SANGEETACHARYA AJOY SINHA ROY

Like Annapurna Devi, Ajoy Sinha Roy also stayed away from the public limelight and spent his days disseminating the musical knowledge he had received from his Guru Ustad Allauddin Khan, among his disciples. Pandit Ajoy Sinha Roy's virtuosity far outstripped pecuniary considerations or those of attainment of flimsy fame that pass with time like ripples on water-surface and he passed his private hours after the daily ritual of office-work in contemplation of the moods of the ragas which then flowed out from the strings of his sitar in tearful torrents. Those were rare days when as a child I was witness to the evening sessions he had with his disciples as I sat spell-bound listening to the melodic streams that filled the air in his small music room and engulfed me with it, a harmony of sounds I was not yet groomed to comprehend in any depth but which touched the blossoming soul of a boy in bud.

The maestro was seated on a carpet on the floor of his room with students holding their sitars sitting in front of him and I, barely ten years old, seated in a corner witnessing the proceedings. The atmosphere, I remember, was strangely unfamiliar to the commonplace circumstance I was used to and seemed to me even then to be of an exalted kind I could not understand. This was my first acquaintance with Hindustani classical music which deepened over the years when I started taking lessons later from the doyen. Those that were learning from him that day saw the best in him for he was at the height of his powers although living as a musical recluse and it surely has not served the best interests of Hindustani classical music by sidelining deliberately such a towering genius to serve the vested interests of mediocrity masked as musician of repute. This inability of the connoisseurs of music to bring the reticent Ajoy Sinha Roy to the limelight, this neglect of genius, this self-serving attitude of even those musicians who learned from him to earn eminence in the world of instrumental music has harmed the cause of Indian music irreparably, as much of what he had mastered from his own master Ustad Allauddin Khan was thus lost to posterity. Only two audio recordings of his are available to the public which were recorded when he was very advanced in age and had lost much of health and musical touch but which still reveal some of the golden moments of his musical life.

True art compromises not. So it was that Ajoy Sinha Roy never compromised with life for cheap popularity or gain but stuck to his sadhana lifelong, that of attainment of musical perfection. He was on the panel of experts of the ITC Sangeet Research Academy and was respected by the musical legends of the age like Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Pandit Nikhi Banerjee and revered alike by a host of others. He remained lifelong a musical virtuoso who avoided the glitter of the world but preferred instead to immerse himself in his pursuit of musical excellence and the dissemination of his vast musical knowledge among worthy recipients. Like Annapurna Devi at the other end of the spectrum, Sangeetacharya Ajoy Sinha Roy was a musical mystic who soared above the melee of the musical market and emerged a triumphant soul, tranquil, self-absorbed and in union with his own higher self that sought expression through melodic outpourings and the transfusion of musical blood into his disciples. But unlike many in his musical fraternity this genial man was but purely a musician and had no marketing propensities in him at all. And that aptly sums up his personality.

He is gone from our midst. His name like his musical ripples is merging in the immensity of space-time. Yet, his music resounds in the corridors of my mind, careering me on to that eventual end, the seeking of harmony with the instruments that compose the symphony of life. My prostrations at the lotus feet of my musical Guru!