The obvious must be stated: Anoushka Shankar is beautiful, and I’m not going to be so dishonest as to claim that doesn’t matter when I watch her play the sitar, the instrument that brought her father so much fame. Some of her performances are on YouTube videos, like the one linked below. She is, by the way, the sister of the beautiful Nora Jones.
But there are so many kinds of beauty. With Shankar, the self-discipline she has—the mastery of her Self—is as obvious as her physical beauty. Her attention is riveted on the instrument, and she rarely looks elsewhere. I’ve never seen concentration like hers. She seems to regard the instrument, as if it were new to her, but at the same time, there’s steel of great strength in her eyes.
There is a grace about her, a generosity, too. On another video, it’s the closing song of the concert, and she gives each of her backing musicians–violin, percussion, the shehnai, a wind instrument that resembles a clarinet–a chance to solo and to shine, and each is stunning. During their solos, she softly claps her hands in time, her eyes are frequently closed, and she’s smiling just as frequently: it’s a beatific look, even the look of a proud mother (which she is, offstage.) She has given herself over to the other musicians, entered into their performances, and it is the most perfect kind of praise.
In this video, she seems to hit a new gear about two or three minutes into the song, and, except for the percussionist, who’s both skilled enough and empathic enough to follow her, she’s gone. She is so fast and so nimble and the notes tumble as if they were droplets in a great waterfall. And, every once in awhile, a little smile crosses her face, and now her eyes begin to close, as if she were listening to a stranger. Something wonderful is happening, I think: athletes refer to it as being “in the zone,” where, for example, every pitch hits the corner for which it’s intended because the pitcher realizes he can release the desire to aim the pitch. Throwing suffices. My hero, Sandy Koufax, had games like that. He was untouchable.
So is Shankar. When you see that smile, she is in a special place where the playing is fluid, effortless and joyful. It’s all right, I think, to live for moments like this, after all the years of rigor and denial and endless, endless practice (her father was a stern teacher, I take it). Those moments, after all, aren’t meant for her alone, or even for her audience alone. When Shankar smiles, it’s because she’s fully aware that God is listening to her, or, even more important, that God is playing through her.
There’s where the joy is: in the surrendering.
A Work in Progress 