Many of us can’t forget the legendary classical singer who twisted his mouth and swayed his hands in the air as his vocal cords took him on that perfect pitch to produce divine music. But how many people know that Raghavendra Bhimsen Joshi is Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s son? Not many. Unless one stops at the middle name and links it to the illustrious exponent of Hindustani classical tradition. Even on various occasions, Raghavendra had to prove that Pt Joshi was his father. His plight would have eased, had the maestro handed down his remarkable art to his eldest son. But never did it happen. Raghavendra would attend hundreds of his father’s performances and practice on his own, but he was never trained by the singer who took Kirana Gharana to the masses.
Raghavendra was allowed to sing to his father only on two occasions—one being during his last days. Bhimsen Joshi, My Father is an intensely emotional account of the singer’s forsaken son; his life-long struggle to stake claim to his own blood and his bittersweet memories with his father. The tell-all book, with anecdotes gathered from his and his family’s memories, gives a glimpse into the little-known personal life behind the mellifluous voice that continues to entertain after his death in 2011.
Raghavendra is born of Pt Joshi’s first and neglected wife, Sunanda Katti, who bore three more children. When he was around five, Bhimsen Joshi eloped and married his disciple Vatsala Mudholkar, with whom he had three children.
“It was the darkest day in my mother’s life. The bag containing precious articles was open and her gold chain was missing. She cooked as usual and waited for Bhimanna (Raghavendra’s paternal uncles addressed Bhimsen by this name) to come back for lunch, but there was no sign of him. That very moment my mother’s niece Sudha rushed in to say ‘that woman’ too had disappeared.”
Raghavendra recalls their painful days from small towns of Karnataka to Nagpur in search of their father, and then the days in Pune, where Bhimsen briefly attempted to stay together, before moving in with his second wife and family.
In his attempt to present a true picture of his father, Raghavendra has narrated a few incidents which show heartlessness of his father. But sentences like “Bhimanna tried to strike a balance between his two households” and “when he bought a used Fox motorbike, he gave me a long ride through the city... took us all to a restaurant in the cantonment area where we ate good food to our hearts’ content. Overall he was an affectionate soul” make up for it. That the first family literally fasted while the second family feasted gave rise to Raghavendra’s bitterness. The former lived in the shadows of the famed Bhimsen, who was conferred the Bharat Ratna in 2009, while the latter hogged all the limelight.
“Once he (Bhimsen) was performing at Churchgate (Mumbai). During the intermission, the ‘young prince’ (writer’s stepbrother) climbed into Bhimanna’s lap. I was right in front of my father, but he didn’t so much as look at me. ‘She’ (stepmother), too, was present. I was so hurt that I got up and sat at the back of the hall, weeping bitterly, unable to understand why I was forsaken, what sin I had committed, especially since Mother had told me how Bhimanna had danced when I was born.”
Raghavendra recalls how he felt humiliated when he visited the second family for their monthly dole. “...‘She’ (stepmother) would ask him, ‘Are you going to squander all your money on strangers’? ... How were we strangers? I could never make out,” he writes.
Although Bhimsen lived separately from Sunanda, it didn’t stop him from attending family events, which shows how he never wanted to alienate them. “He was saddened by the bickering between his two families and the pricks of his conscience.” Bhimsen Joshi “lived with a sense of guilt” and “hounded by these ghouls, he even tried to commit suicide once. When this failed he started to drink heavily.”
Raghavendra, in awe of his father, describes the maestro as “the gullible Shiva who gave his blessing even to the devil who pleased him”. On that forlorn note, the book is a must-read.