Peer Webinar: Chapter 13

The Department of English, The Bhawanipur Education Society College organized Peer Webinar: Chapter 13 on 30th November, 2022 at 7 pm. The speaker was Mr. Arup Kumar Bag; his paper was entitled- “Silsila-e-Mausiqui: Exploring the Discourse of Indian Classical Music in Namita Devidayal’s The Music Room”. The webinar was held on Google Meet; it was attended by the faculty members and the PG Semester III students of the Department of English.

The Peer Webinars are a unique monthly endeavour by the Department of English, The Bhawanipur Education Society College that has facilitated an amiable atmosphere for the exchange of research ideas. In the thirteenth chapter of this series of webinars, Mr. Bag tried to bring out multiple hidden threads between Indian Classical Music and Indian English literature. His paper focused on Namita Devidayal, a journalist with the Times of India, and her ways of narration that represent a diasporic nostalgia. She is a professionally trained singer and has taken ‘taleem’ under her Guru, Vidushi Dhondutai Kulkarni, the renowned vocalist of Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana. In her The Music Room (2007), Devidayal tried to explore the secrets of Guru-Shishya Parampara and presented us a detailed history of Dhrupad, Khayal and Thumri. 

Mr. Bag began his presentation by locating Indian classical music in the cultural discourse of Literature and probed deeper into the questions which are inextricably linked with the investigations of Cultural Studies. The reasons behind the emergence of Cultulral Studies were somehow the same threads that troubled Namita Devidayal in this context. There is a diasporic thrust within Devidayal to be connected with the roots. Her own lessons of music gave her the chance to stay connected with the Indian-ness which she has considered to be primary cultural identity. After answering the questions related to the hypothetical gaps between these two art forms, Mr. Bag tried to explore the essence and different meta-discourses, associated with the contextualization of these two art forms such as- the historical development of Indian Classical Music as ‘Royal Music’ with special reference to the Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana; what is the importance of ‘Gharana’ in Indian classical system; and why it is called a ‘Guru-mukhi Vidya’ etc. He also tried to look at the synthesis of Music and Yogic Studies. The presentation became interesting when he tried to contextualize the idea of ‘Raga’ with the ‘Rasa’ by referring to the Ragamala Paintings [The Pahari Series] and the ‘Shrutis’ of the Saptak. 

Mr. Bag’s presentation ended with two of the major ideological and philosophical discourses in one which he tried to set a parallel between Namita Devidayal’s narrative and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). He tried to lens through how Indian classical system can be interpreted with the help of Dedalus’ theory of aesthetics and its crucial components- Integratus, Claritus, and Consonantia. The other major discourse was to locate how music and human life are linked and how music becomes a part of the post-modern ‘reality’ by forming a new narrative structure- Music-realism.