Tribute to Dhruba Ghosh
Written July 11, 2017
Pandit Dhruba Ghosh, master sarangi player
October 27, 1957 - July 10, 2017
Thank you dearest guruji, friend, colleague, and grand soul for teaching me.
From the moment I met him, I felt the pull of Greatness and the loving touch of a master. I knew I had to move across the globe to study under him. He always welcomed me with an open heart and taught me to dive deep into my soul, into the grids of ragas and soar high above storms like the eagle. He said he wasn’t humble; this apparent humbleness was a natural result—when master and student or two friends sit at sunset and watch the sun set beyond the event horizon, both can share in that moment; both know they are part of that experience. The illusion of the “other” dissolves.
Little did I know that when he cooked me a farewell meal for my last lesson before my current trip to the US, he would be the one to depart. Had I known it would be the last time with him, I would have fallen to the ground to bow to such a great spiritual master. He would have of course laughed with a belly full of mutton and given me more chai.
In the last few months I met him almost every day; I felt I was finally in a groove and making giant leaps. On a different dimension I must have known the tides would turn. He always said “the timing of masters” is different from the world’s. The urge to deepen my studies with him these last months helped give me so many tools in concentrated forms, to navigate music and to navigate myself. He always talked about rags as grids- each as a city map, he once said. One must know the streets inside and out so that one knows which to walk down, which to avoid, which to meander through, and which ones look as though they belong to the city but actually belong to the neighboring city. It was on last Saturday, on Guru Purnima coincidentally, that I had the realization that Dhrubaji was helping me fill in my own grid, the grid of the Self. And I now see, too that he shared so many of his own grids with me. He taught me to see signs everywhere. He showed me the life force that literally lies in the sarangi and the violin themselves, that there is life and energy everywhere, and to recognize the “real time“ of the moment. He said to always sit on the event horizon, and to not live from memory, as memory is in the past and dead.
He showed me how to go into the core of the sound— “the flute sound” he would say. How to swim underwater and feel the buoyancy of musical grids. The last rag we worked on was Shree. He described it as a giant boulder balanced on a pebble (the Re on the Sa (or the Re on the Do)). I loved to feel that weight of Re, which he described as the last seen point of the sun before it disappears behind the horizon. Dhrubaji has finally merged into the Sa. Words cannot describe the immense power and magnetic effect he had/has on me.
About three days before his passing I had a dream where I was a swirl like in a galaxy and my centre was shifting. Then literally the night before his passing, before I went to sleep I asked the Universe for a clear sign as what to do about moving forward with my Indian life/musical explorations and goals. I awoke to the news that this incredibly moving, intelligent, musical and loving soul had moved onto his next dimension. In the last year and a half I was so blessed to study with him, he incessantly reminded me to “accept your masterhood” and to balance my student role with being a master. Every aspect of his teaching pointed to me becoming my own reference point, to lose the idea of the guru and to accept my Self now. He has given me countless seeds of musical mastery and pure magic. He told me the flower between the boulders doesn’t bloom in hope that someone walks by; it blooms for itself. Thank you, Dhruba, for showing me how to go inside— inside the notes and inside myself, to tap into the Clarity that comes from knowing Source. May you blissfully enjoy yourself, in the infinite ocean of theCosmos and the nothingness that is also the fullness. I see you in the birds and the squirrels, your playful and gentle nature living on. I know we have met before and I know we will meet again. All my love and gratitude…