Notes of harmony

In one of those coincidences that stalk movie buffs, last week I happened to re-watch two films in which a man is discouraged from pursuing his interest in music. Hrishikesh Mukherjee's 1977 Alaap, perhaps Amitabh Bachchan's most low-key film in the first few years of his superstardom, has the actor in a variant on some of his larger-than-life parts of the time. In mainstream movies like Trishul and Shakti, Bachchan was often in conflict with a father figure; he is in similar straits in Alaap, but the tone of the conflict is from the tradition of the grounded "Middle Cinema" that Mukherjee specialised in - less dramatic and fiery, more rooted in the everyday dilemmas that face a middle-class family.

As the film begins, Bachchan's Alok Prasad has just returned to his hometown after studying classical music. "Ab toh saadhna ka lamba raasta hai, jo jeevan ki tarah saral bhi hai aur kathin bhi," Alok's guru has cautioned the students - meaning they aren't "finished" with their studies, years of disciplined practice lie ahead. But this is not something Alok's worldly father could ever understand. Barely greeting his son, he peremptorily asks what Alok plans to do with his life now, as if he had been away just for a lark. The senior Prasad (described as "Hitler", though he is played by the Teddy-Bearish Om Prakash trying hard to look tyrannical) is contesting local elections and no doubt has firm ideas about what a worthy pursuit for a son is. Some of the early scenes make light of this situation (if I had to argue a murder case in court, I would do it in Raag Deepak, Alok quips as he mulls his unsuitability to follow in his lawyer brother's footsteps), but soon there is a parting of ways, and it becomes obvious that the hero's single-minded dedication to his art could endanger his very existence.

The other film was Gulzar's 1972 Parichay, which is sometimes described as a reworking of The Sound of Music - and indeed there are similarities in the plot of a teacher who tries to bring joy, including the love of music, into the lives of his sullen young wards. But like Alaap, the story is also about two opposing views of what a man may do with his life. In flashback, we see the music-loving Nilesh (Sanjeev Kumar) playing the sitar in his room early in the morning, going out to the verandah to sing and to contemplate the beauty of nature, and his clashes with his authoritarian father Rai Saab (Pran), who wants his son to grow out of this dreamy-eyed artistic "phase" and do the things he is supposed to do as his only heir. To, essentially, "be a man".

Given that ours is a cinema where music plays such a vital role - and where composers and lyricists have mostly been male - there is something faintly ironical about narratives in which men are looked down on, or disinherited, for pursuing music as a profession. But it is easy to see why music, or art more generally, can be a threat to the status quo of a feudal or patriarchal society. The artist or artiste - with his knack for introspection, for refusing to conform to social expectations of people or groups - can be a problematic creature in a regimented world that is resistant to change.

Notably, in so many films made by directors like Mukherjee and Gulzar, music is a force for egalitarianism, something that helps blur boundaries. Men become more "feminine" when they sing or dance, women can become more assertive and emotionally expressive than the codes of a conservative society might ordinarily allow them to be; gender is transcended in each direction. Music can also be an equalising force in the way it erases class and caste lines. Early in Alaap, the well-off Alok bonds over a song with the cart-driver (Asrani) who transports him home; later he finds his true home away from his father's mansion, in the little basti where a classical singer named Sarju Bai resides. Similarly, in another Mukherjee film Aashirwad, a music-loving zamindar Jogi Thakur (Ashok Kumar) is never so happy as when practicing with his guru, a lower-class man named Baiju. For me you are the real Brahmin, says Jogi Thakur, because you are my teacher. This is as subversive as Alok supporting the basti-dwellers against his own father's land-appropriating schemes, and it is a testament to how the performing arts can - temporarily at least - bring harmony to an inherently unjust world.

Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer