Postcolonial Theory at Florida Gulf Coast University. Today I have the great privilege and pleasure of speaking with Professor Neelam Sarangaur about her remarkable novel, Requiem in Rag Janki. Before we begin our conversation, I would like to briefly introduce Professor Gore to our listeners. Professor Neelam Saran Gore is the author of seven novels, four short story collections, two books of nonfiction, a translation into Hindi of one of her own novels, and a critical study of Raja Rao. She has actively reviewed books for the Times Literary Supplement uk, the Indian Review of Books, the Book Review, and Biblio. A humor columnist for the Allahabad page of the Hindustan Times, she has also written many essays for academic publications such as Oxford University Press, Rutledge, Pencraft, and the Sahity Academy. Professor Gaur has conducted creative writing programs for the Sahitya Academy and has taught at the University of Allahabad for over four decades. She has served as a visiting fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Millia Islamia and the Central University of Rajasthan, and was a Charles Wallace Writer in Residence at the Universities of Kent and Stirling. Her novel Requiem in Rag Janki won the Hindu fiction prize in 2018 and the Sahitya Academy Award in 2023. She lives in Allahabad and continues to write about the city that has shaped her literary imagination. So before we get into this interview, I should mention my personal connection with Professor Gore. We go back many years. She was my fiction and prose professor when I was a BA student in the Department of English at the University of Allahabad. And she did teach me many things, from the coverly letters to the rich history behind coffee houses in Allahabad. So, Professor Gore, welcome to this podcast and I'm so very thrilled that you could find time out of your busy schedule to speak with me today.
- [02:49]
A
Thank you. Thank you, Arunav. It's a pleasure connecting with you again.
- [02:55]
B
So let's dive in. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey as a writer? What inspires you to do what you do as a writer, as a storyteller and academic and an educator?
- [03:11]
A
That's a mouthful. As a writer, as a storyteller, as an academic and I come again. I don't know which one was the fourth. As a writer, I never saw myself as a writer. You know, I have been writing as far back as I can remember ever since I was A child. And writing was part of my chatter. It was part of my inner life. I was an only child and you know, only children are given to chattering to themselves, also building alternative realities which they inhabit. I had no siblings and my parents were both busy professionals. So I lived, I moved between imaginary worlds in which, you know, they were peopled by characters. There was conversation going on all the time. My physical environment used to. It was a shape shifting thing. It could turn into a forest, it could turn into a street, it could turn into a dream cave. Do you see? I never thought of it as writing. That was pretty much my normal existence. Sometime in my childhood I began writing it all down, enjoying it, and that's how it went from there. So I always, I do think that some of the time I'm in this world and the rest of the time that inner world continues for me as an academic. I am an academic by chance and not by choice. I happen to blunder into the profession and having done so, I put in my best and academic. Writer, storyteller. Storyteller. Storytelling was very much part of the constructing of narratives, you know, in the inner, the real which keeps running within. So it all dovetails into one another.
- [05:25]
B
The last one was educator or teacher.
- [05:28]
A
As an educator. Now look, that is a very, very big word. I was not trying to educate anybody. I mean, I mean, I, I, I. All my life I've been trying to educate myself. Never more before than now than when I have retired. But, well, I tried to get, you know, give my students a taste of the, of, of essential life experience through literature. You know, I tried to make them forget the examination. I tried to make them experience what in Sanskrit we call the ras of the work. To enjoy it, to enter into the soul of it. And that was the education not of the mind, but of something else within. You know, something which, which, which grooms your soul for want of a better word. In default of a better word, I would use that dubious word. But what I was trying to do was to educate them in, in experience. In experience as communicated in language. So that, that's how I would answer your question.
- [06:52]
B
And I got a lot of that, Russ, while reading your novel. So let's get into the next question. Could you briefly introduce our listeners to your novel Requiem in Rag janki?
- [07:10]
A
I assume that the audience knows what a raag is, and of course it would be knowing what a requiem is. This was my 13th novel and 13 for me has always been a very lucky number. And it turned out to be my luckiest book. Expectedly, let me say that this novel was different from my other works because many of my earlier books were pre commissioned by publishers or I had already discussed them with the publisher before signing the MoU with them. But this was something in which I was. It was like singing alone in a locked room. I didn't know if there was an audience for this kind of thing. I was sure there wasn't. I went at my own pace, writing it as whimsy dictated, because I just wanted to do it. And I almost feel that I was mandated by some kind of compulsion. Bye bye. Janki Bai herself put it that way. You know, I took such a liking to this character when I read a little article about her. And I very much wanted to develop it, to explore her life. Because more than being an artist, I felt that this inner life of the artist, so tortuous, you know, so conflicted, was constantly living out the binary between life in real time and life in art. And so I collected as much material as I could about her and wrote it into fiction. So this traces her life. It traces her life as an artist, it traces her life in real time, it traces her life within her grooming as an artist. And then, you know, the way she negotiated the pain that life gave her and supplemented it and sublimated it with the exaltation which her art brought her. So, in a nutshell, it's hard for me to describe the book. I'm too close to it, but. But I would describe it in this way.
- [09:41]
B
Thank you so much. And now I'm going to ask some more about Jan Kibai. Because she's such a fascinating character, she's almost assumed the status of a mythical figure now about whom very little is known. I mean, I myself grew up in Ella, but hearing a great deal about Chapanchuri. But for the longest time I had no idea about the person behind this moniker. And for a global audience, the name Jankibai is even more unfamiliar. But reading your novel, one finds out what an icon she was. A musical prodigy, a performer of rare virtuosity, and a trailblazing feminist figure. Can you talk a little more about her? What drew you to writing about her life?
- [10:45]
A
As I said earlier in this interview that about 15 years back I happened to read a small article about Janki, and I was fascinated by her life. I felt that this was someone I recognized. Something in me recognized this being. And I had decided to write about her sometime or the other. So I did it. Although it was many years down the line. Getting the straight biographical Details in place, as you would have when you read the book. Janki Bai was not star material to begin with. Janki came from a very poor background. She was the daughter of what we in India call a halwai, that is, the keeper of a sweet shop, a poor halwai in Varanasi, and had an undistinguished childhood. And then in the course of events, it happened that she was attacked by a mysterious person. And there are various theories about the attack. She had already begun singing. She had attracted the attention of important musical patrons in Varanasi. But there are many theories, and Janki does not help us much because she wrote her own memoirs and. And much of it is fabricated. So I find that there's more fiction in her memoirs than in what I write about her, because I had to get the accounts of neighbors, I had to get the accounts preserved in the memoirs of other singers of the time to try to get at the facts. So Janki was attacked, and it is said that she was stabbed 56 times, although she herself testifies to the fact that it wasn't 56, it was much more. And there are various theories behind this assault. One was that it was a rival singer who was led by jealousy. One was that it was a besotted lover, which seems to be unlikely because she was very small. And the third is actually more sordid, and it seems to be closer to the truth was that her father had had a mistress, a woman who lived in their home as an. As. Almost as a foster mother or as a co. Mother, I would say. And this woman had a boyfriend unknown to the father. The boyfriend was a policeman who used to visit her, and Janki happened to catch them, and so he attacked her with a knife. So, however, Chappan, meaning 56, she was stabbed 56 times and was left for dead, but then managed to recover. And there after, well, after many events, she was, you know, abandoned by her father. Her mother was abandoned by her husband, and they traveled to the city of Allahabad from Varanasi and were trapped in a brothel where her mother had to practice as a prostitute in an institution. But she saw to it that her daughter was not subjected to this fate. And there was small risk of that because Janki was badly disfigured with all the stab marks on her body, on her face. But instead she got Janki trained in Hindustani classical music from one of the best teachers of music. I must mention that some of the best teachers used to actually have, you know, they were located in the gharanas. So to speak. The gharanas were schools of music, and it was the singers who lived in the gharanas who actually carried on the tradition of Hindustani classical music so well. Janki, tutored by Hassu Khan, grew to be a stellar performer and began performing in princely houses in the royal darbars and rose in stature. And what she did was that she broke the conventional stereotype of the woman performer, because audiences expected a woman performer to be beautiful, to be easy on the eye, and Janki was anything but that. She often performed behind a curtain, but thereafter she discarded the curtain because she stood out as the genuine article, the real artist for whom the appearance, the visuals, did not matter, the male gaze did not matter so well. She became one of the leading singers of the gramophone age, that is the first two decades of the 20th century, and her records sold in large numbers. However, we remember very little of her. For some reason, she charged massive amounts for her recordings, and as fame grew, there was a price to pay. Her personal life was very troubled. It was utterly derailed. Her marriage was a mess and her life was lonely, as my book traces. She had no children. She adopted a boy who became a drug addict, and the drugs were supplied to the boy by her own husband. And thereafter, when he ran away and she could not trace him, it was a disturbed life. But what elevates that life was that alongside the pain, there was also the ecstasy of the art. And the art was there as a spiritual presence in her life. And perhaps that is true of many of us in our interactions with the medium in which we work so well. That's it.
- [17:20]
B
Thank you so much. That was beautiful. Through Requiem in Raghjan Ki, you're, however, not just narrating the life of Janki Pai, but also telling the stories of cities like Elaborate and Varanasi, rather than presenting these places as we know them today. Your novel evokes an earlier era, one shaped by Mughal art and architecture, Urdu poetic cultures, classical music across different karanas, courtly drama, and a rich, cosmopolitan, intellectual life that once defined these great cities. And you have written about the histories and the cultural worlds of Allahabad and Varanas in your earlier works as well. Could you speak about how you. Your writing in this novel kind of stands differently from your other works on these cities?
- [18:32]
A
For one, it is more concentrated, being a more, you know, comprehensive project. I have really not separated the character from the city or from the age in which she lived. We carry place and time within us. Janki carries the place where she lives and the time in which she lives within her. And so I too, in the process of writing, did not sit down academically and say, well, now, how do I represent the city? Or how do I capture the age? I think the novel breathed its own time. It breathed with the speech of its time. It breathed with the ambiance of the cities in which it moved. So I would say that I do not consciously create the edge. I let myself go with the flow. And since I am familiar with that age, I'm familiar with that world. I'm fond of that world. I mean, if you were to give me a particular period of time to make my emotional home, I would choose those years. We are all homeless in time, and each of us has a favorite slot of time that we would love to revert to. And I suppose that time in Indian history and that the way our cities were would be my ideal spiritual home. So I don't think I consciously sat down to portray the city or to portray the age. In writing about Janki, the city crept in, the age crept in. And they were all part. They were part of this trinity of story and space and time. So that's how I answer your question. How is this different from my other writings? It's different from my other writings because in my non fiction I am very, very academically approaching the subject separating, you know, memory and, and history and all those things from, from, from my, my personal surrender to the subject. But in this, I have completely surrendered to my subject. And so I. It. It is an entirely unacademic exercise. So does that answer your question?
- [21:18]
B
It does, it does. I do have a follow up though. I mean, because a reason why I loved the novel particularly was because of the way you talk about music. I mean, not just like about the culture of gharanas and that style that came with all the maestros who were singing, but also because of the stories that you kind of are bringing to that these, these are bringing to the novel. Right. Like, I feel like one of my favorite stories was that of Narad, like, encountering this like, strange place with beautiful celestial beings, but somehow being slightly disfigured. And the reason he finds out is because he was singing them wrong. Right? And then he goes and tries to fix that. That was such a beautiful story. Can you talk about like the music in the novel a little bit?
- [22:35]
A
I have to say that I grew up with many of these stories. My father was very deeply into Hindustani classical music, although he was not a performing artist, but he was a musicologist. And I heard many of these stories and it struck me that these stories existed in the Indian languages, but they had not been put together. And I really wanted to weave them into the novel. And another thing I wanted to collect in one place was the diversity of these stories, because these stories come from different civilizational origins and they converge so beautifully, they unite so beautifully. Because in the world of Hindustani music, there is no Hindu or Muslim binary. You cannot separate the influences in the Carnatic music maybe, but not in Hindustani classical music. And, and the richness of this collaboration is also brought out in the stories. So you see, the story from Narad is a story coming from the Hindu traditions, but so many of the other stories come from Islamic traditions. So the combination of indic with Islamic. I mean, I'm trying to show that music here in my book is a faith larger than institutionalized religions. And therefore there is a union of cultures. And if you were to ask me what my dominant subject is in all my books, perhaps it is this one cultural coexistence. Nowhere in any of the arts is this more evident than in music. And if you read these stories, you will read of, of great connections, emotional connections between musicians, you know, and of course there is bias. There are, I mean, it's not always rosy. There are partialities, there is discrimination, but at the same time there is a human, there is a nobility about these connections. And there's also a very, very sublime sense of humor about them, like, like two musicians, a Hindu and a Muslim doing pilgrimage together and pretending, and one dressing up as a Brahmin in order to acquire a particular technical training in music and later confessing that he was Muslim, you know, and begging forgiveness from his guru or, or, you know, and the different, the spiritual thread that runs through Hindustani classical music, the Sufi strain is also something I wanted to bring out because I very strongly feel that Indian civilization would be much the poorer if it tried to sanitize itself from all these so called foreign influences. So music being a field in which you find this convergence at its best, and these stories were, I would say, units demonstrating this convergence. They are beautiful for their own sake too, you know, they're beautiful as stories and as heritage. So I wanted to bring it all together and weave it into the narrative to create a kind of stratosphere in which the narrative flies. That's what I tried to do.
- [26:46]
B
Thank you. So your novel, it's primarily a novel, but you've done a lot of experiments with the writing. You weave together within its fold so many different subgenres and styles at Times it reads like a biography. There is heroism, there is tragedy, there is comedy, there's romance, and there is fantasy as well as folklore. You also integrate so many different styles of composition. Poems, songs, oral narratives, letters. Can you briefly talk about your experimentation with genres in this book, in this novel?
- [27:33]
A
None of it was intentionally done. Documentary evidence on Janki is so limited. Just a few articles and some records of the gramophone age, some lists, catalogues of her records and her own diwan of verses, which has a lengthy introduction about herself. So from the limited material that I had, and they amounted only to footprints of a person's life, I was intuting. I was intuting. I was giving imagination full play, looking for the probable, the possible, when I couldn't find the proven. And in the process of accommodating all the material I had in probability, I seemed to meander through the genres. I was not really doing it as, you know, as a conscious experiment. You know, often writing is like swimming, and you're swimming in order to come up to the surface and breathe before going under and then coming up again to the surface to breathe. And so what I was trying to do is I was trying to stay afloat. I was trying to stay afloat in all the limited data I had and all the human possibilities which that data encouraged. And so none of this experimentation, as you call it, was done intentionally. Another thing I would say, when you talk about language, the novel does play with language. It does. See, there is regional mimicry, there is ornate, although I would say done in English. There is contemporary, informal. There is an archaic tone sometimes so. And the novel also breathes in the languages of Allahabad and Varanasi. There's Avadhi, There is Bhojpuri. There is also Ahyapuri, which is the local language of the region. So the language, this was consciously done. The only thing which was consciously done was accommodating these languages and the rhythms of these languages. So as far as deliberate experimentation is concerned, it's confined to my choice of language to suit particular sequences of the novel. But the rest of it is, I think it's intuitive. Does that answer your question?
- [30:40]
B
It does. It does. Very much so. I have one more question, and then maybe I'll ask you to read a couple of your favorite passages from the novel so we can conclude with this question. If there was one idea or thought or a lesson that you would like readers to remember or take away from the experience of reading your novel, what would it be?
- [31:08]
A
If it was confined to just one idea, I would want my Readers to experience the wealth of cultural collaboration in any great cause. The sense of different cultures, mighty streams meeting and living in Allahabad. You too can share this emotion because. And there's also a sequence in the book in which she tries to cross from the Ganga end to the Yamuna end. And she has this illusion that her teacher is calling out to her and telling her that you are on a mightier stream, so don't bother about the banks. And that is what I would want my readers to remember. Let us not bother about the banks. Life is a mightier stream, you know, Peace is a mightier stream. So if one idea was to be selected, perhaps it would be this one.
- [32:12]
B
Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much. Would you like to share a couple of passages? Favorite passages from the book? Maybe.
- [32:23]
A
I think I'll read the opening of the book.
- [32:27]
B
Sounds good to me.
- [32:29]
A
You know, the protagonist of my book is a 90 year old woman who used to know Janki and who's also a repository of all the lore or the music lore in the book. And she is a crusty. A prickly old 90 year old who is there demolishing her hosts with every breath. So she talks and you can get the rhythm of her crusty voice when it begins. You want me to talk about her after all these years? So be it. Maybe you can get a book out of all this. Me, I am content to turn this raga into a requiem. Isn't that what Vilas Khan did? Tuned his story to a note of grieving, sang it to the corpse of his father Tansen, and the corpse raised its hand in benediction. Some years back you might have heard that raga on All India Radio every time the country went into state mourning for a leader. What? Another story? Patience. It shall come somewhere in my rambles when its time is ripe. And since it's my stories you are after, and since you are my patrons, promoters and paymasters, I'll let loose some on you right away. But please don't think me your chattering relic. I am no hireling of your museum. Understand this. I am an artist. And we artists had our pride. Let not our shifts and drags mislead our hosts into imagining that we were subjects of lesser empires. For the sovereignty of excellence was our cause that others could only gawp at. Yes, even the most powerful excuse my grandiloquence. This I learned from Rajab Ali Khasah, a friend of my family who used to be Darwar musician at Devas. He once received 2,500 rupees from the Maharaja of Indore. Now this Rajab Ali Khan was a man of whimsies, famous for the way he dealt a severe shoe beating to a tangawala who had cruelly whipped his horse and then commanded the man to drive to a mithai shop, bought two sears of jalebis and personally fed them to the whipped animal. A rare eccentric, the story ran, in my family. One other weakness he had apart from music, and that was yitra. How many of you have experienced those kannoj perfumes, inhaled the ether that rises out of those cut glass vials of floral oils, those visitations of rose water and rajiniganda mimosa or acacia, sandalwood and camphor musk or first rain on parched earth. By all accounts an expensive taste for a mere musician, you would say, and I would agree, a taste for the rais, not the poor artist. But the money that warmed his sherwani pocket earned by an evening of music, had kindled his longing. So he hailed a tonga and told the tangawala to drive to the best eatru shop in Indore. On his way back to Devas, he chose the best perfume. The shopkeeper looked doubtfully at him, his humble clothes, his well worn shoes, and sized him up. When Rajabali asked the price, he received the surly answer, it is much too expensive for you, sir. Rajabali was stung. He well understood that fine semitone of disdain in the merchant's response, he who dealt in the tiniest shifts of inflection in a human voice. I ask to know how much it is, sir, he repeated in a louder voice. The merchant felt the bristle of indignation and said, it is hundred and fifty rupees a vial. And how many vials have you in stock? Asked Rajab Ali. Ten, sir, was the baffled answer. Rajab Ali took the bank notes out of his pocket and laid them before the dealer. Then he said, taking off his battered footwear, be so kind enough as to take the whole accursed lot in your shop and pour them into my shoes. Pray do not gasp. I have heard this searing shocker narrated many times in our courtyard. And there's more of the same. Can you endure another one? Then? Listen. Can you endure another one? Arnap, shall I read another one?
- [37:14]
B
Yes, of course, of course.
- [37:16]
A
There was a poverty stricken Lucknow maestro, Haidery Khan, whose only demand of the unknown rice, who driven up in his carriage to his dank and lowly lane with a request for a song. Was a filling meal of malai and puris enough for him? And his wife. When he finished the recital he was taken away in the carriage to an opulent mansion and the poor fool didn't realize who his host was. Yes, none other than the heir to Nawab Sadat Ali Ghazi Uddin Haider himself. Later, when he'd become a court performer at the beck and call of the young prince he gave his employer such a piece of his mind that it thrills my heart just to remember and repeat it. The prince had summoned him on a caprice and commanded. Sing to me Ustad, make me weep today I am in a mood for plenteous tears. Sing. And if my tears should fail to flow, be assured you shall be beheaded. Make no mistake. The terrified maestro sang and was relieved to behold his patron's eyes moisten and presently overflow. When he finished, he was asked by a mellowed master that was stirring Ustad, speak. How may we reward you then? Huzoor replied Haidari Khan, I beseech your highness never to lay such conditions on me. If you did commit the folly of rashly beheading me, think what a loss it would mean to your state. A mere princeling like you, when dead is easily replaced but never an artist like me. I can still hear Jan Ki's dense throaty shortle as she removed the hookah from her mouth to laugh at this one. That's it.
- [39:19]
B
Beautiful. Thank you so much. This was amazing. So I mean clearly, I mean when I read it I was very nostalgic. Not just of Allahabad but like everything. Like it was just so beautiful. And this conversation with you, I hope will like audience would be motivated to go check the novel out. Those who have already not done so. So I mean thank you again for finding time talking with me. This was amazing.
- [39:55]
A
Yes, thank you, thank you. It was great.