Goodbye, Zakir ji. The pleasure was all ours

This is how Hussain’s friendships have always been. Long, steady and fun because he always made an effort.

He was calling from his Napean Sea Road home in Mumbai, where his parents had moved in 1970 after living in a one-room apartment behind the Mahim dargah for over two decades. Whenever Hussain returned to India from San Francisco, he stayed on the first floor of Simla House Cooperative Society — his home of memories and music with the ocean as witness; a home where his mother Bavi Begum would get kam masale-wali biryani made for her eldest son whose now American palette couldn’t handle spicy food, where his Abbaji, Ustad Allah Rakha, would sometimes stand near the living-room window, doing taal riyaaz with him as his mother read the newspaper (the moment from the iconic Raghu Rai photograph) or the music room where he’d go through hours of practice until he was drenched in sweat.

I was quite touched by the fact that amid his busy schedule, he’d made an effort to find out from his secretary where I was travelling. Thus, the Rajasthani salutation and conversation about the traditional Rajasthani snack. In the manic, self-obsessed world of music, it showed deep respect for another person who was giving you their time.

This is also probably why Hussain never took his audience for granted. He found ways to draw them in and they, in return, loved him back. Beyond the tabla, it was his personality that spoke the most to me and probably to many others.

During a performance at Delhi’s FICCI auditorium on the occasion of Kathak exponent Pandit Birju Maharaj’s 75th birthday, he said, “Maharaj ji danced on my fourth birthday… Ab kyunki Maharaj ji aaj chaar saal ke ho gaye hain (Now that Maharaj ji has turned four), I thought I should also pay him a tribute.” Just when the laughter was settling in, Hussain began playing diverse rhythm structures. What was interesting was that he wasn’t building a complicated world of beats that meant nothing to untrained ears in the audience. Instead, there was the sound of rain and thunder, Krishna being scolded by his beloved Radha for coming late, even the sound of a train. On other occasions, there was Ganesha’s conch shell alongside Shiva’s damaru. But at a tabla workshop or a session with other tabla players, it was about would pushing and challenging himself and arriving at the sam (first beat of the rhythm cycle) in diverse ways. While accompanying artistes such as Pt Shiv Kumar Sharma, Pt Hari Prasad Chaurasia and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan among others, it was about surrendering to the art of sangat (accompaniment), carrying the music along and finding ways to make the “main instrument” shine. It was uncanny the way Hussain could gauge the melodic movement and figure what was coming next in ways that many couldn’t. He was always on guard, like the first day of independent driving, never losing focus. “The day I start to think that I have it in me, is the day it’ll be the end of Zakir Hussain. Which is why it’s important to remain a student, keep learning,” he told me once, while his fingers cajoled an invisible tabla. Or, when he told a fellow journalist about how a lot of times young artistes cannot come up because they tend to be in the shadow of more popular artistes; which is why he worked extensively with artistes he thought were talented. Musicians like Niladri Kumar, Purbayan Chatterjee, Rakesh Chaurasia, and Sabir Khan among others, consummate artistes in their own right, have been buoyed by the generosity and attention of a musician such as Hussain.

Amid so many artistes that I meet, most of whom want to tell me how great they are, and the new projects they are doing, there are only a handful who still look at their work and find ways to gaze inwards — that one phrase in the bandish, a particular tukda, perfecting and polishing their skill so that it sounds better the next time. In Zakir ji’s case, the beats were always carried out with precision and passion but they were also kept in check by an assiduous process of self-reflection. That’s what lifted him and the humble tabla to the realm of the extraordinary and stretched the potential of the world of music in general.

We didn’t speak after this interview due to a disagreement over publishing a statement he later decided should be off the record. I, of course, kept attending his concerts. No disagreement was going to deter me from listening to his music. I avoided going backstage though, for a quick greeting, like I used to.

Whenever I did so earlier, he would remember and laugh heartily about the first time I did almost 15 years ago. Amid a mob at Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium, with people asking for photographs and autographs after his concert, there I was trying to get an exclusive with one of the greatest musicians of our century. It was February 14 and I had not wanted to be alone at my tiny apartment. So, a day of music is what I planned for myself. I introduced myself as the crowd milled around and asked him if we could speak for a moment. “Yes, we can. But first of all darling, happy Valentine’s Day,” said Hussain with a huge smile. I couldn’t stop my sheepish grin.

Last month, when I found out that he’d be in India in January for a concert with Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer, I asked his media company to set up a conversation with him; a part of me wanted to clear the air. His sudden death, at the pinnacle of his career, has been utterly heartbreaking.

No one teaches you how to grieve for an artiste. One can desperately try to hold on to the brilliance of his music, the charisma, the rigour and the genius, or the many memories around him — the Taj Mahal ad; his vulnerability when he was the pallbearer for Pt Shiv Kumar Sharma’s hearse, holding on to the national flag that wrapped him; the fun he had with the brass band that was trying to impress him with a jugalbandi during his daughter’s engagement. There is so much to be grateful for as Hussain departs and yet it feels way too little. We needed more of him and his music. Undoubtedly, he would have laughed at the fuss. He’d have said, “This is music’s appeal, not mine,” as he told the BBC in 2016. The pleasure has always been ours.

suanshu.khurana@expressindia.com