Last evening the "rasik" in Austin experienced sheer magic. I came home drunk on Pandit Birju Maharaj and his troupe's Kathak performance at Westlake High. The maestro wove magic through his feet, danced to his own tune just as we, the audience, did to his.  Seventy years of age, give or take a few, and still in top form. Who says art
ages with time? It matures like ripe wine, more beautiful, more subtle, more graceful  than ever before. I watched just his feet all evening and said to myself, such infinite grace. I could do well with his littlest toenail worth of it.

  In the end Panditji and his troupe danced to the beat of our claps, such was the synergy between the artists and their audience.  It was a feast of visual delight and I gluttoned, still greedy for more and more, not wanting it to end. Only a few times before have I had the privilege of being witness to such magic, once in 1977 when Pandit Jasraj rendered his famous "Mata Mahakalika" in Adaana for well over an hour and a half. I still remember well, how both pandit ji and the audience were lost to time and place. The second time around was with Pandit Ram Narayan playing his sarangi to a packed audience with no mike and no electricity. He played on, in the light of two dimly lit lanterns, while we, the audience, sat enchanted under his spell for what we wished was eternity. Then there was Kumar Gandharva and his "Aaj Mujhe Raghubar ki Sudhi Aai" at Janaki Devi Mahavidyalaya, Delhi University, in the eighties. And above all, my most treasured memory is one of Bismillah Khan playing Kedar into the wee hours of the morning. Such memories continue to bring peace and quiet amidst the noise and bustle of daily living. 

  I have had the privilege to attend many wonderful performances by many great artists. But gatherings such as those mentioned above are in a class by themselves. The magic, that intangible something special, borne when the artist and  the audience are in perfect tune with each other is something else! That sense of timeless beauty, that privilege of being a part of something greater, the joy of feeling beyond one's self cannot be captured in words, not by me at least. That is what happened yesterday!