MY FRIEND GOURANG
“Gourang Kodical is no more.’’ The news I received as an SMS was as shocking as it was personally shattering. For the senior tabla artist and impresario of Bengaluru was a friend of more than 50 years’ standing – a college classmate and honorary brother who moulded my taste in Hindustani classical music and introduced my wife and me to some of the finest music heard in Hyderabad-Secunderabad in the 1970s.
I first met Gourang – a tubby little
fellow then, with chubby cheeks and a twinkle in his eye – back in 1962, when
we were both doing our Pre University Course at the Ramakrishna Mission’s
Vivekananda College at Mylapore. It was instant friendship, our common
interests drawing us to each other in a manner only possible in youth. He had a
huge collection of jokes which he could rattle off with a straight face,
building up to a superb climax every time. Both of us were interested in good
music, and I soon found out that he was a very promising young tabla artist. He
belonged to the Saraswat community, and at 18, quite the star of the clan in
Chennai, when he was yet to make it big on the concert scene. At the first
concert I heard of him on stage, he was introduced as the young man with the
magic fingers. A few minutes into the concert, I realised it was a rather
realistic compliment, for so obviously talented was he. Facing Vivekananda
College, run by the Ramakrishna Mission at Mylapore was a dhobi settlement
advertised by the slow moving traffic of donkeys carrying laundry. The college
itself was located in a fairly large tree-shaded complex of buildings
constructed in a non-descript style, but cool and reasonably friendly with its
spacious classrooms and high ceilings serving to keep the heat out. Except for
the Monday morning 26 • Travelling Lights religion classes, there was no
attempt at indoctrinating the students into the teachings of the mission. The
teachers were generally of a high standard, but other than the general emphasis
on academics, there was no overt pressure on the students to perform. My old schoolmate
Bala, Gourang and I hit it off straightaway, all three in the Natural Science
section, as we found many things of common interest to share with one another.
Bala was the most studious of the trio, though he wore his industriousness
lightly, never showing off his academic superiority over the other two. I was
the middle-order batsman and Gourang the tailender, so to speak, in order of
effort put in, which all showed in the results. Bala topped the class, and I
was not very far behind, while Gourang did just enough to pass tests and exams.
Though all three were close to one another, Gourang and I
forged a special bond thanks to our common interest in music. I had always been
fascinated by Hindustani music ever since I heard Nikhil Banerjee and Ravi
Shankar as a boy, and I was proud to call myself a friend of Gourang. I
regularly went to the concerts in which Gourang performed. I was thrilled when
Gourang was introduced before a concert at the SGS Sabha as The Young Man with
the Magic Fingers. Through Gourang I got to listen to some LP records of
Hindustani classical music and such devotional music as Lata Mangeshkar’s Meera
bhajans, and the non-film bhajans and ghazals of Mohammad Rafi, another great
Hindi film singer. The Meera bhajans by Lata Mangeshkar had been set to music
by her brother Hridaynath Mangeshkar, and many of Rafi’s bhajans and ghazals by
iconic music directors like Khayyam. These we listened to at the T’Nagar home
of Gourang’s cousin Pushpa.
Pushpa, her mother and her siblings were lovely hosts in
whose company we spent many an afternoon talking nonsense and listening to
great music on the radiogram in their spacious, gracious home. In what was
proving to be a completely unstructured if eclectic initiation into Hindustani
music, I started listening to several leading Hindustani classical musicians as
well. From Vivekananda College we both went on to do our bachelor’s degree at
the iconic Presidency College on the Marina, where we spent long hours together
at Buharis on the beach, when we were not discussing matters of international
importance in his room at the Victoria Hostel.
The jukebox at Buharis was a great source of entertainment.
We could listen to our favourite Hindi film songs for 25 paise apiece, often
accompanied by a friendly waiter who patiently supplied us endless cups of tea
(sometimes on credit) while accompanying the immortal Mohammed Rafi’s Yeh mera
prem patra padhkar in his own inimitable, grating voice. From Gourang, I learnt
some Hindustani music basics, and also tried to share some of my amateur
knowledge of Carnatic music with him. Both of us completed our degree that
year. Gourang exerted himself just enough to pass the examination, actually
walking out of the hall as soon as he knew he had answered the bare minimum of
questions to ensure that, such was his indifference to academic achievements.
He was also impatient to go to his hostel room and start practising the tabla
for an impending concert. Gourang’s father Ramanand Kodical was a genial, if
awe-inspiring figure, and I met him briefly at Madras, before his premature
death while Gourang was still at college. The sound of his tabla was soothing
and rhythmically perfect, though only his hands seemed to be traversing the
drums, with no effort visible from the shoulders downwards. I once asked him if
he ever suffered from bodyache after a long concert and he assured me
otherwise. He never felt any aches and pains from his musical exertions. Sadly
and ironically, acute pain in the feet caused by his diabetes made it
impossible for him to sit on the concert stage in the later stages of his
career.
The Kodical family owned a flat at Pandurangashram, very
close to the Chitrapur Math at Malleswaram, Bangalore, where he moved some time
in 1972, after his daughter Kavita was born. Like the other members of his
family, Gourang was a devoted servant of the math, the headquarters of his
clan, and he lived physically and spiritually close to it all his life. For
decades afterwards, I had a home in Gourang’s residence at Bangalore, and my
family basked in the affection we received from Gourang’s mother Seeta, though
my visits there grew rarer with the years. Gourang had his initiation in tabla
at the age of five from his music loving parents. I learn from a short
biography of his that he counted several distinguished teachers like Shashi
Bellare and Dattappa Garud before settling down with Shaik Dawood in Hyderabad.
His father Ramanand Kodical was a senior Customs official, and Gourang spent 28
most of his school years in Jamnagar, Gujarat. Great musicians like Kesarbai
Kerkar, Pannalal Ghosh, Nikhil Ghosh, Latafat Hussain and Abdul Halim Jaffar
Khan often visited the Kodicals when performing at Jamnagar. Brought up in such
a rich musical atmosphere, Gourang made his concert debut at the age of eight.
Some of the stalwarts Gourang Kodical accompanied were Mallikarjun Mansur,
Basavaraj Rajguru, Bhimshankar Rao, Malini Rajurkar, Kumar Gandharva, Bhimsen
Joshi, K.G. Ginde, Dinkar Kaikini (Gourang’s sambandhi), Yashwantbua Joshi, Rajan
and Sajan Misra, Kishori Amonkar, Prabha Atre, Lalith J. Rao, Parveen Sultana,
Ram Narayan, and Hariprasad Chourasia. He was renowned for the felicity with
which he accompanied vocalists across gharanas. I always knew Gourang could
write brilliantly when he chose to, and tried in vain to persuade him to
contribute regularly to Sruti. I also knew the splendid work he had done as a
founder member of Sursagar, which has been the foremost promoter of Hindustani
music at Bengaluru over the last three decades. Luckily for Sruti, he agreed to
organize an interaction among the members of the team responsible for
Sursagar’s growth and development, and we were able to present their
reminiscences in Sruti 378 in March 2016.
Many young musicians enjoyed Gourang’s encouragement, wit
and wisdom. Gourang was a gentle, kindhearted, soft spoken man – albeit the
possessor of a wicked sense of humour. He smiled and laughed his way through
life, even in his last days. His daily ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ on Facebook inspired,
sometimes amused his followers. He was a true maestro of Hindustani music in a
quite understated way. And before I forget, he was a whistler par excellence!
