Defying borders with Indian classical music: From Indian subcontinent to Ireland

When Yameema Mitha was 13 years old, she was visiting her Mamu (mother’s brother) in Delhi. He was the Director General of All India Radio, and he would receive several invitations for musical events. Yameema went along to one of them with her cousin, also a teenager. Both teenagers were embarrassed when they arrived. “Mamu was given the first row seats, and everyone was in their finest clothes, while we girls were wearing just regular clothes,” Yameema remembers, while sitting in her sunny home in a suburb of Dublin.

Yameema says that her cousin already loved classical music, and Mitha was exposed to it to some extent at home. But the performers that night were Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Allah Rakha Khan. The concert began around 9pm, and around 3am, when the dignitaries had left, a young man was invited to the stage. “He was beautiful, with long curly hair, wearing an orange kurta; it was Zakir Sahib, Ustad Allah Rakha’s son. Panditji sat between the father and son playing the tabla, and Ustad ji was bursting with pride. And that day on, I never looked back, on my journey with Indian classical music,” says the Pakistani woman who is a resident of Ireland, and has been one of the key persons promoting Indian classical music in Ireland.

Yameema is 68-years-old, and identifies as a woman of the Indian subcontinent. Her childhood was spent in Lahore, but included an annual trip to different parts of India where her cousins, uncles and aunties lived. Both her parents shared a deep love for Indian classical music in more ways than one.

Yameema’s father was Abubaker Mitha, and was from a Muslim Gujarati business/political family in Bombay and was an officer in the British Indian Army; her mother’s maiden surname was Chatterji but four generations prior, the family had converted to Christianity. After Partition, her father was deployed to the newly-formed Pakistan, and he was on kafila duty that was assigned to army personnel on either side of the border: escorting the Hindu refugees from Pakistan who were migrating to India, and Muslim refugees who were migrating to Pakistan. Nobody expected the border to turn into an iron wall, Yameema says.

During those kafila duty trips, Yameema’s father would have the chance to meet his family. He would also visit his former commanding officer, General Rudra. During one such trip in 1948, he saw Yameema’s mother, Indu, who was General Rudra’s niece. He would say that he knew at that moment that he would marry her. They continued to meet with family around, and During the next four years, the two of them exchanged letters across the border, and eventually married in 1951 and Indu Chatterji moved to Lahore. Yameema was born in 1956, the oldest of three daughters.

Music flowing through the generations

Yameema’s mother Indu was a trained Bharatnaytam dancer and had travelled to Madras to learn from Lalita Shastri from Kalakshetra. When she moved to Lahore following her marriage, she adapted Bharatnatyam to Hindustani music.

When Yameema’s father was still in the British Indian army, he had a roommate who introduced him to Hindustani music. “An English fellow in their unit would say, ‘What gargling are you listening to!’ My father was so angry that he listened to the music all the more, as an act of defiance. Later, in Pakistan, whenever we were transferred to different cantonments, there were always mehfils, and that’s how my sisters and I were raised in a purist tradition of Hindustani music,” Yameema remembers.

The family would visit India in winters, which is also when concerts took place. Obtaining visas was never easy. Once, her mother did not receive the NOC from the Pakistan government to visit her family in India, and her father promptly offered his resignation. “The commander in chief laughed and told my father to not be so impetuous… Despite the border, I was raised between both countries. It is one of the luckiest aspects of my life, and my biggest treasure is a religiously diverse family,” says Yameema.

During her teenage years’ visits to India, she had the unique opportunity to learn at the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya in Delhi. She worked as a journalist in Lahore, and later in Islamabad, and also studied in the UK. She worked for Oxfam in Pakistan, and raised her two children in Pakistan until they were ready for secondary school, when they moved to Ireland. “Just like I would visit India for winters during my childhood, my children visited Ireland annually and would be enrolled in various summer camps in Ireland.” The children also grew up being exposed to Hindustani music as she did in her childhood. The family moved to Ireland in 2007 when Yameema was 50 and her older child was 11.

In Ireland, she encountered the Indian Classical Music Society, of which she has been an integral part. There were already four Irish men who had been learning Indian classical music, and a South Indian mridangam player. When Yameema’s sister—also a Bharatnatyam dancer—was visiting Ireland, they organised one of the first concerts. “The Irish lads invited their gurus to Ireland and arranged performances, and we all just got on like a house on fire. This community of musicians—Irish and from the Indian subcontinent—became some of my closest friends and apne log in pardes,” Yameema says, while remembering how she would fetch musicians from the airport in the middle of the night and then spend hours cooking elaborate meals.

While living in Boston, USA, some years ago, she was surprised to see the scale of the arrangements for the annual Indian classical music festival where 300 people signed up as volunteers. “I met the person who started the festival and told him of our miniscule efforts in Ireland; how I feel despondent. He smiled and told me that what I saw was 30 years of hard work. That really inspired me to keep dedicating my energies to developing an interest for Indian classical music in Ireland,” Yameema tells me this, after helping organise recitals with many visiting artists: tabla maestro Debojyoti Sanyal and sarod-nawaz Saugato Roy Choudhury from Kolkata, and other dancers and musicians. Yameema knows too well the struggles of bringing artists from the Indian subcontinent to Ireland, due to visa issues and the non-guarantee of a large audience, unlike in the US or London.

A life of navigating visas

Many years ago, during one Indian Republic Day event in Lahore, a young civil servant told Yameema that after the age of 68, a person from either country—India and Pakistan—can visit the other easily. This was music to her ears. “The young man told me that he had never seen anyone feel so excited about turning 68! But that never really happened.” The last time she was able to visit India was in 2016. Since then, several close relatives have passed away without her being able to meet them.

She has seen how the elders in her family have embraced ageing with zest; they continued to pursue their own interests, even after they had become grandparents. “My mother still lives life with enthusiasm, and taught dance till she was 87 years old. One of my aunts, at the age of 40, lived with her partner for the next 48 years, in a time when it was a very radical thing to do, she worked in theatre, and always had a different perspective on the world.”

Reflecting on ageing in Ireland has brought to the fore many contrasts. "We say in Pakistan that a few strands of white hair and a few extra pounds gives a person more respect. It is nice to be an older woman in the subcontinent, because it gives a certain status of respect. But people there also grow old easily because of this: people respect the elders and so people can just fit into an elderly role and not move and just grow old faster. But in Ireland, the older people are marginalised because of their age, but they also have a choice to create a new role for themselves and stay young.”

Yameema says that one may not feel old, but age is something that one’s knees and bones feel; when she is unable to stand for long hours to cook for 20 people. “Irish society expects older people to get on with life, which I think is tougher. So maybe they stay younger by sheer will. But for me, having children late in life kept me younger. People now want their grandparents to fully embrace that role, but older people are resisting this everywhere.”

Apart from championing Indian classical music, Yameema is also pursuing her PhD in Ireland, wherein she is researching the portrayal of Pakistan in Hindi cinema. “People tell me, ‘Why are you bothering yourself with a PhD at this age?’ I tell them that I actually enjoy doing it, rather than wasting my time sitting in other people's homes, listening to tales of the family! I am, after all, a product of the two countries and the borders have defined my life.”

Yameema understands how the name “Indian Classical Music Society” has kept away people from the rest of the subcontinent from getting involved. “One Indian musician living in Ireland had raised this issue about the name, but that was vehemently opposed, because the society largely comprises Indians. So that is problematic, if the music is not viewed as arising from the Indian subcontinent, rather than just the country. This is where it can become parochial. That is also why I want to be an active and visible member, because my presence is a marker of the inclusivity and syncretism of this music, of resistance to it becoming any one’s property,” says the contrarian 68-year-old.