The bard of Banaras

Pandit Chhannulal Mishra mixed music and storytelling to enrapture his audiences. His musical journey was as onerous as it was long.

- AMITAVA SANYAL

SUCCESS came to Pandit Chhannulal Mishra late in life. When it finally did, it took the musician to heights almost unthinkable during the first half of his life.

Young Chhannulal's father took him to Muzaffarpur in Bihar for an almost-decade-long tutelage under Ustad Abdul Ghani Khan of Kirana gharana. The ward would later say that the zamindar of Champanagar had wanted to keep him, then a teenager just graduated from gurukul, as a court singer in Bihar. But Chhannulal's father had wanted to keep him close at their home in eastern Uttar Pradesh's Hariharpur.