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On a Sunday afternoon
I went to Worli to make a discovery. Mohan Samant, the painter
is a classical musician as well. He plays the sarangi and his
style is quite ... different from all the rest. With a large
canvas of his showing a bull and a woman together in an unconventional
posture serving as the back drop, Samant sat with a glass of
vodka on a mattress. He talked of the artist's compulsive search
for forms, the communion with the unconscious, the breakway
from the traditional associative forms. Then Samant came out
with a splendid subject for speculation. What could have been
the attitudes suggested by the ten heads of Ravana when Sita
was in Lanka! And then he played the sarangi; we did without
the tabla. Samant played the Bairagi going to the kharaj from
unpredictable points. He does it with the grace of a pearl diver.
His patterns are short and quick. They change fast but they
are like the premises of a syllogism. And then suddenly a cyclonic
fury overtook him, the fingers moved in a feverish delirium
and the melody burst out like brightness from a sparkler. It
was a pity he chose to play Bhairavi after this. The afternoon
concluded so very abruptly.
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