I recently wrote a post on my two memories of Ustad Zakir Hussain. I suggested to my Niece, Poorvi, to write about her association with the Ustad so that I could add it to my post. As she was unable to do it right away, I posted my post. Now that she has been able to write down her association with him, I posting it now as a separate post as below.
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It was the spring of 2007. I was a graduate student at Stanford, and I had the incredible honor and fortune of serving as one of the Teaching Assistants to Ustad Zakir Hussain. Zakirji was teaching a course at Stanford, called “Introduction to the Music of India.” I applied to be his TA, and then approached the interview with the legend with a combination of nervousness and excitement. He was so incredibly warm and friendly from the get-go, that it felt like I was settling into an enjoyable conversation with an old friend. He asked me about my background in music, what I had learned, and who I had trained with.
The course ran through the spring quarter at Stanford. Once it began, we had weekly/bi-weekly meetings with Zakirji and his lovely wife, Toniji, to discuss class content and his plans to deliver it. During every meeting, and during every class, Zakirji exuded warmth, smiles, and friendly humor. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by his incredible open-mindedness and flexibility with any unexpected changes that came up. I say “surprised”, because, through volunteering and organizing concerts both in India as well as through SPICMACAY at Stanford, I’ve had the “opportunity” to observe all sorts of artiste personalities and behaviors - some unforgiving, difficult, extremely demanding, and very inflexible. Zakirji with his name and fame, could have been any of these. But instead, I saw him being calm, accommodating, forgiving and even reassuring if any of us messed anything up - be it his TA’s or his tabla students. I believe it may have been this same open-mindedness and flexibility that fuelled his creativity and the ease with which he broke boundaries and made music across borders and genres.
During one of the classes, he had asked us - his TA’s to prepare our own solo performance items to demonstrate to the students in class. I prepared to sing a composition in Yaman Kalyan. Zakirji had brought along one of his students to accompany me on the tabla. As our “performance” started, we realized that Zakirji’s student, who presumably hadn’t yet been fully trained in the taal in which I was singing my bandish, was struggling to keep up with the accompaniment. Zakirji kindly and silently stepped in from behind the stage, smiled, said a few words to him and took over his student’s tabla as I was singing. He used the opportunity to show his student how to play the taal while keeping the accompaniment for my performance going, which meant . . . that there was a part of my rendition for which Zakirji accompanied me on the tabla! Needless to say, this was incredibly special and an unforgettable experience for me! He also complimented me on my voice and musical ability at the end of it.
On the final day of the course, Zakirji brought his entire family along - Toniji, and their daughters, and took all of us out to treat us to dinner at a restaurant in Palo Alto. We TA’s were students without cars, and so he even drove us to the restaurant. Something about that was just so incredibly sweet and touching for me. We took lots of pictures with him that evening, and we went back home with hearts full of warmth and gratitude.
I continued to keep in touch with him, albeit only loosely, occasionally reaching out while arranging concerts for my teacher Smt. Aditi Kaikini Upadhya, etc. when she visited us in the Bay Area. I forgot to mention that he had even given me his cell phone number when I was his TA! I always wondered if he wasn’t worried that I’d share it with others, or perhaps call him myself and bug him for favours! But he was really “chill”. Nothing seemed to bother him. The last time I met him was at his place. My guru Aditiji, who he knew quite well, was visiting my husband and me in the US, and Zakirji invited us all for dinner. After dinner at a restaurant close to his place, we went to this place where we asked him about his awards that we saw in his living room, and he casually showed us his “Grammy”s. If I were a character in Tom and Jerry, my eyes would have popped out. Little did I know then that that was to be the last I was going to see him.
A few years later, my teacher Smt. Aditi Upadhya told me she met/talked to him somewhere, and he inquired about me - how I was, and what I was up to. I had gotten busy with a full-time job and my kids, and didn’t really do a good job of keeping in touch even though I could easily have. But I guess I subconsciously always thought to myself that I would meet him sometime in the future - another day. After all, he was still young (not that I consciously ever thought about that fact), and he was just an email away, just a phone call away, and of course he or Toniji would always kind enough to respond . . . but sadly, it was not to be.
I’m still processing the unfathomable loss of the legend, and the void he left behind in the world of music.
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