It's the Small Things | Begum Akhtar's Paan

There were, perhaps still are, the blessed few who’ve seen Begum Akhtar take a paan. To have witnessed it was to have glimpsed nafaasat as a reflex. Observers were often struck by the smallness of the paan. The gilauri was pared down to what was essential. Just choona, kathha, supari. Maybe some saunf and ilaichi (no zarda: tobacco she smoked, leaving her paan innocent of vice). A triangular wedge tucked between cheek and grace. It stayed there invisibly, like a secret. Would stain the mouth, but never the lips. The nafasat lay in that distinction. It was a kind of calibration. There were no unseemly bovine workings of the jaw. The leaf infused her, perfumed her throat. You wouldn’t know there was betel in her mouth unless she wanted you to. Unless she laughed.

Decades of paan and supari will do things to a mouth. Many have wondered if the gilauri was Akhtar’s accomplice. If it gave the grain in her voice. With years of lime and areca alkaloids, the buccal lining grows stringy and gets bands of scars underneath. Oral submucous fibrosis is a chronic, insidious, scarring disease of the oral cavity. The tongue is depapillated, the mucosa becomes leathery, the uvula shrinks. Palatal lift is less supple. Consonants get cramped at the front gate. The singer’s mucosa, once a lubricated resonator, becomes almost like dry felt. And tightened by scar.

Paan-chewing cohorts show measurable drifts in voice parameters. There’s a kind of spectral roughness: the bloom left by years of petty friction and low-grade scarring. And dryness. It leaves them wanting more of the betel quid, to sluice the mouth and throat in that alkaline, tannin-rich juice.

I’ve no evidence that Akhtar ever suffered that slow tightening, or what shape it might have given her sound. But here is Chha Rahi Kaali Ghataa, from her later years, when her voice had begun to carry its own weather. The dark rainclouds are outside, the storm is in the throat.

Ambarish Satwik is a Delhi-based vascular surgeon and writer.

We’ve grown up hearing that “it’s the small things” that matter. That’s true, of course, but it’s also not – there are Big Things that we know matter, and that we shouldn’t take our eyes, minds or hearts off of. As journalists, we spend most of our time looking at those Big Things, trying to understand them, break them down, and bring them to you.

And now we’re looking to you to also think about the small things – the joy that comes from a strangers’ kindness, incidents that leave you feeling warm, an unexpected conversation that made you happy, finding spaces of solidarity. Write to us about your small things at thewiresmallthings@gmail.com in 800 words or less, and we will publish selected submissions. We look forward to reading about your experiences, because even small things can bring big joys.

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