‘Foreign pupils love me, India’

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Classical flute exponent Pandit Haripra-sad Chaurasia is helping the West relate to the Indian culture in a rather unusual way. He has encouraged at least 22 of his foreign students, mostly from the US and the Europe, to adopt Indian identities at his gurukuls. “They love the flute, they love me and they love India. And they want to

acquire Indian identities. At least 22 of my foreign students have changed their names to convert to Indian music, Indian spirituality and the Indian way of life,:” the 73-year-old flute maestro said.
His gurukuls in Mumbai and Bhubaneswar are called Hari Ka Vrindavan. The foreign students mostly hail from the US, Estonia, Britain, France and other European countries but are addressed by their Indian names like Shankar, Sita, Shiva and Chitra.
“They sit on the floor, meditate, practise yoga every day, pray, eat Indian food and even craft their own flutes (with Assam bamboo wood). They follow the guru-shishya (student-teacher) tradition of the gurukul (traditional spiritual retreat).”
Chaurasia was in New Delhi to perform at the Shriram Shankarlal Music Festival this weekend.
The flute exponent spends time between his two gurukuls and the Rotterdam Music Conservatory in the Netherlands, where he heads the department of world music.
The regimen at his gurukul is rigorous. “The training session begins at 6 am with yoga and ends at 9 pm. The students are taught to write music, compose music, speak about music and learn western and north Indian and south Indian musical traditions. The motto is serve the guru, learn from him, and be happy,” he said. Gurukul as a knowledge hub in India dates back to the Vedic age.
Chaurasia, who was honoured with the French Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts des Lettres in 2010 and knighted by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in 2004, owes his “training in classical music to his guruma Annapurna Devi, the daughter of Ustad Allaudin Khan of the Maihar gharana”.
“Before his death, Ustad Allaudin Khan told me to learn music from his daughter. I followed my heart years later and studied music from Annapurna Devi, who was then living with sitar maestro Ravi Shankar,” he said.
— IANS