Zakir Hussain Page 6

  Since she had eaten breakfast they waited awhile before the surgery but not long enough. You’re not supposed to eat before going under general anaesthesia. As you know the muscles get paralysed, so during the operation, the food that she ate earlier entered her windpipe and she started to choke. They suddenly realized what was happening, but they did not have the right equipment or medication to revive her. By the time an ambulance finally arrived, she had already passed away.

  By the time my younger brother Taufiq, who was at home in Bombay, managed to contact us in Kozhikode, we had already played the concert that evening and had just returned to the hotel. The news was utterly shocking. All I could tell Taufiq was to make sure that someone stayed close to our parents, to make sure they were being looked after. Some of Abba’s students went immediately to Simla House, whilst Fazal and I desperately tried to find a way to get back to Bombay. We tried to hire a helicopter or charter a plane, but there was nothing we could do because the airport was closed for the night.

  So Fazal, Sultan Khansahib and I drove from Kozhikode to Kochi. We got to Kochi around 4 a.m. on the morning of 3 February. When we got to the airport, we called home and were told that Abba had passed away. When he was told about Razia Apa, I believe he did not say a word. Though his students tried hard to distract him, he would not speak to anyone. Abba was very attached to Razia Apa. They were very close. I heard that Abba wandered around the house and even went into my room. Maybe he was thinking—where is Zakir? Perhaps he wanted to talk to me. But that didn’t happen. He went to the bathroom and came out and that’s when he had a heart attack. They called the doctor, but it was too late. When Fazal and I returned to Simla House, we arrived to two deaths in the family. I mean how does this happen in any home? It doesn’t really.

  It was very strange. There were already forty guys from the press who were at our door. Word had spread, and it was difficult to manage everything. Amjad Ali Khansahib, Shivkumarji, Hariprasadji were there—everybody was there; I don’t know how they heard the news. Amjad Ali Khansahib had come all the way from Delhi.

  NMK: Was your father in good health otherwise? How old was he?

  ZH: Abba was eighty. He was born in 1919 and he would have been eighty-one on 29 April 2000. He was in very good health. He passed away on a Thursday and on the previous Sunday he had played at Shanmukhananda Hall in Sion in Bombay. He was fine. It was the shock of losing Razia Apa.

  Amma was made of sturdier stuff and she oversaw all the arrangements. We had a family grave in the Mahim kabrastan and we had to find a second grave. They could not give us adjoining graves because there was no time. It was amazing to watch Amma get through everything. It required a lot of self-control and strength. The rest of the family sort of worked our way through the day as best as we could.

  Abba passed away at around 3 a.m. on 3 February 2000, and by 7:30 or 8 that same morning, Fazal and I were home. Taufiq ran helter-skelter, making arrangements for the funeral. Abba and Razia Apa were buried on the same day and in the same graveyard in Mahim. Ravi Shankarji was in another city, so he chartered a plane and landed in time for the burial. He came straight to the graveyard.

  I had even told Razia Apa to wait a day or two longer so that I could have gone with her to the clinic. But she said the procedure was routine and would take an hour and it would be over. I heard that she felt uneasy that morning at the clinic, and perhaps if someone were with her she would’ve just returned home.

  We decided not to take the doctors to task about Razia Apa. What would that have achieved? Then losing Abba on the same day…

  NMK: The ‘Homage to Abbaji’ concerts have a huge following. The first concert starts at 6 a.m., the second around 2 p.m. and the last at 7.30 p.m. on the same day. A wide variety of musicians perform each year and it has become a big event for music lovers in Bombay. When did you first decide to organize these memorial concerts?

  ZH: We did something on 29 April 2000, on Abba’s birthday. I basically wanted to organize the barsi in the year that he had passed away, and only for that year. The morning concert was held out in the open at Kala Ghoda. We were allowed to block the surrounding area. That was probably the birth of the Kala Ghoda festival because it did not exist before that. We had this huge truck, which was turned into a stage. The afternoon session took place at the Tata Theatre. Without me even asking, musicians from all around the world came, and in the evening session there were dozens of musicians and 8,000 of his fans who came to celebrate Abba’s life.

  In 2001, we decided to have the memorial concert on the day that Abba passed away [3 February]. The year 2016 is the sixteenth year since that first barsi. I don’t even have to ask anyone, because so many musicians just say, ‘I’ll come.’ I remember getting a text message from Amjad Ali Khansahib: ‘Mian, hum haazir hain’ [I shall be there]. Abba had tremendous goodwill. Musicians just loved him. There was never any ill will against him, nor did anyone have a bad thing to say about him.

  Every year on 1 February, we all visit the graves of Abba and Razia Apa. Then we go to Abba’s music school and talk about him and remember him. The next day, we have a Quran khani [prayer meeting] at home and on 3 February, there’s the barsi concert. It’s a three-day process.

  NMK: You were so close to your father. Does he appear in your dreams?

  ZH: Every now and then he does. I am sure that some of the compositions that pop into my head when I’m sleeping are transmissions.

  It is traditional for a father to recite prayers in the ear of a newborn, but Abba would hold me in his arms and sing rhythms to me. My mother used to scold him, and ask him to say a prayer instead, and Abba would tell her that music was his prayer. Sometimes I would be awake and sometimes not, but he carried on reciting rhythms to me during my infancy. I have this feeling those rhythms are somewhere in my subconscious and something triggers them and they come flooding back. Abba really believed that music is a divine language. He respected Goddess Saraswati as much as he believed in Islam.

  NMK: Do you have premonitions or big dreams like your mother? I am thinking of her dream about your father sending her money when there was none at home.

  ZH: No, no dreams like that. I probably dream more often about my mother than my father, because I spent more time with her. Till I was about twenty-two, and even when I came back and forth from America, my mother was always there. Abba was travelling so much.

  Amma was the man of the house for me. She was the one who made it possible that one day I could sit here trying to speak to you coherently about my life and my thoughts. I don’t know why she felt that I must learn English. I don’t know why she thought it was okay for a Muslim to go to a Catholic school. It must have been a difficult decision for her because her neighbours were like—why are you sending him there? He’ll get corrupted—he’ll become an angrez!

  NMK: I am sure your mother visited you in America. Did she like it there?

  ZH: She came to see us in 1983 but it took a while persuading her to come. She did not like flying and did not really enjoy America. She was a woman of the neighbourhood, a mohalla type of person. She liked standing on the balcony and chatting with the neighbours as they passed by: ‘Arey Amina, kaisi ho, kya ho raha hai? Achchha Najma, kahaan ho? Namaz ho gayi?’ [Amina, how are you? What’s going on? I say, Najma, where were you? Have you said your prayers?]

  Amma had lots of friends, not just from the neighbourhood, but many wives of my father’s students became close to her. Our house was a full house with Abba’s students, countless guests and us kids. Amma never let anyone leave the house without eating. She was forever in the kitchen.

  She used to love the ten-minute walk from Simla House to the bazaar with its chain of lively conversations. She knew everyone and everyone knew her. For her, America was like—what is this? Nobody walks down the street. Why does everyone drive a car? You go to a shop and they don’t know you. They just give you a what-do-you-want look.

  *

  NMK: We had to stop our las
t conversation as you were heading back to America. It’s good to meet and talk again today. You’ve just arrived in Bombay, but you look surprisingly well rested. No jet lag?

  ZH: I don’t think so. I landed from the US the day before yesterday at four in the morning, came home, rested till nine, then gathered some clothes and the tabla, got into the car and drove to Pune. I arrived there at 2 p.m., had a little lunch, took a shower, ironed my kurta, got ready and was on stage by 6:45 in the evening. I played till about 10 p.m., then we went to the promoter’s house for a nice dinner and I came back to my hotel at 1 a.m. I went to sleep till seven, had breakfast, got ready and then we drove to Baramati. Had a little something to eat at Baramati, warmed up the tabla, played the concert, had dinner, got into the car and drove for five-and-a-half hours back to Bombay. I got here at 4:30 this morning.

  I don’t feel that I’m being squeezed out of every ounce of energy. I feel fine today. And the glow is from interacting with the Pune audience, and the audience in a smallish city like Baramati. It’s a tonic. There were kisans, people who work in cooperatives, some industrialists and many students. There were about 1,500 people. We might have had a larger audience, but people did not have the cash to buy tickets what with the recent demonetization in India. So only 1,500 people could come.

  NMK: As far as performing in public goes, I read on the Net that you were five when you performed on the stage for the first time.

  ZH: I don’t remember it very clearly. Did I show you a photograph of me on stage? I looked more like seven or eight. It was one of those long six-hour concerts, and I believe at some point my father may have needed to go to the loo or something, and so he asked me to take over because the concert was still in progress. That’s how it happened. I just took over and started playing. I think the audience was a little dazed, but the maestro who was playing was totally okay.

  NMK: The maestro?

  ZH: Ali Akbar Khansahib.

  NMK: Wow! What a way to start!

  ZH: [smiles] My relationship with Khansahib goes back a long way. After this first time on the stage when I was seven or eight, I earned my first hundred rupees playing the tabla for him at the Bombay Press Club. That was when I was twelve. Then from 1972, I spent about eleven years in America as his accompanist. I used to stay for six months or so in the US, and then come home for about four months, do concerts in India, and go back again.

  Khansahib and I performed together all around the world and I taught at his music college. I mixed his drinks for him and sat with him through the evening. At some point, he would say: ‘You eat, I’ll eat later.’ At around 2 a.m., he would have a piece of chicken and then go to bed. He ate very little and never drank before a concert. Khansahib just enjoyed a glass of whisky with three quarters’ soda after the sun had gone down.

  NMK: Was it a big decision for him to move to America? Why did he decide to settle there?

  ZH: I imagine it was not a very big decision. If he wanted to do something, he did it without thinking of the consequences.

  Khansahib’s first visit to America happened by accident. In 1955, Yehudi Menuhin, the great violinist, was organizing a series of Indian classical music concerts at New York’s Modern Art Museum and he invited Ravi Shankarji to perform. As Raviji was busy at the time, he asked Yehudi Menuhin: ‘Why don’t you invite my brother-in-law, Ali Akbar Khan?’ So that’s how Khansahib was the first to visit America and not Ravi Shankarji.

  Khansahib really enjoyed America during that first trip. Suddenly you were no longer a second-class citizen as you were in the India of the 1950s, and here you were counted amongst the music elite. You were wined and dined and given all that respect. Khansahib was the first Indian musician to perform on American television—in Alistair Cooke’s famous arts programme Omnibus.

  The following year, in 1956, Ravi Shankarji went to the States. Then some years later, Khansahib was invited back to teach at the American Society for Eastern Arts in California. He jumped at the idea because he wanted to experience America again. So, he returned to Berkeley in 1965 to teach and in 1967, he founded the Ali Akbar College of Music, which soon moved to San Rafael in Marin County and that’s where his college is now.

  I think living in America took him away from the rigmarole of daily life, the responsibility of being the prince of the house. He did not like all the attention he received in India—in California he enjoyed vacuuming his house and watering his garden—he did this every day till he was no longer physically able.

  NMK: Did you meet Ali Akbar Khan’s father? The great Ustad Allauddin Khan.

  ZH: I saw him once in Maihar. We went there to attend the celebration of Baba’s hundredth birthday.

  NMK: I read somewhere that he was very unpredictable and had a legendary bad temper. There is a 1971 documentary about Ravi Shankar called Raga: A Journey to the Soul of India, directed by Howard Worth, that I saw and in the film, we see Ravi Shankar going to Maihar for Ustad Allauddin Khan’s hundredth birthday. Is this the same trip that you’re talking about?

  ZH: That’s right. I was about thirteen or fourteen and studying in the eighth standard. I travelled along with my father in the Kashi Express from Bombay to Maihar, which is in Madhya Pradesh. The train did not usually stop at Maihar, but at Katni and Satna. Because Ravi Shankarji was visiting Allauddin Khansahib, and they were filming his visit, arrangements were for the Kashi Express to stop at Maihar, and so that’s where we all got off. You will not see us in the Maihar portion of the film because it was really about Ravi Shankarji.

  I remember that Allauddin Khansahib had gathered many of the local people and taught them how to play music. He created something called the Maihar Band. He would walk around with a stick and had the reputation of hitting these orchestra members if they made a mistake. He would get very angry.

  Ali Akbar Khansahib used to say that when he was young his father would tie Khansahib’s hair with a rope to a ceiling hook. And if he happened to fall asleep when practising and his head would droop, the rope would pull him up. There are many well-known stories about Baba being a hard taskmaster. I guess all teachers are. Maybe he became crankier in old age; sometimes the older you get, the crankier you can become. But come to think of it, I never saw Ali Akbar Khansahib in a cranky mood. He was as calm at eighty as he was at sixty.

  NMK: Had his father passed away by the time he had moved to America?

  ZH: No. But he did go back to his father’s home in Maihar for a couple of months every winter like I used to come to Bombay. Ali Akbar Khansahib’s first wife and kids lived in Calcutta, and his second wife and kids lived in Bombay. His third wife was with him when he passed away. He had twelve children.

  NMK: When you went to America for the first time, was it to work with Ali Akbar Khan?

  ZH: No, Ravi Shankarji called me there. I was in Munich playing at a concert in February 1970 and Ravi Shankarji phoned me and said: ‘Your father is unwell and can’t do the four or five concerts that I have yet to do. Since you are in Germany, just go to the American Embassy, get a visa and meet me in New York.’

  At that time, a young man of eighteen who did not have dozens of documents could walk into the American Embassy and apply for a visa. So I got my visa and left for America. I was Ravi Shankarji’s tabla accompanist at the Fillmore on 22 February 1970 in San Francisco. After the short tour was over, I was about to return to India when Raviji heard about an opening in the Department of Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington in Seattle. It was he who advised me to stay on in America and take the teaching job. I taught and studied ethnomusicology. Because I was teaching, I did not have to pay university fees.

  The plan was to get a PhD degree, but halfway through, I heard that Ali Akbar Khansahib’s tabla player, Shankar Ghosh, had to return to India, and so Khansahib asked me to move to the Bay Area, to become his accompanist and teach at his music college in San Rafael. He understood that he needed a competent tabla player who was not a great master, but someone who could teach the
students the basic blocks. I was young and not the Ustad Allarakha of my time and all Khansahib needed was a simple tabla player to play a little rhythm for him on stage. Like Ravi Shankarji, he was aware that his concerts had to entertain the audience, and a musician with whom he could have a little nok jhonk [musical banter] was good. So I fit the bill.

  I left Seattle and joined Khansahib in San Rafael, which is about 24 kilometres from San Francisco. I slept in his living room for the first ten days. It was just he and I and his cookbook! He was a good cook and made delicious biryani, daal and chicken curry. A few weeks later, he found me a rented room and after that I got my own apartment.

  There is a huge and beautiful stained-glass mural of Goddess Saraswati that you’d see as you approached Khansahib’s college. And inside his home, hung on his wall were symbols and images of every possible God and Goddess—Goddess Saraswati, Lords Ganesh and Krishna and Jesus—and Allah’s name and the name of Prophet Muhammad were written in Arabic. Perhaps this came from his childhood in Maihar. The famous Ma Sharda Devi temple is located in his hometown. To reach the temple, which is on a very high hill, you have to climb more than a thousand steps. Inside the temple, images and symbols of every religion greet you. Perhaps those images stayed in Khansahib’s mind.

  He had a universal Sufi way of approaching his faith. Just think of the name of his sister—Annapurna Devi—that’s not a Muslim name and even though his family were Muslims, they were totally secular.

  NMK: What did you learn from him on a personal level?

  ZH: He was a quiet person. He would sit for hours and chain-smoke. If you asked him a question, he’d answer you, light up a cigarette and go quiet again. He was one of those people you could spend years with and suddenly realize that you had learned a lot without knowing it—both in terms of music and as a human being.

  Ali Akbar Khansahib reminded me of a glass snow globe—the kind you shake and watch the snow whirling around inside. He had this calm exterior with a storm raging within. In many ways, he was a law unto himself, a man in his own world. He was like a sadhu who decides to stand on one leg for years on end. He did not conform, and everything rotated on an axis of his choice. It was amazing—he and his brother-in-law, Ravi Shankarji, were in America at the height of the popularity of Indian classical music, but Khansahib did not care to profit from it. He never attempted to find himself an agent to book concerts and earn him thousands of dollars. He liked going to his music school from 5 to 9 p.m. four days a week, he would teach there and then come home.