Seven years ago, Kunal Joshi, a young sculptor from Varad village in Malvan, faced an unusual commission that would transform his life and help preserve a dying musical tradition. He was asked to craft two distinctive wooden figures - the heads of the mythological serpent Vasuki and a peacock - carved from Burma teak. The challenge seemed daunting as Joshi was unfamiliar with woodworking and had no idea what these animal heads were intended for. "I thought they were to be used as mementos or show pieces," he recalled.
It took Joshi six months of painstaking work to chisel away at blocks of Burma teak and shape the intricate figures before dispatching them to their destination. Only months later did he discover their true purpose: they were meant to be the decorative endpoints of a priceless old rudra veena belonging to renowned musician Bahauddin Dagar. The musician was seeking to restore the instrument that once belonged to his father, the legendary Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, and had been crafted in 1960 in Calcutta by master luthiers Kanailal and Brother.
The elder Dagar had redesigned the traditional rudra veena to produce a lower octave that would match the human voice, adding the beautiful end pieces for both functional and aesthetic reasons. The Vasuki head was designed to reduce tension on the strings, while the peacock head contained a resonating chamber that allowed for greater sound resonance. "I could find no one to restore the veena and thought that I could start by just getting the Vasuki and peacock made and then see if its maker could go further," Bahauddin Dagar explained.
Joshi discovered the full significance of his work when he arrived at Dagar's dhrupad gurukul in Panvel in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had forced him to extend his stay there, and the magical sound of the veena - its profoundly deep bass resonance - drew him into an intensive study of the instrument's sound and structure. Over the next two years, guided by Dagar's patient mentorship, Joshi learned to deconstruct and then reconstruct the veena step by step, mastering each of the 70-80 parts that comprise the complex instrument.
Today, five veenas owned by Dagar's students bear Joshi's craftsmanship, and he now offers Dagar-style veenas to any musician seeking one. This remarkable creative journey, where art, material science, music, and acoustics converged under a master musician's innovative mentorship, has become the subject of a 20-minute documentary titled "The Shape of Sound." Produced by the Film and Television Institute of India, the film is directed by renowned sound engineer and designer Madhu Apsara, who has collaborated with Dagar for over two decades.
The necessity for this experimental mentorship program stems from the rare and precious nature of the rudra veena itself. Known to be notoriously difficult to master, the instrument has counted only a handful of true practitioners at any point in history. Extinction constantly looms, not just for the musical art form, but for the craft of making the instruments as well. Today, with one or two exceptions, most of the old master luthiers have stopped crafting the rudra veena due to declining demand and the superstitious belief that creating a flawed instrument could bring curses upon their families.
"The whole project came from my fear that there will be no veena makers left," said Dagar, an eclectic artist with varied interests and a devoted young following. "I needed someone to join my journey to find an avenue out of the crisis by mentoring fresh talent in the art. Kunal was a godsend and some of my other students are learning the craft as well. In fact, Shibu Maity, who has been cooking for my household, is now an expert at filing the bridge."
For Joshi, the transition from sculptor to instrument maker proved to be a revelation, as he discovered how lifeless material could become a vessel for exquisite music. "There are so many more details to pay attention to while crafting the veena, nearly 70-80 parts to put together," he explained. "The smallest error can be ruinous. But a good instrument produces a sound that can give so much joy, like watching the badmast chaal (swagger) of an elephant."
The mystical aura surrounding the rudra veena is particularly evident at the Sufi Inayat Khan Dargah in the heart of Delhi's Nizamuddin basti, an oasis of quiet amid the bustling neighborhood. Every three months, on the fifth of the month, Bahauddin Dagar offers a recital as a hazri at the shrine. These performances are conducted without percussion, allowing listeners to hear the delicate musicality of the veena in its purest form - a practice that Dagar particularly favors.
The rudra veena has always carried an aura of high mysticism, surrounded by myths, miracles, and superstitions that practitioners still subscribe to in varying degrees. Some of its most renowned legends were men of deep spiritual inclination across faiths, including Dattatreya Rama Rao Parvatikar, Shamsuddin Faridi Desai, and Bande Ali Khan. Contemporary artists firmly believe that the art form has yogic and intangible dimensions that extend far beyond the purely physical and material aspects.
During performances at the dargah, Dagar plays raga Malkauns with remarkable sublimity. In an age when instrumentalists often chase ear-splitting volume to impress audiences, he prefers to keep the volume low, allowing the veena to weave its mellow magical spell. "In the old days, the veena was played in massive interiors of palaces, temples and forts, the sound traveling across and bouncing off stone, beams and arches," Dagar explained. "It may be soft but it has a lot of resonance and overtones and a certain circularity that could carry across distances. It is a sound that does not die easily."
This sound ethic is something that Madhu Apsara understands and translates perfectly for Dagar's performances. A student and longtime associate of the musician, Apsara is deeply attuned to Dagar's philosophy of how the veena should sound on stage. For at least 25 years, they have worked together to ensure that amplification does justice to the veena's unique tonal qualities. It was this partnership that inspired the sound engineer to document the collaborative experiment between Dagar and Joshi in his film.
"It [The veena] is a quieter instrument, and [its] sound is very tender, so it needs faithful amplification and reproduction to retain the original microtonal clarity," Apsara explained. "We keep the volume purposely low so that the nature of the instrument is retained. This also quietens the mind of the listener so they start hearing the nuances. We do this even in big concerts. Silence is very important in our music."
Apsara's film documents an interesting aspect of Dagar's work with his instrument: with the near-disappearance of legacy veena makers, it is increasingly those from non-musical backgrounds who are preserving the craft, including Joshi, Maity, and Apsara himself. There were once dedicated pockets of veena-making expertise across India, primarily in Vadodara, Meraj, and Calcutta, with renowned names like Kanailal, Mangala Prasad, and the Mistry family leading the field.
However, the craft is not easy to sustain economically. It takes at least two years to craft a single instrument, and with declining numbers of performers and audiences, demand has dwindled significantly. "Kanailal stopped making the veena and I had no one to turn to when I wanted to restore my father's veena," Dagar said. "Many makers also bought into the superstition that if they make a flawed veena, their families would be cursed."
By the 1990s, finding a skilled maker had become nearly impossible. As a result, many veena players had no choice but to become adept at making and repairing instruments themselves, as the 55-year-old Dagar learned early in his musical career. Like many young people rebelling against the weight of a colossal family legacy, Dagar had not immediately embraced the veena, even though its sound constantly filled their modest one-bedroom family home in Chembur.
He began his musical journey on the sitar, learning under the tutelage of his mother, Pramila Dagar. As a teenager, it was rock, jazz, and pop music that captured his imagination. "I would play that at loud volumes, and my father was not the forceful type - he let me be," he recalled. "But I was intrigued by the sound of the veena." The Dagar home served as an intellectual gathering place for eclectic discussions on films, quantum physics, architecture, and art. Director Mani Kaul's famous 1982 film "Dhrupad" primarily featured Zia Mohiuddin and his brother, vocalist Zia Fariduddin Dagar, while Kumar Shahani's experimental film "Khayal Gatha" also featured Zia Mohiuddin's work.
"It was only after my father passed away in 1990 that I started looking at what he gave me and put myself into serious practice," Dagar reflected. In his second year of college, he made the bold decision to drop out and pursue the veena with greater dedication and rigor. "I was very young, and there were great expectations from me. Do I have what it takes? That question constantly bothered me."
The journey took Dagar in multiple directions - learning, teaching, and delving deeply into the structural complexities of the veena itself. "I would do my own repairs because our veena was of a different make. I just had to figure it all out for myself," he explained. "The circle of veena musicians was so small then - Asad Ali Khan, Hindraj Divekar, Shamsuddin Farid Desai and Bindu Madhav Pathak among them."
Building a successful career on an instrument that occupies such a lofty and intimidating stature in Indian classical music is never easy. Critics often point out that the veena has painted itself into a corner with its own formidable reputation for difficulty and mysticism. These are challenges that Dagar is acutely aware of and actively works to address. "It is not as difficult as it is made out to be," he insisted. "But I didn't go out of my way to worry about what the audience wants. I care for the nuances and how I choose to unfold a raga may or may not be received well. So I played a few concerts, taught, held workshops, got some scholarships and fellowships. [I] managed somehow."
Encouragingly, it was around five to seven years ago that interest in the rudra veena began to grow significantly, along with Dagar's own following among younger musicians and music enthusiasts. Performers like him and Jyoti Hegde - notably the first woman to take up an instrument once considered too powerful for women to handle - are now far more visible than before, and their student base is steadily increasing.
"I can imagine a time in the near future when the veena will be in greater demand, when the fortunes of the few makers in the market will revive," Dagar predicted optimistically. "When they will promise an instrument in six to seven months. Who knows it may even come off the shelf. That is the cost of popularity."
For Joshi, this journey of discovery and craft mastery has been thoroughly exhilarating. The process is deliberately slow but deeply rewarding - from picking up the kadwa kaddu (bitter pumpkin) that grows primarily in Pandharpur to crafting the rotund resonators at either end of the instrument, to sourcing high-quality teak wood for the dandi or fingerboard, hollowing out the wood with precision, carving intricate details, finishing, polishing, and finally affixing the two distinctive animal heads. The delicate frets are installed by Maity, while the master musician himself steps in to oversee the crucial final step of stringing the instrument.
"When I was restoring the tumba of Kanailal's perfect veena from 1960, I saw that the artisan had left one flower carved but without any detailing," Joshi observed thoughtfully. "I was taken aback and then it struck me - imperfection leaves us with a path forward. Anything that is perfect tends to be dead." This philosophy of embracing imperfection as a pathway to continued growth and learning has become central to Joshi's approach to his craft, ensuring that the ancient tradition continues to evolve while maintaining its essential character and spiritual significance.
