A Review of 6-A Akash Ganga by Nirmal Chander Dhandriyal
The documentary 6-A Akash Ganga begins on a note of strict discipline. A man opens the door and instructs the camera crew about the specific rules they need to follow in the house. They are the first people ever allowed to shoot there, he tells them. This sense of privacy and order defines the rest of the film, as the director respects these boundaries and rules while tracking and offering glimpses into the life of its intriguing protagonist.
The subject of the film is the late Annapurna Devi, an exceptional musician and notably the only Indian female instrumentalist of her era, a maestro of the surbahar (a sitar-like instrument). While Tawaifs (courtesans) were very much a part of Hindustani and Carnatic musical traditions, they were singers rather than instrumentalists. Annapurna Devi was trained in the Maihar Gharana, established by her father, the renowned Ustad Alauddin Khan, who was the royal musician at the court of the Maharaja of Maihar, a princely state in colonial India. (Born into a Muslim family, she was named ‘Annapurna’ at her birth by the Maharaja.) Early on, her ‘Baba’ spotted her keen musical sense and considering her the best of all his students, trained her in vocals and then instruments—first the sitar, then the surbahar. This documentary based on a legendary musician also serves as a history of the Indian classical music tradition.
Along the way, the film explores different shades of Annapurna Devi’s life, for instance, the complex dynamics of her marriage to fellow pupil and sitarist, Pandit Ravi Shankar, who would go on to earn international fame. Between the mid-1940s and mid-1950s, they performed many shows together, displaying an intimate chemistry that audiences loved. However, Annapurna Devi was highly competitive and often outperformed him. Ravi Shankar, on his part, felt hurt when people praised her more, leading to the near-breakdown of their marriage in 1956; eventually, he did leave her in 1967 for a career abroad. Her life was ridden with more personal losses: their son Shubhendra Shankar followed his father to America to train and tour with him and eventually died at 50; her second husband, Rooshikumar Pandya, passed away at the age of 73.
Annapurna Devi appears as an enigmatic and secretive personality, deeply invested in shielding her talent and life from the world. Never much interested in the public gaze, she famously took a vow to never perform in public again at what would seem like the height of her career—a promise she did not break even at the urgings of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Much of her life was spent as a dedicated guru to devoted students, with her disciples ranging across instruments. The most notable among them was perhaps the flute maestro Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, who recounts how she was a devotee of the goddess Saraswati, very strict and particular about the time she gave to her students. And it was Nityanand Haldipur, another flutist-disciple, who would go on to care for her as a son till her last days.
The title 6-A Akash Ganga, which initially sounds like a mysterious code name, actually refers to Annapurna Devi’s residence, which served as the setting for so many of these less-known stories. The film reaches a poignant peak when Nityanand Haldipur, the disciple-son comes across this entry in his mother’s journal: “Kaash dard badalo jaisa hota, ban-ta aur mit jata” (I wish pain took the shape of clouds: forming, only to disappear). As we ponder over these plaintive words, we get a sense of the many trials of endurance borne by one of the greatest and most reserved musicians of her time.
–Written by Lavanyaa Jain, 1st year, B.A. Hons. Journalism and Media Studies