Organised by the Bangalore Kidney Foundation, the Mallikarjun Mansur festival featured vocalist Kalapini Komkali, daughter of Pandit Kumar Gandharva.
A very interested audience at the well maintained JSS auditorium listened in rapt attention as Kalapini presented Bilaskhani Todi, Ahaliya Bilawal, Sur Malhar, Kafi and a couple of bhajans. She sings in her father's emphatic style with deep impact. The ragas assume a poignant and hard-to-ignore persona as the phrases sink in.
Once in a while, it's nice to see how the Hindustani world lives, akin to a glimpse of the other side of the moon.
Listening to Bilaskhani Todi, with its pathos associated with Tansen's bereavement which occasioned its unveiling, I remembered John Keats:
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk..
The last one is at a flower seller in Gandhi Bazaar, close to where I lived as a child. Try the special banana-leaf lunch nearby in Udupi Krishna Bhavan. It's the best in Bangalore.
