Gentle to a Fault : Aditya Sudarshan on Mitra Phukan's "A Monsoon of Music"

If the book tackled the questions it throws up, it would have been something of a masterpiece. 

A Monsoon of Music

Mitra Phukan

Penguin Zubaan, 2011

`450, 432 pages

Paperback/Novel

A Monsoon of Music, Mitra Phukan's second novel, is set in the world of Hindustani classical music in and around Assam and Bengal. It is a gentle and leisurely novel, with a minimalist but detailed plot, and a consistent atmosphere of unhurried musicality. What Phukan says about classical music applies equally to this book: “it could never be absorbed... in a hurry... you needed time to savour the way it unfolded.”  

The story itself is simple. Nomita Sharma is a 26-year-old vocalist living in the little town of Tamulbari near Kaziranga, where she studies classical music under her guruma, Sandhya Senapati, and teaches school children. Nomita has received a proposal from Kaushik Kashyap, a young sitar maestro who has already gained national and international renown, and is set to gain even more. Nomita's response to this proposal is the central drama of the novel. But it is a drama that is treated in a curiously undramatic manner. There is little overt tension created, and there is no obvious conflict presented. Phukan's characters are almost all uniformly intelligent and reasonable, which means that there is no particular parental pressure on Nomita, nor any oppressive demands from the groom-to-be or his family. Nomita has space and time to reflect on her situation, to gather information about her potential husband, to think about the implications of arranged marriages in general, and marriage to a musical genius in particular. Her reflections occur over the course of what is, quite literally, 'a monsoon of music', a series of concerts in Tamulbari and Kolkata, which also become the setting for many discussions about classical music, the dangers of an insular puritanism, the dangers of commercialism, the bond between the guru and the shishya and so on. This last subject acquires a special relevance once Nomita becomes aware of the rumours that surround the relationship between her guruma, Sandhya – perfectly fitted, as far as Nomita knew, to her musician husband Tridib – and an industrialist named Deepak Rathod. She does not, at first, believe the rumours – her teacher is her role model – but they give her food for thought. 

Now, none of this may sound gripping, but it does come close to being mesmerising. Phukan creates the reader's interest in her characters by the simple expedient of being interested in them herself.  There is no pandering to prevailing fashion. Nomita, for example, is a perfectly plain girl, not greatly beautiful, not very greatly talented, fairly conservative in dress and taste – and intelligent – altogether a contrast to the typical young female protagonist of the modern Indian English novel. The same principle applies to the expositions of music that run through the book. Phukan is interested, and so even a completely ignorant reader like myself, if willing to be patient, is also quite likely to be drawn in. 

However, he or she is also likely to be a little disappointed. It is perfectly artistically valid to hold clear of overt drama, but Phukan never quite catches hold of even the covert drama that is certainly inherent in her story. She hints at powerful questions, but fails to fully tackle them. Is an artist as a person defined by his or her art? Is a 'fitting' marriage the most exemplary marriage? Can the values of classical music, with its emphasis on structural perfection, become damaging to one who lives and breathes them in all things? If this book, which does throw up these questions, had also seen them through, it would have been something of a masterpiece. As it is, the climax of the novel feels wrongly engineered; its emphasis beside the point. Nomita overcomes what was never really assailing her. She had never been troubled by the commonplace middle-class fear of other people's opinions, but by her own special attitude to music and musicians. But that attitude is allowed to pass, insufficiently tested. 

One thus feels a certain tameness in the novel as a whole, stemming from the absence of a well-developed antithesis. Even the frequent debates Phukan's characters indulge in never draw blood, so to speak. It is as though, having fashioned so lovingly their gentle personalities, the author is loath to really disturb them, and having intimately introduced the world of classical music, she has grown shy of undermining it. Still, the personalities are real and human, the world is truly captivating, and the drama, though unfulfilled, is certainly discernible. All of this makes A Monsoon of Music a very fine novel, worth reading.