A few days ago, I woke up to the news of the passing of Ustad Zakir Hussain. Much encomiums can be read all over the place and I will not add to them. I just want to reminisce about my two encounters with him. The second one shows the kind of impact he had.
The first time I listened to ZH live was in January 1981, in an old college in Mumbai, I do not remember which. I am certain about the year because there was a concert of Pt. Ravi Shankar after the concert in which ZH played. Before Ravi Shankar’s concert started the emcee announced that he had been awarded the Padma Vibhushan. That news was received by the large audience with a very lengthy round of applause.
Coming to ZH, he was accompanying Dr N Rajam and her daughter Sangeetha Shankar in a violin concert. During that concert, there was a long sawal-jawab between Sangeetha and ZH. It turned out extremely well. The audience, mostly college students, cheered, clapped, whistled, and hooted as if that dramatic exchange was a romantic conversation between two of their peers that they had overheard and were teasing them about it. And all on stage enjoyed it though Sangeetha herself appeared extremely abashed
The second time I heard him live was in the year 1987 when I was doing my MTech at IIT Kharagapur. It was January and the famous Spring Fest of IIT Kgp was on. Since my friends knew my interest in classical music, as the day of a much awaited concert approached, many asked me something like, “Surely, you are going to the Zakir Hussain concert.” I felt a little bad because it was a Santoor concert of Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, accompanied on the Tabla by ZH. I also overheard people talking about the Zakir Hussain concert in the cafeteria and so on. That shows how famous he was among the youth.
On the day of the concert a few student organisers of the Spring Fest came to me with a peculiar request. They wanted me to attend the concert in “fancy dress” - dressed in tight fitting pyjamas and a long kurta and a shawl draped over it. They also wanted me to sit at the very front. They wanted me to play the role of one of the cognoscenti. I could oblige but for the fact that I did not have a suitable pyjama. They went out and fetched one - from another student - washed and freshly ironed. There were a couple of other students who knew classical music - another Veene player and a Sarod player. They were reluctant to wear the fancy dress and hence it was only me.
I wore the clothes and thanks to them, I had the opportunity to go to the wings of the stage and talk to and spend some time with the artistes as they waited for the event that was going on to end so that they could start their concert.
I am not very knowledgeable about the percussive arts. However, I am a great admirer of Pandit Yogesh Shamsi. The great respect and awe with which he talks about Zakir Hussain (and of course, his father Ustad Allah Rakha) I can get an idea how good they were.
