The Emperor

Michael Jackson died. I am a great fan of his but this entry is not an eulogy to him. It is a lament; and a tribute to someone else.

I adore Jackson. There was a certain energy to his dances and songs that kept the viewer mesmerised. I often watch "The Way You Make Me Feel" even today. And I love it. My cousins had introduced Jackson to me when I was about 6. From Thriller to Billie Jean to plain moonwalking, I loved it all...

There was another musician who I discovered all by myself though. This is about him. Why? Because this great musician died too last week. Because you need to know about him. Because "The Times of India" (which I hope does not reflect really the times of India) had just a three line side column entry on his death (whereas it continues to splash Jacko over 5 pages every day since his death).

His name was Ali Akbar. We call him Ustad Ali Akbar Khan Saheb, or sometimes plain Khansaheb. It is understood that there is only one of his kind. Its difficult to describe his music, so I will tell you just stories I know. (Whether all true or not I don't know.)

Around the time I was 13 years old, I had just started playing the sarod. I was pretty interested in Classical Music at that time and I would listen to everyone and anyone with an LP or cassette recording. I had already found out Zakir Hussain and was looking for more of his kind. Then one day, I heard Medhaavi...

Here is the first of the stories. It dates back many years before I heard Medhaavi. On a particularly bad personal day in his life, Khansaheb as a young musician had run away from home and had decided to end his life by jumping from a cliff. Torn by the internal machinations of his mind, he did not jump that day. He created a raag. He called it Medhaavi...

Medhaavi is an outpouring of his soul. Medhaavi is the expression of that which is impossible to express. Medhaavi encompasses you completely. Medhaavi makes you forget that you ever knew or ever want to hear anything else again in your life.

Oh, I forgot - why was I playing the sarod? Well, another story. When I was about 12, my father (a very good general physican in my part of Calcutta) noticed a commotion outside his extremely small clinic. People were suddenly prostrating in front of an unseen entity and creating a major hullabaloo. My father recalls stepping out and not being able to believe his eyes. For in front of him was Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, flanked on the sides by Aashish and Dhyanesh Khan - his two eldest sons - whom I would eventually have as my gurus. Khansaheb had a concert in Calcutta that evening and was sick and worried that he wouldn't be able to play. Anindya, his disciple and my father's long time patient had brought him over.

Thanks to my father, that night Calcutta heard the maestro enraptured. Khansaheb was not ungrateful. He came back to the clinic the next day and gifted an autographed LP to Baba. He was overwhelmed that he had not just been able to play, but could play extra long. He asked Baba about his sons and when he came to know that I had been playing the tabla for some time, suggested that I start learning the sarod from his son, Dhyanesh.

I did.

But good music takes some time to be understood and although I started learning the sarod and heard the autographed LP at the first opportunity I found it, to be frank, dull for my tastes.

A few months later, I heard Medhaavi. I dug up everything in the house that I could find on Ali Akbar. I must have been deaf or blind or both. For streaming into my ears was the most profound and beautiful music I had ever heard in my entire 13 years of life! I heard the autographed LP again. This time at full volume.

Khansaheb's music was ethereal. It said so much at so many levels that I can't even begin to describe it. I wasn't sure whether I was hallucinating, so I heard these many times over. I went to Guruji (Dhyanesh Khan) and I told him the wonderful things that I was suddenly hearing. He smiled. But didn't say anything. He was (Dhyanesh Khan died a year into my training with him) a great guru. He wanted me to find my own path. He was my guiding light.

So I went to my father's other classical musician patients. I told them that Ustad Ali Akbar Khan was the greatest musician ever - and I asked for their opinion. To my utter surprise (and utter relief as well) they all agreed with me. They took me under their fold as if I had stumbled upon a secret society. They gave me membership willingly and immediately. They would rave and rant about Khansaheb till I got bored. I wanted to listen to more of his music. I wanted to listen to everything he had ever played.

Till then I had not been allowed to Khansaheb's live concerts. They were meant for "grown-ups" only. I was dying to meet him, to see him with my own eyes. I wanted to bring out that faceless music from the speakers into the visual domain. I wanted to meet this god. If his music was so beautiful, how beautiful would he be? I fished out a photo from him from the newspapers and drew a portrait of him and stared at it long and hard.

At that time I was also involved with "The Statesman in School". The Statesman was a widely read newspaper in Calcutta and we were the school volunteers who wrote about stuff we liked in a weekly edition called "The Statesman in School". Arup-da (Amitava Ghosh's son) was in charge and dearly loved by all of us. One day, he gave us a proposition. We could interview the star of our choice.

Ali Akbar, I had screamed out and had promptly been given permission. There were a few d******s in the other members who disliked the choice - because Western Music was the in-thing and also because they had never heard of Ali Akbar. (I suspect they also work for the TOI today. Heh! Heh!). That week Shiva (the rock group) was being interviewed and there was considerable excitement because of that. However, the good Arup-da fought for me and won. Both Shiva's and Ali Akbar's interview would go up in that edition.

Where is Shiva today, I ask you? Most of you probably don't recognise the name anyway...

Well, I had got my chance to meet the great man and that was all that mattered. I needed questions to ask him, but I didn't know what to say. I just wanted to meet him. My mother (I am eternally grateful to her) wrote down a bunch of questions for me and I called up Khansaheb's secretary and arrived there with my brother in tow. The average age of the interview team was 11!

We were asked to wait in the living room. Heart thumping I waited. How tall would he be? Over 6 feet? Was he an angry man? What if he scolded me or asked me to play the sarod for him? I became convinced I had made an error by opting for the interview. I could leave now, but Arup-da would be very disappointed...

My brother and I stood up as Khansaheb walked in. I was astonished. He wasn't more than five feet two I think, very dark and hobbled in with a pack of 20's Classics in his hand. He was going to light up, but stopped when he saw his "interviewers" and was as astonished as I was. My brother, all of 9 years, holding up a portable borrowed tape recorder and me, all of 13 years ready with pad and pencil.

"You are going to interview me?", he asked in a broken and husky voice. Ow, this is the person who created Medhaavi? But I was also afraid for Ustad Ali Akbar Khan was a giant among musicians. Before I could react, he looked half amused and half interested and settled down.

I learnt that the Ustad's legendary father, Baba Allaudin Khan had made him practice for 18 hours a day and would tie him to a tree and hit him with a stick if he didn't. I learnt that his father had finally appreciated his music when Ali Akbar was 50 years old. I listened to all this with wide open eyes.

How do you play the sarod like that, I wanted to ask him.

At the end of the interview, I slipped him the portrait I had drawn and requested for it to be autographed. "You have given me too much hair", he said rubbing his shining bald pate and lovingly signed the sketch.

That day, I met the greatest musician in the world. Apart from his music what made him so great? He lived in the knowledge that he was the Emperor. So he didn't worry about ego. He concentrated on his art and created music which words cannot convey. Indian Classical artistes are as jealous as they are talented and they often have ego hassles. The Emperor had surpassed ego because he knew in a completely egoless way, that he could not ever be surpassed. He had after all stepped out from the shadows of his genius father and made a brand of music which was completely his own. Some of us, know its Ali Akbar by just hearing the tuning of the sarod.

I saw his concerts after that. Live concerts.

How did he play? Did he smile at the audience from time to time? Did he shake his head and have mannerisms? Did he complain about the weather? Did he threaten the sounds guy?

No, to all of the above.

One of the first things you would observe about Ali Akbar on stage was that his hobble was completely gone. He would walk rapidly and purposefully to the dais. He would announce the raag and he would sometimes forget.

And then he would slouch down with sarod in lap. He would lower his head, close his eyes and disappear. In a few seconds you would hear the first strain of the sarod. Each string pluck would be a like a stroke of a brush with a different colour. You would see the picture appearing gradually with the aalaap. What went on behind Khansaheb's closed eyes is beyond anyone's wildest imagination, but his hands gave us ample glimpses of it.

For through his sarod, God used to speak...

Hariprasad Chaurasia doesn't play with Zakir Hussain - apparently because the latter hogs the limelight. Ravi Shankar stopped his first wife (incidentally Ali Akbar Khan's sister, Annapurna Devi) from publicly performing the surbahaar (larger cousin of the sitar) out of jealousy and fear. Kishori Amonkar routinely yelled at the poor sounds technicians. Vilayat Khansaheb wouldn't play at a concert because he himself had dropped tea on his own sherwani. Amjad Ali Khan tries tricking Bickram Ghosh by rehearsing a taal in the green room and then changing it on stage.

But Ustad Ali Akbar Khan - he just played the sarod. He played like there was no tomorrow. He played like that every time. He gave to you a gift no one else could. Each concert you would hold in yourself for the rest of your life. He used to say that each raag was a manifestation a divine soul in Heaven; and he tried to bring these souls down to Earth for his audience.

He is on record for having said that having practiced for 10 years, one could please oneself; after 20 years one could please the audience; after 30 even the guru. But you will need many many years more to please The Divine.

Khansaheb not only pleased The Divine I am sure, he also merged with It. Legend has it that even when he was sleeping his left thumb used to be upright and twitching slightly. (That's how the sarod is held.)

Once at the Dover Lane music conference, the organisers reminded him to announce the raag and taal before the concert. It was hilarious. With all earnestness, Khansaheb announced Bageshree Kannada would be the raag. And the taal would be....? He gets stuck, looks befuddled at Swapan Choudhuri (his brilliant and long time accompanist and a great musician in his own right) and both start giggling like teenagers.

"Well, I don't know", Khansaheb finally mischeivously admits - "Actually I haven't thought about it." The evening rolls on. Calcutta is seduced by the sarod and forgets all about the taal. Till Khansaheb starts the gat in jhaptaal, pauses briefly and to keep true to the organisers' wishes announces, "OK, now I know, it is jhaptaal". He smiles and sinks back to his closed-eyes-world in a mere couple of seconds...

And I have to tell you this. Once I heard Khansaheb with Zakir Hussain. Zakir was then half his age and I knew that his professional debut had been when he had accompanied the Emperor at the age of 11. But I had never heard them together live.

Two wizards on stage. A complete magic show with sur and taal. At the end of the concert most of the audience has been moved to tears by the concluding Bhairavi. Zakir flung himself at the Emperor's feet. The Emperor acknowledgesd Zakir, waved at the audience and smiled. We clapped our hands black and blue and cheered ourselves hoarse...

People of all generations need to listen to his music. For Khansaheb created music beyond music. He was himself solidified music in human form. India is grateful to have had him as her son.

Michael Jackson's dance videos will always be the same to me. I have them memorised. Ustad Ali Akbar Khan's cassettes and CD's are different each time I hear them. Ever new and ever changing even as he has now passed on. That is true greatness.

Seeing India's present musical awareness, I think that in a way, it is better that he died. For he is now with the gods. And they are his fitting audience.

I will not miss you Khansaheb - you are in my heart.