Focus on Arrival Day

It is tragic that no one seems to have done any work on the author of those books, JO Cutteridge, and there is nothing on the internet about him. Whether the scholars at UWI or UTT have done anything on this great educator, I do not know.

Whilst reading of the careers of some of the famous Indian singers of the first half of the last century, I came across a reference in the Wikipedia entry on Juthika Roy, an article from the Daily Times of Pakistan “NWFP government ban fails to dissuade music enthusiast” carried on July 21, 2003.

The article tells of how in reaction to the extremists who wanted to ban music in Pakistan, a former employee of the municipal corporation of Peshawar, Allah Dad Khan, displayed his library of over 14,000 records of rare songs. In his collection was a wooden record, and a Russian record made of plastic.

According to the article, the first song ever recorded in India was by an Afghan woman called Gohar Jan Calcuttawali, who wrote her own lyrics in urdu. The recording company was called His Master’s Voice.

Dad Khan also has in his collection the famous “Naat” sung by Kumari Juthika Roy that caused Kamal Dasgupta to embrace Islam, and also rare songs by Amir Bai Karnataki and GM Durrani. His collection is regarded as one of the largest in the subcontinent. One of the most influential musicians of that time was Pundit Vishmadev Chattopadhyay, who blended Indian and western music for the first time in a film called Rikta. An article on him can be found on the webpage listing sites about the singer Kanon Devi. The site banglatorrents.com/achives/f-110.html can be quite interesting to musical savants. The most interesting place in India to me at this time is the unexpected gorge of the Brahmaputra river.

As the tectonic plate that is India plunged beneath the Asian continent, the Himalayas and the plateau of Tibet arose, and the Brahmaputra river cut its course through the ranges as they lifted, so that its deepest gorge is almost 18,000 feet deep, and as far as I know, still unexplored, something that disappoints me deeply.

The nature of the rock at the base of the gorge would be of great interest to geologists. The base rock of the canyon of the Colorado river, the Grand Canyon of the USA upon which North America rests is called the Vishnu Schist. I wonder what the base rock of the gorge of the Brahmaputra will be called.

SURENDRA SAKAL

La Romaine