Agam Singh Giri: Lese epiqu’, more Prabash

The first time I heard of Agam Singh Giri and Amber Gurung together was in 1957 in Darjeeling. I was at the closed iron gates of the Gorkha Dukha Niwarak Sammelan (GDNS) Hall. It was the usual season of “Variety-Charity” shows in town.

I heard a beautiful song wafting out from the stage over the loudspeakers system. There was a tragic “natak” going on inside, and the drunken protagonist was singing. It was the voice of Amber Gurung singing his own composition on Agam Singh Giri’s lyric. I still remember the first lines of the song:

Dharmara dharmara raat
Lamki warawara ayo!
Kina yo thotro jiwanalai
Pratipal pheri satayo?

The song’s words received poetic justice in Amber’s sonorous voice. The melody had chromatic melting and moulding notes. The music arrangement was punctuated with sevenths, major ninths and diminished chords in guitar and accordion. The violins were wailing in mock-serious maudlinesque. I believe the tearjerker song made the evening audience cry copiously in catharsis.

It was a great experience for me, too - a village idiot and rustic farm boy of Nor Busti recently come to Darjeeling for higher studies. It was a fine education for me, alright! In retrospection, the Agam-Amber alliance goes that far back into the 50s. The partnership was to flower in such immortal songs as “Nau Lakha Tara Udaye”, “Najau Pharki Nepal” and “Baisakh Lagyo Pahadma”.

“Dharmara” and “Baisakh Lagyo” remain in Amber Gurung’s portfolio, still unpublicised and unrecorded. In the meantime, I still recollect the opening words of “Baisakh”:

Baisakh lagyo pahadma,
Kukule bhanchha sunana;
Hridaya hamro royeko
Batasle bhanchha sunana!

I used to sing these songs to myself on my guitar in the quiet nights of Darjeeling and in moody parties with friends. Today, I hear Gopal Yonzon’s magic flute lines in them when we performed these songs in public concerts. This paved Gopal’s way to Satyajit Ray’s “Kanchanjunga” wherein his golden notes clash and mesh with the silver snows of the very mountain.

Thanks to Agam Singh Giri’s evergreen words for all this. Yes, to quote the Bible, ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ The words of Giri started it all. Then came Amber’s unique music and original voice. Then Gopal’s flute; the string serenade of Karma Yonzon, Shekhar Dixit, Ganesh Sharma, Indra Gazmer; Lalit Tamang’s guitar, Sharan Pradhan’s mandolin, Ranjit Gazmer’s tabla. It all began with Agam Singh Giri’s lyric in the early beginning before other poets came to Amber Gurung and his Art Academy of Music with their own songs.

Amber’s Academy began in Agam’s Bhanu Bhakta School of which he was the headmaster. We gathered in a classroom and rehearsed in candlelight. Agam, always neat in daura-suruwal-topi-kot, appeared perfunctorily, held brief pleasantries with Amber, left his new lyric on Amber’s harmonium cover and left unobtrusively.

Some likened Agam to King Mahendra of Nepal because they looked alike. Mahendra visited Darjeeling and his six children studying there. He also wrote songs and poems. But the differences lay somewhere. Agam’s Elmer Gantry-like life bordered on professing and poetry by day and drunken deluge from dusk, and oftentimes at daybreak itself.

We were fortifying ourselves in Ajila’s bar prior to an epic football match between our college and the 2/8 Gurkha Rifles. Agam Daju came in and sat down. But in a minute, he slumped over. He had already had one or two pegs elsewhere. Hefty Ajila picked him up like a matchstick and took him to her bedroom for rest. His featherweight and lack of resistance worried us.

The Chandmari Road’s deep drains occasionally accommodated two dead-drunk school headmasters, and kind passers-by brought them home. One was Agam Singh Giri and the other was my own Kanchha Baje, Albert Karthak. Agam Sir was my neighbour, his house just a few steps down the road from mine. His youngest brother Madhav was my good friend. The town ended immediately below our area and gave way to Victoria Road and Lloyds Botanical Gardens.

Even more worrisome was Agam Daju’s walk home in the dark night on the Victoria Road and further down to the Padri (Padre) Kaman (tea estate) dead below the botanical garden. The road was poorly lit and the tea estate road was virtually dark. How did he manage to reach his second home where he often lived with his second wife? This lady was a beauty with a comely personality and as young as his daughter. But he managed.

One morning, he appeared at Ranjit’s house wearing two different shoes. He rummaged in the room and found the black counterpart. Smiling wryly, he put it on, left the brown one and walked out. There was a party the previous night, and Agam Daju had mismatched his shoes. He also left a long-promised song for Ranjit and me.

We were practicing at Amber Sir’s house. He and Gopal Yonzon had entered into an evening Raga “jugalbandi” wherein Amber’s harmonium was “questioning” and Gopal’s flute was “answering”. At the end of the “sawal-jawab”, there was a knock at the door. We stopped and kept quiet like corpses. We knew it was Agam, drunk to his ears. The knocks got louder and more persistent. Finally he gave up. His parting shot was, “I didn’t know this door had turned to stone!”

We had good reasons not to let him in at such a time and in such a state. A few evenings ago, he had begun penning a song while Amber sang. The page had only one letter, and it had been punctuated by ikar, ookar, ref, chandrabindu, halant and what not!

My last vision of Agam Daju is his rattling the gate of my house one evening. Drunk, he declared:

“Peter Bhai, we must drive all these Biharis, Kainyas [Marwaris] and Bangalis from Darjeeling. This is our land! They don’t belong here!”

Here was the historical dilemma! Darjeeling was “my” domain, the land of my forefathers - the Lepchas! From the Kankai River as their westernmost border in Nepal, the Lepchas owned Ilam, Morang, Jhapa, Sikkim and Darjeeling.

How could I explain all these to Agam Singh Giri? “Since you’re drunk, Agam Sir, we can’t do anything about it right now” was all I could say then before leading him to his house.

By now the vast Lepchaland has disappeared, having been parcelled out by Nepal and India.

Before long, Sikkim became an Indian state. Darjeeling became Gorkhaland. It was also mooted as a No Man’s Land at one time.

Agam Singh Giri wrote “mini” epics, such as “Yuddha Ra Yoddha”. But they do not possess epic tales of heroic deeds of Herculean characters. His works are rather the precursor to Bal Krishna Sama’s “Chiso Chulho”. Therefore, his historical myopia is understandable, including the diasporic disillusionment depicted in his “Nau Lakha Tara Udaye”. In other words, Agam’s epics have replaced the more ancient ones.

Therefore, in sum, Agam Singh Giri remains an endearing innocent in the vast epic lands of the Rongs - the Lepchas - in the Northeast of South Asia.