New Delhi: Pandit Ram Narayan was only eight years old when he began playing the sarangi, a bowed Indian string instrument. His father, Nathuji Biyavat, a farmer and musician from Rajasthan, saw potential in his son and asked him to leave school to master the short-necked, three-stringed instrument. It was the 1930s, and sarangi was considered socially backward, typically played only in courtesans’ salons.
Relatives, neighbours, and friends questioned Biyavat, asking why he was jeopardising his son’s future.
“My grandfather would say that his son, Ram, wouldn’t play the sarangi in courtesan salons but at All India Radio (AIR) and on the national stage. His prophecy came true,” recalled Ram Narayan’s daughter, Aruna Narayan. Pandit Ram Narayan went on to sing at AIR in Lahore when he was just a teenager.
On 9 November, the sarangi virtuoso died at the age of 96. From Maharashtra governor CP Radhakrishnan to the Sangeet Natak Akademi, tributes poured in for the legendary musician.
His daughter Aruna, considered the first Indian woman to play sarangi professionally, said her father would jokingly boast about attending school for only two days.
“He would tell us how my grandfather, who knew only the basics of the sarangi, taught my father and asked him to leave school to focus on riyaz (practice). Despite no formal education, he could speak fluent English and Punjabi,” she told ThePrint over a phone call.
Later, Narayan’s father took him to popular sarangi players in Rajasthan to learn the instrument.
Pandit Ram Narayan is credited with bringing the sarangi out of the shadows of traditional Indian music and giving it its own distinguished place on the national and global stage.
Bollywood—only for money-making
The popular track ‘Chalte Chalte Yun Hi Koi Mil Gaya Tha’ from the classic Bollywood film Pakeezah (1972) opens with a sarangi solo by Ram Narayan. It took over 21 takes to set the desired emotional tone for the song, which was sung by Lata Mangeshkar.
In this song, actor Meena Kumari, who plays the titular character Sahibjaan, longs for romantic love and expresses her desire to escape life as a courtesan.
This acclaimed song elevated both Ram Narayan’s status in the film industry and the sarangi’s place in popular Bollywood music – transforming it from a mere accompanying instrument to a stand-alone one like the sitar.
However, Bollywood was not Ram Narayan’s dream—classical music was his true passion.
“Playing in Bollywood was a source of income for my father. He had a family to support, and classical music back then didn’t pay much. But he was incredibly successful and even became the highest-paid musician in the industry,” said Aruna.
Once he had earned enough money to secure his family’s future, Narayan left the Hindi film industry to focus on classical music. He became a celebrated solo concert artist, recorded albums, and embarked on his first international tour in 1964 to the United States and Europe with his older brother Chatur Lal, a tabla player.
His student, Vasanti, who trained with him for 25 years, recalls Narayan’s struggles to establish the sarangi as a solo instrument in India.
“The idea of the sarangi as a solo instrument was unheard of in India, and when Narayan started performing solo, the response was underwhelming. He felt disheartened. But then he went to Germany, where musicians were mesmerised by his performance. When he returned to India, people’s perception of the sarangi had changed,” Vasanti recounted.
Narayan even released a book called Indian Music in Performance: A Practical Introduction, in collaboration with Neil Sorell. In the introduction of this book, Yehudi Menuhin, an American-British violinist, described Narayan as a “supreme artist.”
“I cannot separate Sarangi from Ram Narayan, so thoroughly fused are they, not in my memory but in the fact of this sublime dedication of a great musician to an instrument which is no longer archaic because of the matchless way he has made it speak,” said Menuhin in the introduction.
Also read: Violin maestro M.S. Gopalakrishnan who mastered both Carnatic and Hindustani Classical music
Simple man, a hands-on father
Aruna Narayan was 18 when she realised she wanted to play Sarangi. She was nervous because most musicians start much younger, and she was already at the fag end of her teens.
“I went to my father and said, ‘I don’t wish to sing because I don’t enjoy it; I want to learn the sarangi instead.’ Without a second thought, he replied, ‘Why not? If you truly want to learn, then play. There’s no age limit for starting an instrument.”
And with that, her father became her guru.
Although Pandit Ram Narayan was deeply immersed in his music, he was never an absent father. According to his daughter, while he went on tours every two months, he made sure to be fully involved with his family when he was home.
His students remember him as a simple man who never thought of himself as a maestro. Violinist Anupriya Deotale, Ram Narayan’s student from 2002 to 2010, recalls visiting him in Mumbai for classes and meeting him in Delhi whenever he was in the city.
She remembers the time she and Narayan went to a Delhi emporium to buy kurtas. On their way, Narayan spotted an elephant near India Gate and insisted they stop the car so that he could buy bananas for the animal.
“We brought bananas, and without any fear, he went up to the elephant and fed it by hand. Such was his compassion and simplicity. He had only love to give,” Deotale said about her guru.
In his last months, Pandit Ram Narayan was mostly found resting in bed. His daughter came to visit from Canada, and would practise her sarangi in the next room. She made sure to close the door so as not to disturb him.
One day, Narayan’s nurse came up to her and said: “Please didi, don’t close the door. Even in his sleep, his fingers are moving while listening to your music.”
This pleasantly surprised Aruna. “That’s when I realised you can’t take music out of Pandit Ram Narayan.”
From that moment on, she practised with her door open, letting him hear the sarangi till his last breath.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)