DR. LUIS DIAS
Life can be curious. A radio broadcast from thousands of miles away, a BBC Proms interval talk, made me take a closer look at something hanging on my wall for as long as I can remember.
A Prom concert featuring the Berlin Philharmonic is always a big draw. On September 3, 2026, its programme featured just two works: Beethoven’s might Violin Concerto in D major (Augustin Hadelich, soloist), and Alexander Scriabin’s Symphony No. 3 in C minor, ‘The Divine Poem’, with Kirill Petrenko conducting.
The guest at the interval discussion was senior lecturer in Asian history at the University of Edinburgh, Christopher Harding.
Russian philosopher and composer Alexandr Scriabin (1872-1915) had a well-known fascination with India and dreamed of a week-long multi-sensory grand liturgical event ‘Mysterium’ combining music, scent, dance, and light “somewhere in the Himalayas” that “would bring about the end of the physical world and elevate humanity to a higher spiritual plane”. Needless to say, neither the concert nor the elevation of humanity happened. Beethoven’s interest in India is tantalising, a few mentions in his bad handwriting. Some dismiss it as idle curiosity; others blow its significance out of proportion.
In Beethoven’s ‘Tagebuch’ (‘diary) there are seven entries in the 1810s referring to India. “Beethoven found it quite laborious to write. So if he bothered to write something, then it meant something to him,” explained Harding.
One of those entries (Tagebuch 63b, 75) is a quote from a German translation of Kalidasa’s epic play ‘Shakuntala’, with a twist. In the play, the ascetic Sharngarava, disciple of sage Kanva says, “No selfish purpose animates us.” Beethoven changed it into a sort of ‘note-to-self’: “Let no selfish purpose animate you.”
Beethoven’s sources for information about India, her philosophy and literature were at least two: Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann (1743-1815), geographer, zoologist and Enlightenment scholar; and the Austrian orientalist and diplomat Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856). The latter sent Beethoven ideas for “Indian operettas”, but the composer, although interested (he had jotted down “an ancient Indian scale” in his notes), was too busy.
India back then was ‘hot’ in the Western imagination thanks of course to the colonial expansion here. In 1789, British philologist and scholar Sir William Jones translated ‘Shakuntala’ into English (‘Sacontalá or The Fatal Ring’); it was the first Indian drama to be translated into a Western language. In the next 100 years, there were at least 46 translations in 12
European languages.
Goethe was deeply impressed by ‘Shakuntala’, and published an epigram on it in 1791. He is said to have got the idea of a Prologue to his own epic ‘Faust’ as a theatrical device, from Kalidasa’s ‘Shakuntala’.
Around 1820, Franz Schubert began the sketches for an opera in three acts (requiring 14 sopranos, three altos, five tenors, nine basses, mixed choir and orchestra) based on ‘Shakuntala’. This is one of the many “what if?’ moments in music history: If Schubert had lived just a little longer, we might have had a ‘Shakuntala’ opera by him.
If memory serves me right, our school education about Kalidasa (c. 4th-5th century CE) and ‘Shakuntala’ was reduced to a ‘fill in the blank’ or ‘match the column’; no more. My father gave me a better holistic education than our school syllabus, especially true for Kalidasa’s ‘Shakuntala’.
He would stand me in front of the painting, and summarise the epic for me, much before I came across the pictorial version in ‘Amar Chitra Katha’. He introduced me to Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘The Discovery of India’ (1946), also at a young age.
It is fashionable today for vested interests to scapegoat Nehru for everything. But his genuine love for India shines through in his
eloquent prose.
The radio discussion triggered a ‘rediscovery’ (‘odyssey’ is more fashionable nowadays) of my own. The caption in Portuguese below the painting says it was (a black-and-white photograph of) a watercolour by R.G. Chimulkar, and won a gold medal (it doesn’t say where or when).
Shakuntala is flanked by companions, including Anusuya and Priyamvada in a forest grove; one of the fawns must be her favourite, Dirghapanga.
An internet search reveals the artist was Raghuveer Govind Chimulkar (b. Candolim 1904/5; d. Thane 1948), “Indian modern painter associated with the Bombay Revival of Art movement during the 1920s and 1930s.” Orphaned when young, a relative who detected his artistic potential enrolled him in the J.J. School of Art. He won the prestigious J.J. School’s Mayo Medal in 1932 and many more prizes.
Chimulkar apparently fell in love with a student, known simply as ‘Kamala’, but for reasons unknown, the friendship did not result in marriage. The heartbreak unbalanced him, and he died aged just 42 in an asylum
in Thane.
I dusted off Nehru’s ‘Discovery of India’ from our bookshelf. My father’s own “notes-to-self” scribbled in the margins are now his communication with me from beyond the grave.
Nehru quotes the “splendid tribute” to Kalidasa from Sanskrit scholar Arther William Ryder (whose English translation of ‘Shakuntala’ I am currently reading): “Poetical fluency is not rare; intellectual grasp is not very uncommon; but the combination of the two has not been found perhaps more than a dozen times since the world began. Because he possessed this harmonious combination, Kalidasa ranks not with Anacreon and Horace and Shelley, but with Sophocles, Virgil and Milton… We know that Kalidasa is a very great poet because the world has not been able to leave him alone.”
My ‘Shakuntala’ odyssey also made me revisit the relevant episodes (18 and 19) devoted to her and Kalidasa, of ‘Bharat Ek Khoj’ 1980s Doordarshan series based on Nehru’s book, (with Roshan Seth playing Nehru), produced and directed by Shyam Benegal and music by Vanraj Bhatia. It took me back to a better time in my life, my ‘achche din’.
Nehru’s insightful observation about Kalidasa’s “love for life and a passion for Nature’s beauty” come across on reading ‘Shakuntala’.
Ryder goes even further: “Fully to appreciate Kalidasa’s poetry one must have spent some weeks at least among wild mountains and forests untouched by man.”
Little is known about Kalidasa’s personal life. The Hindi playwright Mohan Rakesh creates as his muse Mallika, a humble woman from his mountain village, in his famous play ‘Ashadh ke Ek Din.’ The Yaksha and Yakshini in Kalidasa’s ‘Meghdoot’ (Cloud Messenger) are inspired by their own love separated by distance when Kalidasa reluctantly becomes Ujjain’s court poet. The stories of Mallika and Shakuntala are superimposed in Benegal’s documentary episodes. I also watched M.F. (Maqbool Fida) Husain’s 2000 film ‘Gaja Gamini’, where his own muse Madhuri Dixit plays Shakuntala. I am not surprised it tanked at the box office. Husain even throws Leonardo da Vinci (Naseeruddin Shah) into the esoteric mix.
But it made this point: Creative people often need a muse to fire their inspiration for their best work: Beethoven had his mysterious ‘Immortal Beloved’; Leonardo had Mona Lisa; Kalidasa had Mallika (whose beauty he then extols also in ‘Shakuntala’), Chimulkar had (for better or worse) ‘Kamala’; Husian had Madhuri.
I look at my Chimulkar ‘Shakuntala’ with a new layer of understanding after my journey of rediscovery.
