WHEN quite a few of my friends were running helter-skelter with sound bites and seminar papers about the status of women on Saturday, I was relieved to find myself relishing the music of Kala Ramnath. Young and charming, Kala is a great violinist with a vibrant stage presence.

The meditative romance of Shuddh Kalyan and Bihagada she played for a private audience, followed by a celebration of spring in lyrical Basant made the evening special. Another great woman musician, her legendary aunt and violinist N. Rajam is said to have honed Kala’s mastery over the originally Western instrument adapted to Indian music.

The young violinist is also the main disciple of vocalist guru Pandit Jasraj, which makes her a competent singer, a role she can glide into with ease when there is a need to explain the flourish in a raag.

Recently I had watched Rajam at a command performance she gave with her daughter and two amazing granddaughters. In any field where they can dodge the obstructive male ego women do better than men.

I won’t recommend such a test in politics and bureaucracy where their role will necessarily be circumscribed by the male agenda. We need nothing short of a revolution if women are to play a defining role in politics, not being merely elected presidents and prime ministers.

What a feast it is to watch women sing, act, dance, draw, sculpt, take a lawyer’s brief, supervise academic research, write novels, fly planes, do a Nadia Comaneci on the beam, send a ball careening past the opponent on the Centre Court at Wimbledon, or fly planes.

(It was fitting then that it was a woman who piloted my mother’s last flight on her way to an elusive treatment in Delhi. She wouldn’t leave the aircraft without first giving the pilot the warmest hug she would reserve for women unknown to her who broke the patriarchic glass ceiling.)

As women musicians go, I idolise Kesarbai Kerkar and was fortunate to catch a glimpse of her melodious prowess in the 1970s shortly before her death. The great ustads as well as budding male singers would throng to her concerts to learn, and occasionally steal a trick or two, which was never easy to replicate.

There’s a promising new book on Gangubai Hangal, which I hope to write about soon. She was another hugely gifted musician who sang only traditional classical compositions. Unlike other women singers of today Gangubai was neither a Brahmin, nor was she from a privileged layer of the caste heap.

Her music was so refined that she would flatly refuse to sing religious bhajans in a concert, often to the embarrassment of her upper caste fans. When women like Gangubai take a stand there is unalloyed dignity and wisdom in their assertion.

The struggle of talented Indian women to make a mark in an innately adverse milieu is not unique. As my former teacher, a distinguished historian in her own right, reminded me recently, the story of women in music cannot be complete without appreciating the contribution of Saint Hildegard of Bingen of 12th century Europe.

Hildegard was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess and visionary among her other attributes. Her compositions continue to enthrall Western music lovers today.

Yet of all the particular days celebrated in a calendar year, I have the least faith in International Women’s Day. This is because according women equal status in a stubbornly regressive society is too crucial an agenda to be observed once a year. Labour Day, Literacy Day, Girl Child Day are similarly celebrated with a good heart but turn into occasions for mostly repetitive and vacuous debates and seminars.

Can you fight the might of the music-hating Taliban or of the rising tide of misogynistic Hindutva hordes, to mention two negative forces stalking the world, with resolutions in seminar halls? Or do you need to take evasive action? But what evasive action? Malala Yousafzai has become a popular symbol of resistance to the Taliban’s medievalism. She is a symbol of resistance all right, but where is the resistance?

Malala’s trauma can be justifiably blamed on narrow religious precepts propounded by iodine-deficient maulvis. However, something equally gross happened in a supposedly more hospitable Delhi on Saturday. While I was riveted to Kala Ramnath’s violin, news came that Soni Sori had been given ‘permanent’ bail by a court.

Permanent bail is legal sophistry. Sori is a tribal schoolteacher from Chhattisgarh and has been accused of being a conduit to Maoist guerrillas. Sori was tortured and brutally molested during her horrendously long police custody. Policemen who shoved stones in her private parts were rewarded with gallantry medals and promotions. An overtly democratic state can be just as misogynistic as another based on religiously inspired patriarchy.

Some of the hateful axioms are beginning to be questioned though. In Lajja, a little noticed movie actress Madhuri Dixit gets away with lines that would ordinarily have invited censure from the religious orthodoxy.

In her role as Sita, she asks her consort Ram: “You too were away from me during my captivity in Ravan’s castle. Will you walk with me through the test by fire?” She also reminds Ram: “You came to defeat Ravan with powerful weapons. But you killed a dead man. I had already killed Ravan, by refusing his advances.” Kala Ramnath needs to keep her violin tuned to some of these faint notes of change.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com