Some wonderful anecdotes I found on the wonderful web about Ustad-ji that give a glimpse about what inspired him and the kind of man he was. The incidents about Marwa and Malhar are my favorites.
QUOTE
From: PILLARS OF HINDUSTANI MUSIC
by B.R. Deodhar (Popular Prakashan)
[On Khansaheb BADE GULAM ALI KHAN]:
I believe the year was 1945. Khansaheb and I were seated on Chowpatty sands, chatting. The sun was about to set and its last rays had fanned out and bathed the West in red. The picturesque scene above was reflected in the calm waters of the Arabian Sea. It was a habit with Khansaheb to go to Chowpatty regularly every day to see the beautiful sunset. As he sat transfixed by the scene before us Khansaheb turned to me and said, "Deodharsaheb, this is the precise hour to sing raga Marwa. I am amazed by the ingenuity of our ancestors! Consider their perceptive artistry in employing that particular rishabh (re, 'D") and dhaivat (Dha, 'A') as they did! The hour of sunset is a most fascinating time. Lovers who have been separated begin to wonder at this time how they are going to spend the night in loneliness. The same thing happens to people who do not have a roof over their heads. The day passes by itself-but the night? They start worrying about finding a shelter for the night. In the seven notes of Hindustani music the most important resting place is shadja (sa, 'C'). But in Marwa the very note (sa) virtually vanishes and whenever we use it briefly we feel a sense of relief. I am of the opinion that the chief aim of Marwa is to portray this anxiety or uncertainty".
...[Bade Gulam to Deodhar]: "When I happened to be seated on the bank of a river, or in a park, I see birds flying here and there. I see them darting and dancing around without a care in the world; they suddenly take to flight and having reached a certain height dive down to their resting places in some tree. I am fascinated by all this. I want to translate all their delightful movements into music and I try to do this by means of a suitable tana e.g. one which moves very fast from the Sa (tonic) to pancham (Pa, 'G') of the higher octave and then circles down like a bird in flight, to the middle Sa..."
...One day Khansaheb had a radio broadcast at 1 p.m. As I was working for the Bombay Radio Station at the time, I too had to be in attendance. After he had finished, Khansaheb said, "Wait for a while. I have sent for a taxi - we shall go together." It was mid-july and the rain was coming down in torrents. Besides, I was hungry. But I did not have the heart to say 'no' to Khansaheb. The taxi came along and we got in. Water in any form made Khansaheb happy and heavy rains in particular were pure bliss for him. Some of the rain-water seeped into the taxi and began to drench us but Khansaheb seemed to be in high spirits. He said, "Come Deodharsaheb, let us go to the sea-shore; the sea would be something to be seen right now." I protested, "For one, I am famished and besides my clothes are beginning to get wet. So let me go straight home." However, by way of compromise I agreed to let the taxi driver take us via Marine Drive. We came to Marine Drive and Khansaheb asked the cabbie to stop his vehicle at a spot where there is a cement-concrete projection. The waves of the turbulent sea at this point were thirty to forty feet high. Khansaheb said, "Deodharsaheb, the time and this place are just right for doing riyaz. Listen." And he began to sing. Whenever a particularly massive wave broke and water spouted up Khansaheb's tana rose in synchronization and descended when water cascaded down. Water rose in a single massive column but split at the top and fell in broken slivers; so did Khansaheb's tana in raga Miyan Malhar. Sometimes, if his ascending notes failed to keep pace with the surging water, he was angry with himself but tried again till it synchronized perfectly with the surging water. This went on for three quarters of an hour. I got so interested in the whole proceeding that hunger and thirst were forgotten. Finally Khansaheb's son, who happened to be with us, said to his father, "Let us go now - it is two-thirty p.m. and we are both hungry."...
...I remember another interesting incident. One evening, Khansaheb gave me a long lecture on the importance of celibacy, especially to singers. The following day, while on his way to Chowpatty, he came to the school and urged me to go with him. I said it would take me a few minutes to get ready. Khansaheb said he would wait for me by the roadside. When I came down, I saw an extraordinary sight. A lovely Punjabi girl - she must have been around eighteen years old - was going towards Chowpatty. Our school is practically at one end of Chowpatty, and Khansaheb seemed to be a few steps behind and following her. The girl caught the attention of every passerby because of her beauty and the grace of her movements. I caught up with Khansaheb, tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Khansaheb, were you not yourself holding forth on the virtues of celibacy yesterday? But a passing lass seems to have turned your head today!" Khansaheb said, "You will hardly understand what I am thinking or looking for. Look what a beautiful piece of creation that girl is! And how intelligent the Creator must be to produce such captivating figure! She has turned the eyes of every passer-by to herself and she is completely unaware of this. Watch her graceful gait - the beautiful movement of her arms and neck! Come, I shall sing to you what I have just seen." We returned to our school and Khansaheb started singing a thumari in which he painted a vivid tonal picture of the beauty we had met...
...Khansaheb was whimsical. If the audience was up to his expectations he could give an unsurpassable recital. But if the atmosphere, or something else, was not absolutely right he would make do with an offering of thumaris. In 1945, at a recital at Kolhapur, the percussion accompaniment did not come up to his expectations. Consequently, he wound up the pure classical part in the first forty or forty-five minutes and started singing thumaris. He was upset by his having given a lacklustre recital. He returned to his lodgings (at Deval Club) around 2.30 a.m. followed by fifty to sixty members of the audience. Khansaheb said to the people, "All right now, you sit here in the verandah. I shall sing for you." He asked one of his disciples to provide basic percussion accom- paniment on a dagga and took up his favourite musical instrument swaramandal in his lap. He started singing and went on till 6 a.m. Theatre-goers on their way home heard his voice and came to Deval Club to hear him. They stayed on to enjoy the music until Khansaheb stopped singing. No one was in a hurry to get home. There was a similar incident at Belgaum. There too the main recital did not go well. Khansaheb, anxious to catch the 5 a.m. train to Bombay, went straight to the railway station - followed by the usual crowd of inveterate music lovers. The percussion maestro Thirakawa, was also there. Everybody made himself comfortable on the railway platform and Khansaheb started singing. The recital began at 3 a.m. and continued until the arrival of the Bombay train. The unplanned audience, in its final stages, numbered some two hundred people who went home when the recital ended. Needless to say, the voluntary recital was incomparably successful - unlike the earlier (paid) one...
...My relationship with Khansaheb was extremely cordial. So I had no hesitation in questioning him about the variable quality of his recitals. I said, "Khansaheb, your presentation of khayal music seems to be lacking in order. You do alapi for some time. Then you take up notation (sa, re, ga, ma etc.) and before the listeners quite realize what you have done, start on tanas. After some time, you once again turn to alapi. Consequently, other musicians consider your gayaki outside any gharana discipline."
Khansaheb heard me out and said, "I won't answer you in words but by my music. Listen, I am going to sing raga Darbari." He presented that raga for forty-five minutes so beautifully that I could not find a trace of his usual untidiness. His first twenty minutes were spent in alapi, so relaxed and leisurely that the listener would begin to wonder whether Khansaheb was incapable of producing a single tana. The first part consisted entirely of charming gestures and alapi in which he glided from note to note. There were no twists or turns or the tiniest of harkats. The bol-anga that followed was equally beautiful. Finally, he ended with spiral tanas which reminded one of cannon fire. I asked him, "Why don't you sing like this always?" He replied at length: "Because all are not discerning listeners like you. I am a Punjabi and people think of me as a musician who is adept at harkats of Punjabi style and good at notation (sa, re, ga, ma). I am also known for my powerful tana. If I do alapi as I just did, within a short while listeners begin to look displeased as if they were saying to themselves, 'Why is Gulam Ali singing today like a singer lacking in guts? What we have come for is some fireworks, fast tanas and harkats of Punjabi flavour. This man is wasting his time in alapi!' When I see the audience getting fidgety I lose my concentration and then give it what it wants. But all the same, what you say, Deodharsaheb, is true. I am sometimes guilty of untidiness in my presentation. It is true. I do realize it, but am somehow powerless to check it"...
Khansaheb was temperamentally very cheerful and a god-fearing kind-hearted person. He was invariably touched if he encountered an abjectly poor or helpless person. On his daily visit to Chowpatty he made frequent stops to hand out money to beggars. He would put his hand in the pocket and hand out whatever he found there, be it a few annas, a rupee or a five-rupee note.
Khansaheb was an uncomplicated person - even a little naive in some matters. It was not in his nature to tell lies and deceive anyone. At one time I did not know that he had once been a sarangi player. One day, he happened to see a sarangi in our school and immediately started playing it. He, of his own accord, told me that at one time he had had to support himself by playing that instrument. When he told me about the privations he had to undergo and the circumstances through which he had to pass there was not the slightest touch of self-consciousness about him.
Whenever we engaged in a chit-chat on Chowpatty sands, a small crowd of music lovers would invariably gather round us. On one such occasion Khansaheb started singing. Within a short time he had an audience of thirty or forty people round him. They were all greatly delighted with his music. Khansaheb's glance happened to fall on a paanwala who had also left his stall to listen to him. Khansaheb said, "Did you see how music makes you forget everything? This paanwala has been standing here for a long time oblivious of the fact that he must sell paan to make a living. The crowd will melt away when the show is over but the poor chap would have lost the evening's business. I must do something for him." He then called the paanwala to his side and asked him to serve paans to every one of the thirty or forty people present, at his expense.
Khansaheb had a keen sense of humour. In 1945 he had to go to Kolhapur for a recital. I accompanied him. At Dewal Club, where we were staying, tea was brought in the morning in somewhat diminutive cups. Khansaheb was amused to see such tiny cups. He turned to me and said, "Deodharsaheb, what is a man of my size going to do with this minute quantity of tea? It is barely enough for one sip!" He ordered an entire pot, drank his fill and treated all others staying at the club to tea. During that visit he decided to go shopping for some vests. He visited several shops but was unable to find one large enough for his size. Finally he found one single garment of the requisite size at a shop. Khansaheb said to the shopkeeper, "What kind of a city you have here! I cannot find a vest I can wear!" Khansaheb was a spend- thrift. Whenever he was flush with money he would indulge in an orgy of spending. Naturally some people took advantage of his gullibility and extravagant habits. But Khansaheb rarely complained. He would say, "Fate earmarked the money for them - so they got it."
Khansaheb's fondness for food is well known. It is true that he loved good and nourishing food. If he happened to be hungry and food was late in coming he would become visibly disturbed. But stories about his gargantuan appetite, for example that he habitually polished off four chickens and fifty rotis, were largely apocryphal. I can vouch for the fact that he was not a glutton. It was his parasitic companions who gorged themselves on his food and spread stories about his huge appetite.
As Khansaheb was a Pakistan national he had to return to Pakistan when his visa was about to expire. He had innumerable admirers in India and he was in great demand all over the country for concert performances. Consequently he was inclined to take up Indian citizenship which was not easy. Those who were originally residents of what became India but migrated to Pakistan for security reasons could regain their Indian citizenship. But Khansaheb, being a resident of Lahore (in Pakistan), was unlikely to be able to acquire Indian citizenship.
On one occasion, Khansaheb gave a recital at the residence of Morarji Desai when the latter was the Chief Minister of Bombay. Morarji was greatly pleased with the recital. Khansaheb, seeing this to be a good opportunity for bringing up the subject of his citizenship, said to Morarji, "I am really more fond of India than Pakistan. There are thousands of people here who love my music and I should very much like to settle down here. But because I come from Lahore (which makes me a Pakistani national), I have to obtain a visa for coming to India. When the period of the visa, which is some seven to eight months, is over I have to return to Pakistan." Morarji heard him out and said, "Khansaheb, if you wish to live here and are determined to become an Indian national let me know. I shall try to arrange it." Khansaheb having made a declaration to that effect, Morarji got him to make a formal application which he forwarded to Delhi with his own recommen- dation. Khansaheb succeeded in acquiring Indian citizenship in 1957-58....
