The lilting notes of friendship

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s fan following in Mumbai included some of the city’s wealthiest men and women. Hosting him in their grand homes was a dream project for many of them. But for the four decades that the legendary singer gave concerts in Mumbai, there was only one place he would stay—the Worli flat of his boyhood friend Narhari B H Kulkarni, where he greatly enjoyed a rustic meal of jowari bhakri and bhaji.
The very ordinary businessman with eclectic tastes, seven years younger to Panditji, had known him through his ups and downs, his peak as well as his one bad patch. Kulkarni, after all had been there when, at age 20, the master singer had made his debut in their hometown, Hubli, with the blessings of his guru, the great Sawai Gandharva.
“He started singing at 7 pm and continued to sing till 6 am the next morning. He held each raga for two hours and did not once repeat a single taan, he was that creative even then,” recalls 82-year - old Kulkarni.
Fate brought the two friends together once again in Mumbai in 1946. A young singer looking for a break on radio, Panditji had moved to Mumbai to seek his fortune. He shared a one-room tenement in Matunga with 20 other struggling youngsters all from the Dharwad-Bijpaur-Karwar-Belgaum belt. All they could use that room was to bathe and sleep in.
The tram journey from Matunga to the AIR office at Charni Road cost an anna then and since the jobless singer could not afford it, he would walk the whole distance to try his luck at the radio station. Time and again he would be shooed off by the AIR bosses. But his persistence paid off and he began to be given occasional programmes. Each programme would fetch him Rs 5 and he would make it last for 15 days.
“He survived on kurmura (puffed rice) and shengdana (peanuts),” recollects Kulkarni. But Joshi’s incredible talent did not remain hidden for long; he became a regular on radio and started travelling extensively on concerts. He moved to Pune and built himself a home there. By the ’70s he had become one of the most loved and acclaimed figures on the Hindustani music scene.
“But he remained a humble and unpretentious man throughout,” says Kulkarni. “No ego, no politics, no desire for the trappings of fame. He was a spiritual man, a follower of Raghavendra Swami. And all that mattered to him was his music and his audience. You know he would go to any length to see a smile on the face of his listeners, even if it meant singing for an extra hour. He would sometimes break into a taan right here on my terrace and ask me: ‘How does that sound?’ He was the only singer I ever listened to actually.”
The only time the singer would get riled was when he had to deal with uninformed reviews, critics who could not even identify his music. Smiles Kulkarni, “He would publicly chide the critics by singing a raga and asking them: ‘So now tell me, what did I sing?’ ” The only man who remained totally unperturbed by the lack of official recognition, the delay in being awarded a Bharat Ratna and all such political issues connected to his life was the man himself.
Kulkarni would visit him once a month even after Joshi became bed-ridden some years ago. “The discussions always revolved around the family, our mutual friends,” he says. It was a friendship that lasted till the very end.