Shahjadpur
5 July 1895
Yesterday they were playing tunes from devotionals [kīrtan] at the nahabat long into the night—it felt quite wonderful, and very appropriate in this rural atmosphere—as simple as it was tender. There was a soft breeze and sparkling moonlight last night, and the nahabat was being played in lingering detail. I kept the windows open and went to sleep listening to that music. This morning I woke up to the same music. In the olden days, kings had court musicians who sang at specific hours by which you could tell the time; that aristocratic habit seems very desirable to me. In my childhood when we lived in the garden house at Peneti, the nahabat would play three or four times a day from the Dakshineshwar Shiva temple next door—I used to think then that the moment I grew up and became independent, I would employ a nahabat like it. The stone god who is deaf to the unbearable din of the brass bells does not need to hear the opening notes of the ragas of the nahabat four times a day. Far better if some pious soul made an arrangement for such a nahabat to play for gods [ṭhākur] like us, then the music would not be played in vain.* Then this daily inconsequential life would become so much more pleasurable, and the day’s work and duties would not induce such feelings of unbearable weariness and renunciation. The moment I hear music or song I realize how thirsty I had been feeling all the while for music—that’s why I really wish sometimes that someone close to me would learn how to play a musical instrument really well.