Thirteen winters ago, on 24th January 2011, I attended the The Dover Lane Music Conference for the last time, along with my parents. That was a significant phase of my life as I was on the cusp of starting my professional career and was about to bid adieu to Calcutta and move out into the big bad world. It was also the time when I had newly joined this social network called Facebook. As I look back into my Facebook timeline today and parse through the uploaded photos, I stumble across the fact that my Facebook post from that period actually carried the memories of the magical night including a snippet alluding to Ustaad Rashid Khan who was one of the four performing artists.
The night started with danseuse Yamini Reddy performing to Raaga Nata Bhairavi. Born to the legendary Kuchipudi exponents, Padma Bhushans Raja and Radha Reddy, Yamini has got dance in inheritance from her parents and she lived up to her genes with her beguiling mudras. Then came Kaushiki Chakraborty, daughter of Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty , who enthralled the audience with her rendition of bandish in Raaga Pahari and Raaga Kaunsi Kanhra. Next up was Amaan Ali Bangash who mesmerised us with Sarod recital of a bandish composed by his father Ustaad Amjad Ali Khan. He had his mother Subhalakshmi Khan in the front row as audience.
There is a saying in Bengali .. “ওস্তাদের মার শেষ রাতে” and the unforgettable Musical Soiree was rounded off with Ustaad Ustad Rashid Khan coming up with powerhouse performances of Raaga Lalit and Raaga Ahir Bhairav as the night slowly gave way to dawn.
Rashid Khan was always a maverick and a musical genius in equal measures. But then he was destined for greatness. After all, he carried the flattering endorsement of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Ustaad Amjad Ali Khan called him a “Prodigy” !! For listeners, it was Rashid’s ability to stir profound exclamations – of love, devotion and reverence – that set him apart. Hearing him sing was a beautiful surprise, as he would switch between the lyrical and soft, before suddenly bursting into an intricate taan – the technique of improvising with rapid melodic passages. His voice had a honey-like warmth that grabbed listeners the instant he sang the first note. He could sing the slow tempo alaap with the meditative quality of an Ustaad Amir Khan and move seamlessly into a fast-tempoed tarana or a romantic thumri like ‘Yaad Piya Ki Aaye’. Inside the sanctum sanctorum of Indian Classical Music, Rashid Khan was the “prince of modernism” who showed complete respect to classical forms but didn’t hesitate to “blur the distinctions between mainstream genres”.
On that fateful day , as the sun broke out , his exquisite exposition of Raag Ahir Bhairav – usually sung as the first Prahr of the morning – didn’t leave me for days. In fact it stayed with me and continues to reverberate in my subconscious and has strangely become an abiding memory of Calcutta winters that I will carry till my last breath.
‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter’.
~ John Keats
We mourn the passing of Ustaad Rashid Khan, one of the greatest vocalists of Hindustani classical music, may be we mourn the passing of his legacy of perfection as well
At Indendencia Street, in downtown Guadalajara, a sign was placed on the ANDA Theatre: “Hoje! Não trabalhamos porque vamos ver Pelé”, translated “Today! We don’t work because we’re going to see Pelé”.
At the end of the 1970 World Cup, the English newspaper The Sunday Times published a historic headline: “How do you spell Pelé? GOD”. In the glorious championship in Mexico, Pelé showed Brazilian football to the world, like no one else, and made a city stop working to watch him. In 2019, the official page of Santos, the club where the player made history, joked with the photo: “ Work dignifies the man, but seeing Pelé on the field dignifies him even more. Privileged are those who had the chance to live this unforgettable experience”.
Pelé was one of the first global sporting superstars who transcended continents, admired for his wizardry and sometimes criticized for his political stance, or the lack of it. Pelé’s greatness can be measured by the simple fact that he could make football a spectacle of natural grace and beauty when he missed as much as when he scored. He was the national treasure who once managed to bring about a 48-hour ceasefire between two warring factions during the Nigerian civil war in the 1960s, just so they could watch Pelé play in an exhibition game in Lagos. He was also the person who played a big part in Calcutta hosting him and the New York Cosmos during its tour of Asia in 1977. Pelé played in that game against Mohun Bagan at the Eden Gardens for about half an hour, in the winter of his career and far from his best, but still a turnout of 80,000 mesmerized.
Pelé suffered World Cup disappointments too, none more than when he was brutally kicked out of the competition in England in 1966. He left the scene of the 3-1 defeat by Portugal at Goodison Park draped in a blanket after a succession of fouls that left him limping on one leg, with his right knee heavily bandaged. That knee injury was caused by earlier savage challenges in Brazil’s first game against Bulgaria and Pelé was so disgusted by his treatment that he vowed never to play in another World Cup – a decision the game was grateful he later reversed.
Brazil’s 1970 World Cup win was the pinnacle of Pelé ‘s career. He was the focal point of a dream team that has become enshrined in the game’s history. Pelé may have been the headline act but he was accompanied by names such as Rivelino, Jairzinho, Tostao and Gerson, as well as the great captain and leader Carlos Alberto. Testimony to Pelé ‘s brilliance are two occasions in the 1970 Mexico World Cup when he failed to score – and yet are used to this day as prime exhibits of the skill, power, elegance and mental speed and agility that mark him out as arguably the greatest to have ever graced the game. The first came in Brazil’s opening group game against Czechoslovakia when Pelé , from several yards inside the centre circle in his own half, received the ball languidly then spotted keeper Ivo Viktor off his line. In an elegant, instinctive swing of his right boot, he sent the ball in a high arc towards goal, landing inches wide, with the panicking Viktor making a scrambling retreat before the relief of realising he had not been embarrassed by Pelé ‘s genius. Fast forward to the semi-final against Uruguay, again in Guadalajara, when Pelé raced at full speed on to Tostao’s pass, yet still had the presence of mind to run past keeper Ladislao Mazurkiewicz, also allowing the ball to run past the pair. The keeper had been sold perhaps the greatest dummy in World Cup history. Sadly, the angle was subsequently too tight for Pelé to score but the moment is still replayed whenever World Cups are relived and as the late, great BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme, probably taken as much by surprise as Mazurkiewicz, said in that wonderful moment: “What genius. Incredible.”
Brazil, in 1888, was the last Western country to abolish slavery, and Pelé was born just 52 years later, a poor Black child who started out life shining shoes. Edson Arantes do Nascimento was born on Oct. 23, 1940, in Três Corações, a tiny rural town in the state of Minas Gerais. His parents named him Edson in tribute to Thomas Edison. (Electricity had come to the town shortly before Pelé was born.) When he was about 7, he began shining shoes at the local railway station to supplement the family’s income. One of Pelé’s earliest memories was of seeing his father, while listening to the radio, cry when Brazil lost to Uruguay, 2-1, in the deciding match of the 1950 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. The game is still remembered as a national calamity. Pelé recalled telling his father that he would one day grow up to win the World Cup for Brazil. And he did in 1958. He had become such a hero that, in 1961, to ward off European teams eager to buy his contract rights, the Brazilian government passed a resolution declaring him a non-exportable national treasure. I am not joking. You can check the records !!! When Pelé was about to retire from Santos in the early 1970s, Henry A. Kissinger, the United States secretary of state at the time, wrote to the Brazilian government asking it to release Pelé to play in the United States as a way to help promote soccer, and Brazil, in America.
In his 21-year career, Pelé — born Edson Arantes do Nascimento — scored 1,283 goals in 1,367 professional matches, including 77 goals for the Brazilian national team. Many of those goals became legendary, but Pelé’s influence on the sport went well beyond scoring. He helped create and promote what he later called “o jogo bonito” — the beautiful game — a style that valued clever ball control, inventive pinpoint passing and a voracious appetite for attacking. Pelé not only played it better than anyone; he also championed it around the world. Among his athletic assets was a remarkable center of gravity; as he ran, swerved, sprinted or backpedalled, his midriff seemed never to move, while his hips and his upper body swiveled around it. He could accelerate, decelerate or pivot in a flash. Off-balance or not, he could lash the ball accurately with either foot. Relatively small, at 5 feet 8 inches, he could nevertheless leap exceptionally high, often seeming to hang in the air to put power behind a header.
How does one define an ICON? A person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration They say Muhammad Ali was arguably the greatest sports personality of all time. Pelé was that and more. In his pomp, Pelé was Ali from the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, Jesse Owens in Berlin Olympics. He was Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros, Tiger Woods at Augusta, Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps in Beijing, London and Rio. All rolled into one, many times over!! Maybe it’s best to let pop-culture icon Andy Warhol define Pelé’s legacy in his own inimitable fashion,
“Pelé is one of the few who contradicted my theory,” “Instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries.”
Calcutta Chromosome 