Told by	Angshubha Bandyopadhyay
Obtained by	Sanjoy Bandopadhyay
Date	03 December 2014
Place	Sangeet Bhavan, B.T. Road Campus, Rabindra Bharati University, 56A, B.T. Road, Kolkata 700050
On Angshubha Bandyopadhyay	Tabla player, Guest Teacher at the Department of Instrumental Music, Rabindra Bharati University
Key-words	Jnan Prakash Ghosh, 1990’s, namaskar, pranam, Ironside Road, time management

Angshubha Bandyopadhyay speaks:

Paraphrased in English

Against Time Wasting

Told by:   Angshubha Bandyopadhyay

It is a story about the strict discipline of Guru Jnan Prakash Ghosh. Throughout his entire life he strictly followed the values of Time. He firmly believed that time is like precious jewels, once gone, it never comes back. He never wanted to waste time even when it directly connects him. Probably it was  1990s. On Wednesdays all of his disciples used to gather in his Iron Side Road residence for Taalim. It is usual custom to touch Guru’s feet. So, they used to touch their guru’s Guru when they entered the classes. It is a very common practice in Indian tradition of Music. But Guru Jnan Prakash Ghosh was against that this kind of rituals. The reason was, for him a pranaam took precious two minutes which cut short his lesson-time and he could not tolerate this. He tried to forbid them from doing so, but the students did not take much notice of that.

One fine Wednesday morning, it was around 9 am to 9-15 a.m. Guruji came to his practice room with his unique chappals on his feet. All of his disciples stood up in respect and began to touch his feet. He immediately got furious and told them that he would not take their classes as they were not listening to him seriously. The class got postponed for the day. The students could now feel the significance of the situation. Helplessly they requested Mallar, Guruji’s son, to settle down the issue. Things were settle down gradually, and from that day his disciples became very cautious about wasting time for pranaam.

This is a memorable story of a Guru which a student would always love to remember.

 

Paraphrasing by Dr. Suranjita Paul, Research fellow

Data processed at SAP-DRS Lab, Department of Instrumental Music, Rabindra Bharati University.