ANNAPURNA DEVI: AN UNHEARD MELODY By Swapan Kumar Bondyopadhyay Roli Price: Rs 295 Pages: 208

Annapurna Devi: An Unheard Melody marks another episode in the soap saga of India's most celebrated musical family of Ustad Allauddin Khan of Maihar and that of his more famous son-in-law, Pandit Ravi Shankar. After the sitar icon's three candidly colourful confessionals (My Music My Life; Raag Anurag (Bangla) and Raga Mala: The Autobiography of Ravi Shankar), here at last is the much-awaited "authorised" perspective of the wronged, silently suffering wife, the enigmatic and unseen Annapurna.

PICTURE SPEAK

MEMORIES: Shankar and Annapurna with son Shubho; (below) Annapurna

As it fights shy of taking on the onus of a direct first person narrative, this biography reads as a wishy-washy yet vicious attack on Shankar's charismatic persona. Through quotes from secondary sources like nephews Ashis and Dhyanesh at best, and innuendo and unattributed stories at worst, the gharana empire strikes back at its prodigal son-in-law. And how.

The cardinal accusations against Shankar are that he was not only habitually unfaithful to his wife (and all the other women in his life), but more demonically, he sought to stop her from playing in public. And Annapurna, ever the paragon of unseen, unheard purity, magnanimously obliged. Sample a couple of salacious slices: "Many say that her father had directed her not to play in public so that Ravi Shankar's playing does not sound lacklustre to the audience... After that evening's recital (at Delhi's Constitution Club, March 30, 1955) there was humming among the audience. Then the judgement of the listeners placed the crown on Annapurna. I do not know if Annapurna ever performed in public after this." (Author's italics.) And further: "She felt that Ravi was suffering from an inferiority complex because she got rave reviews. The jugalbandis, in their five or six concerts together, were enough to establish her superiority over Ravi Shankar as a performer... Ravi Shankar was justifiably jealous. And so he elicited a vow from his wife that she would no longer play in public. There are many versions of this anecdote afloat, mostly apocryphal. Annapurna, however, told me that something worse had happened than Ravi attempting to make her take this oath. But she added that she would divulge it to none. 'That will go with me when I go.'" So obsessive is the writer's preoccupation with running Shankar down musically that he even argues that the maestro and his present wife conspired to tamper with son Shubho's microphone levels during the few concerts at which the ill-fated man partnered with his celebrated father.

Of course, it is another matter that the "rave reviews" mentioned are not documented, nor are there any recordings of Shankar-Annapurna duets. In fact, there is not a single published recording of Annapurna, and the two privately made tapes that this reviewer has heard fail to justify the claim by a long measure. More significantly, the book projects a disturbing profile of a reclusive, emotionally repressed, yet passionately sincere, teacher who-once the barrier was broken-could be a perceptive and loving master to her small band of dedicated disciples. With star students like Nikhil Bannerji and Hariprasad Chaurasia, one could have looked at Annapurna as an Indian Nadia Boulenger (1887-1979), the French conductor and teacher who created many 20th century composers from Philip Glass to Vanraj Bhatia.

There are intimate revelatory glimpses into Annapurna's secret world but they tend to get subverted by the writer's sentimentality. Sadly, from Swapan Bondyopadhyay's narrative, the enigmatic Annapurna descends to the level of a tinsel devi, a betrayed Tani to the Tansen of our times.