Her teacher is Mohan Sundar Shrestha, one of the few sarod players of Nepal. Sarod, as most people would surely know, is a beautiful classical stringed instrument, like a sitar. But fretless, and is known for a deep, weighty, introspective sound contrasting with the sweet, overtone-rich texture of the sitar, with sympathetic strings that give it a resonant, reverberant quality.
“He can easily pass those thin strands of strings in those really tiny holes of his sarod, better than we ever could,” Neupane goes on, “It’s been 20 years since I’ve been learning sarod from him, and he’s a tough teacher to please, but he’s a wonderful person.”
At his home in Kilagal Tole, the 69-year-old sarod player eagerly welcomes his guests. With his very first remark, “Don’t sit there, it’s cold, sit on the mattress,” he proves Neupane right as she had said at some point on the walk to his home. “He can tell our every move, sometimes I wonder if he’s really blind.”
Soon, the teacher and student duo are on their instruments strumming their strings as Shrestha dictates “Pa, ma, ga, re, sa,” and as they both come into tune, the room reverberates with blissful classical melodies.
Shrestha, who was born sightless, did not attend any school, but his parents chose to teach him music. At age 13, when he was sent to learn music under the guidance of the late Narayan Prasad Shrestha, a well known Sarod and Sitar player in the Rana period, he says he was not too sure what he was doing as he could not distinguish one thing from the other.
When asked if he had a hard time learning sarod, he stops playing and says jokingly, “More than me, I think it was harder for my teacher.” As he rubs and massages his fingers, a habit he seems to repeat whenever his hands are free, he adds, “He had to teach me everything by holding and guiding my hands.”
So it was with almost everything he learned. The light-hearted musician shares that the method felt normal for him but for people around him, from his mother to wife, children and students, communicating with him may have been a bit difficult.
Neupane, who is also organizing Shrestha’s solo concert at Gurukul on December 11, intervenes to exchange some information on the current developments of the concert. She then puts in, “He taught me the same way, and though he gets irritated sometimes, he’s been patient.”
For Shrestha, who currently plays sarod at Hotel Annapurna everyday except Thursdays for an an hour and half, from 6 to 7:30 pm, teaching has been a lot harder. Having taught to play instruments like sarod and sitar for more than two decades, he says he still does not believe that people can teach music.
“It’s just about discovering notes, but then, you can’t set a line on which the teacher or the student is or should be. As long as you’re playing, you’re a student of music,” he says, carefully keeping aside his sarod, the instrument he seems to know even better than the back of his own hands.
Besides his lifelong dedication to master every tune on the sarod, Shrestha has worked at many places as a musician – from Radio Nepal to the National Theatre and the Royal Palace. He has been honored with numerous national awards from the Gorkha Dakshin Bahu to the Trishakti Patta; yet, after all his contributions, he still remains mostly unseen and more unfortunately, unrecorded.
“The most important objective of the solo concert we’re trying to organize for him at Gurukul is to have a visual album of him playing his finest tunes. I hope it’s a success because the world deserves to see him play, and he definitely deserves it, too,” shares Neupane, new to all the event management business, and looking anxious for the first time that day.
Shrestha will be playing at Gurkul Theatre of Purano Baneshwor in Kathmandu on Saturday, December 11, and will be accompanied by Rabin Lal Shrestha on tabla, Rupa Neupane and others on sarod, sitar and tanpura.
Tickets are priced at Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 and the show starts at 2:30pm.
Related story
Ustad Sudarshan Rajopadhaya's love for Sarod
_20220607114554.jpg)
