Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Ghazal singer Pratap Tanvani is 93. But even at this age he does ‘riyaz’ every day. A resident of Vijay Nagar is the city, Tanvani has been a singer for nearly 80 years now. Besides ghazals, he also sings classical songs and plays harmonium.
Tanvani has performed for the All India Radio besides at different public functions for over six decades now. He also himself composes the music of the ghazals he picks for singing.
Born in 1929, Tanvani migrated to India after the partition of the country. His father, Vadhyaram, was a poet. “Having moved to India, we were safe physically. But our problems were far from over,” he said.
The first and foremost problem was finding a means of livelihood. The problem was worse confounded by the fact that the Sindhis did not have even a nodding acquaintance with the Hindi language and the Devanagari script. Nonetheless, as the Sindhi script had many commonalities with the Arabic script, in which Persian and Urdu are written, they could easily learn the twin languages.
In 1949, Tanvani passed his intermediate examination with Persian as one of the subjects. Knowledge of Persian and Urdu enabled him to read poetic works of great shayars.
Slowly, he began singing them. Besides Bhopal, he performed in many cities in the country.
His two sons manage the family’s opticians’ business. “He doesn’t keep well these days. But he rarely skips his daily practice,” his younger son Anil told Free Press.
Tanvani is concerned that the Sindhi language is stagnating for want of new literary writers. “Many singers sing Sindhi songs but they all are old works,” he said.
Also, some musical instruments like Sarangi and Mochrang used by Sindhi performers are on the verge of extinction. Once upon a time these instruments were very popular, he said. Tanvani said that it was unfortunate that the younger generation does not even know about these instruments.
