A Seeker at the Edge of the Well: Chaitanya Tamhane’s ‘The Disciple’ (2020)
Facebook link for the abridged version of this essay in 10 slides
Instagram link for the abridged version of this essay in 10 slides
Netflix started streaming Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple from end April 2021. The film won the Best Screenplay award and the FIPRESCI International Critics prize at the Venice Film Festival. Tamhane’s first film Court (2014) too won an award at Venice — the Best Film in the Horizons category. Court arguably stands out as the best Indian film of the last decade. From the Kafkaesque trial of a Dalit activist in the Mumbai Sessions court in this debut film, Tamhane moves to the Marathi Brahmin subculture of Khayal music in Mumbai.
Synopsis
Sharad Nerulkar (Aditya Modak), a 24-year-old vocalist, was initiated into Hindustani classical music by his father (Kiran Yadnyopavit) at a young age. Over a period of more than a decade he gets trained by Guruji — the gharana maestro Pandit Vinayak Pradhan (Dr. Arun Dravid) — who was his late father’s guru too. Learning under Guruji is somewhat in the style of the traditional gurukula for Sharad — involving massaging him, attending on him and doing chores for him. Despite his commitment Sharad finds Khayal challenging and gets corrected frequently by his guru. Can he go on learning till the age of 40 as his Guru says to attain some level of mastery?
Structure
The narrative is punctuated by scenes in which Sharad is shown riding his motor bike in slow motion listening to the tapes of Guruji’s guru: the Alwar Gharana’s matriarch Maestra Sindhubai Jadav known as ‘Maai’ who is no more. We hear her in the voice of Sumitra Bhave to the accompaniment of the tanpura. Her pithy aphorisms take us to another world in which music is looked upon as an eternal spiritual pursuit. In the very first tape Sharad listens to there is a warning by her: “If you want to earn money, raise a family, then perform love songs or film songs, don’t tread this path”. Undaunted by this, Sharad tries to continue the path but finds Maai’s idealistic aphorisms hard to live upto.
**Article contains spoilers**
Khayal
The film revolves around the struggle of Sharad trying to master Hindusthani classical music. Khayal, the genre of singing he is learning is demanding as it is to do with the state of mind. There is a lot of improvisation in this genre so the singer plays the role of a composer too. The singer composer expresses his state of mind in that moment through his singing. It takes long years of sadhana to become proficient in it. Those who are successful can make it big as there is a sizable following for such music. There are various traditional aspects of classical music that are passed onto Sharad as legacy. The school of music (Alwar Gharana) he belongs to has a particular style. Although there is a lot of scope for creativity as the singer musician has to improvise on the fly, he has to stick to the style of his school and not stray away from it. Films on success stories are aplenty. They don’t offer much insight into complexities of life. The Disciple takes a different path and in the process takes an in depth look at the complex world of classical music in changing times.
Struggle of an artist going against the mainstream
Some of the plights of the uncompromising musician protagonist could be common to other fields too such as literature and cinema. A budding writer focused on literary fiction may not even get published. In the case of a student of cinema, it is extremely challenging to raise funds to make an art film. A commonality among them is not to pander to the mainstream, resulting in artistic work at the cost of material success.
The gurukula system in music
What a student of music comparatively faces is much more challenging. It takes long years to learn in the case of Hindustani music. Although things have changed a lot, there has been the traditional gurukula system in which the student stays with or stays close to the guru (as in The Disciple), takes care of him and learns from him. Sharad has taken up a small-time job with a publisher of classical music CDs so that he can fully devote himself to helping and learning from his guru. The film employs wide shots and long takes, not giving away what goes on in the minds of its characters and letting the audience seeing things on their own. As we see in the film, the guru-shishya relationship is dealt with in detail. Sharad idolizes Guruji and subjugates himself to him. As for Guruji, he is very much dependent on him. Perhaps Sharad is his chosen disciple to pass on his legacy, reason why Guruji keeps correcting him — which he doesn’t seem to be doing with his fellow students Sneha and Tejas. Also, Sharad holds the tradition of music so sacred that he wants to be perfect and doesn’t want to make a mistake. In one of the teaching sessions, while singing the raag, Sharad stops abruptly as he has been repeating himself while Tejas and Sneha don’t appear to have such qualms and they are able to pull it off.
Veneration of an icon
Much more than the guru the unseen guru’s guru wields enormous influence on Sharad. It is Chaitanya Tamhane’s master stroke to come up with the idea of the secretly recorded tapes of the lectures of Maai, the reclusive maestra. There are scenes in which Sharad is seen riding on his bike listening to her tapes. Maai is not supposed to have given performances. In one of her lectures, she talks about singing for guru or god and not for an audience. Guruji gives performances but mostly for small gatherings for which he doesn’t even get taxi fare. Guruji considers Maai’s music as divine purity. Maai says in another lecture: “Saints and ascetics have attained this music after thousands of years of rigorous spiritual pursuit. It cannot be learnt so easily. Even ten lifetimes are not enough”. The centuries old legacy, passed onto Sharad from Maai through these taped lectures, have an impact on him.
Ideal versus the practical
Over the years Sharad finds it challenging to go by the ideals put forth by Maai. Also, the hard work he has put doesn’t seem to payoff and he wonders whether a lifelong pursuit without reward is possible in the materialistic world. When we see him after a gap of 12 years it is the second chapter in the film. Compared to the first chapter shot somewhat in a romantic way as Sharad still had his dreams, the second part appears prosaic and less colorful. Sharad finds that the audience has changed and he has to promote himself. He poses for photographs for his website, gives performances, cultivates people, invites them to attend his performances and thanks them when they do so. But his rigorous approach to music elicits harsh comments on the social media. Unlike him Sharad finds that Sneha is a rising star who gets good appreciation for her performances. Perhaps Sneha is more practical than him. She is able to appeal to the audience and she is likely to succeed and have a flourishing career. Sharad also watches with some envy a reality show on TV in which a young girl from rural Bengal makes it to the finals of the Fame India music contest. He too wants some recognition which would have been anathema to Maai. Sharad also cannot stick to the monastic discipline Maai appears to call for in a lecture. There are a couple of scenes in which he is seen watching porn and practicing self-abuse. This will appear odd in a country like India which has a puritanical attitude to sex said to be due to the influence of Victorian values. Tamhane wants to cover all aspects of his protagonist.
Student as a consumer
The attitude to Khayal is no longer as committed as it has been for Sharad. This comes through in a scene in which the mother of Karan, a student in his music class comes to him. Karan wants Sharad’s permission to join a fusion band and continue to attend his class. Sharad clearly says that if Karan joins the band, he shouldn’t come back to classical as it will affect his Khayal singing. Karan’s mother feels offended to hear this as she is a consumerist who feels that she is paying for her son so he can continue to attend the class.
The iconoclastic critic
Sharad’s devotion to Guruji and Maai takes a beating when he meets Rajan Joshi (Prasad Vanarase) the music critic — a character very well conceived as a counterpoint. Joshi questions the myths about Maii such as the one on her lack of interest in performing for an audience. He claims to have heard her in person and he is critical of her for disparaging the Mughal influence on music. On Guruji he says that it was not as if Guruji wasn’t interested in concerts. He couldn’t handle the pressure of the stage. Joshi has heard that Maai’s lectures were secretly recorded and he is sure that they will be a sham. Although Sharad can’t take the criticism on Maai and Guruji and reacts to Joshi by throwing water on his face, over the years he appears to see some truth in it. In a performance for a small gathering he sees Guruji lacking in confidence. Maai’s last talk in which she calls her most faithful student — perhaps Sharad’s grandfather — incompetent. It has an effect on Sharad who wonders whether he too is incompetent despite being a faithful student. In the past he was possessive of Maai’s tapes and didn’t even share them with Sneha. He gives them away to a library even though it is not keen on keeping lectures on music.
Integrity to one’s gharana
The scene in which Sharad gives his last performance which he aborts is puzzling. An explanation from a friend knowledgeable in music suggests that in this scene Sharad starts exploring the raag Miya Malhar. Soon he realizes that he is going away from the mould in the process. It is sacrilegious for him and he doesn’t want to do it. So, he quietly walks out. It is not a protest against his school of music. He continues to respect it but his integrity to his gharana/ style wouldn’t let him give a performance. It can be argued that he could have started his own style. That will need a fundamental break from his school or branching from it which the character does not have in him. As shown in the third chapter of the film set in 2022, he sets up a company to promote North Indian classical music, releasing the legacy of Alwar as the first offering. He is earning his money and he has raised a family too.
How does The Disciple Fare?
Casting is superb in the film which has actual musicians such as Dr. Arun Dravid, Aditya Modak and Deepika Bhide Bhagwat acting in the film with excellent result. Music design by Dr. Aneesh Pradhan has been appreciated by experts. Cinematography by Michał Sobociński evokes the changing world of the protagonist in the three chapters skillfully. Michał has an impressive pedigree. His father Piotr Sobociński has worked with Krzysztof Kieślowski. Michał’s grandfather Witold Sobociński worked with a number of great Polish filmmakers such as Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi and Roman Polanski. It seems that finding the cinematographer for The Disciple was one of the ways the Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón — an Executive Producer of the film — helped it. Producer Vivek Gomber has been proved right in backing both Court and The Disciple. Chaitanya Tamhane has come up with yet another extraordinary film. The Disciple touches a core aspect of Indian existence with its legacy of centuries old tradition. Yet it has a universal theme too.
As Sharad travels by metro with his wife and daughter, a folk singer moves about in the compartment singing the haunting melody of a Goraknath bhajan. What does one make of Sharad’s next phase of life as the ending is ambiguous? Going by the protagonist’s psyche, although he has adapted himself to changing conditions, Sharad appears to retain Maii’s core value of seeking aesthetic truth, eschewing the pursuit of success and fame — as they will come in the way. So he doesn’t want to take center stage as a musician but function at the fringes of music instead. To paraphrase a line from the Goraknath bhajan sung by the folk singer (another man on the fringe), “At the edge of a well, oh, seeker” Sharad perhaps finds it aesthetically fulfilling to be a seeker at the edge of the well.
