If there is one sound that I could recognise while asleep, it would be the sound of Zakir's tabla. (I've irreverently called him by his first name for years.) In a strange twist of fate I had forgotten what it was like. To listen to him live. I had forgotten the fidgety, noisy audience before the curtain went up.
As I sat through his concert again, I remembered everything.
What the air smelt like, (perfumed and unlike Calcutta), the red-velvet chairs of the VIP's, the rich, the famous (all of whom would fall asleep in a short while), people trying to get noticed (by hand-shaking the red-velvet occupants from behind) - all very vivid.
The local musicians were all back-stage. (Mind you, when a Calcuttan refers to "local musicians", he refers to the best Classical talent the country has produced.) They were backstage because they wanted to talk to Zakir and let the world know that they were on talking terms with him. Normally, I would give and arm and a leg to be able to touch their feet, but today I wanted to be alone. Because today was the day that I heard that sound again.
I hated the crowd. I more than mildly hoped that I could wish them away so that I could be alone with him. OK, a few of the other genuine music lovers could possibly be admitted. Of course, I was the only person in the universe who understood his music. But the sleep-ers, the noisy, the rag-tag should definitely be shown the door. The "rag-tag" is used derisively but it it has no implications on social status and oddly enough, none on classical training or comprehension either.
I met Mayukh at St. Xavier's. I had a bit of an ego then because I could play the tabla fairly well and I think that he had an ego too and for exactly the same reason. We regarded each other with suspicion...
...till we discovered that we were both Zakir Hussain devotees. All was forgiven and we shook hands and made up. We spent time at each others' houses listening to Zakir's tapes and admiring his artistry. Eventually, we started practising together.
The wait for the curtain was getting unbearable. What made it more agonising was that you could hear Zakir tuning his tabla backstage.
The great Peavey's crackle to life. The crowd shifts and sits upright in anticipation of the announcement. With the introductions over the curtain goes up slowly to a mild mechanical whirring.
The suppressed hysteria finds vent. People stand up and cheer and clap and whistle and yell. Zakir has to quieten them down after thirty seconds.
The crowd is silent. Zakir signals to the sarangi and the heart-wrenching notes of the sarangi get added to the tanpura drone. The stage is set.
One cycle goes by. I wait for the life giving water. Zakir sits with eyes closed and hands on the tabla. As the sum is about to arrive, he suddenly awakens. There is a brief flash of his right index finger. It hits the kinaar in a single fulfilling stroke. Then silence again.
I drink in the perfection of the stroke. The tone is rich and full - I've never heard that in any other tabla player. The bol fills every nook and cranny of the auditorium. It permeates my being. My soul is full. The Ustad is ready. I am ready.
Eyes closed, I listen to the languorous peshkaar meandering its way through the sixteen beats. Unhurried, the Ustad plays. The perfection is all I can think of. Every strike is beautiful. What they create together is even more so. There is no flaw. He is doing stuff which under any other circumstance I would disbelieve. But now I cannot.
After 10 minutes we are still in ati-vilambit. My body strains and contorts as the rhythmic patterns get more expansive and elaborate. Its almost as if I fear that he is going to miss the sum this time - but he reminds you every time that while you are lost in his music, he is completely aware of the Beauty.
I wish the peshkaar would go on forever. 20 minutes down, not a single pattern has been repeated. It is new every time and makes you want more.
The relaxed rhythmic expressions are giving way to short bursts of impossible speed. What is amazing is that the tonal quality and fullness come through unhindered. I know at once why I worship him.
One thing that Mayukh and I hated the most was the crowd hysteria in St. Xavier's over western music. People loved the school band. They whistled and clapped when they sang and drummed. And they boo-ed and jeered at Classical numbers.
We decided we would take the risk of our lives. Next Teacher's Day, when the students put up numbers for the faculty, we would join in. We enlisted as "Classical Tabla Duet" to raised eyebrows and smothered smirks.
On that fateful day in September, as the curtain went up we gulped. There were at least one million people in the auditorium. We were dwarfed in their presence. We couldn't see anything because of the lights on us. The world seemed like a black hole.
Our stomachs swimming, we stammered to the audience to give us a chance. They did and fell silent. We remembered Zakir in our minds, did a low five and started...
The qaidas take over. My disappointment at the peshkaar getting over is soon overcome. Zakir's left hand is doing things on the bnaya which makes the audience go crazy. I am hoping that they won't break out into foolish clapping and spoil it for me. They do.
Zakir's hands begin to look motorised. They are spewing out intricate improvisations. I watch open mouthed. He is smiling and has his eyes fixed in space over the audience's heads. I realise he is connected to a source of Beauty that I can only appreciate, but not see. He sways mildly and head-bangs vigorously. His fingers are a blur. But I can still hear each stroke. That same room-filling and soul-filling sound. There is no sacrifice of Classical integrity. He is doing undocumented stuff. But they are augmenting the integrity and reinforcing it.
The audience is hysteric, they don't know what to do. They don't see it as lucidly as I do, but they know that something is going on. The creative process eludes them. I see it. Zakir doesn't. For he is possibly unaware of what he is doing. There is a spontaneity rising from within him and his fingers are merely reacting in expression. He is oblivious that he is doing something incredible. He is doing it because it is flowing through him. For him, it is neither incredulous nor impossible. For he personifies something beyond judgement right now.
The resounding crash of the sum brings me out of the trance. The audience erupts. They feel the need for expression. Poor souls! If only they could see what I saw, they would not clap. Clapping is demeaning to the Beauty. Would you clap at a beautiful sunset? Would you clap at a garden in spring bloom? Would you clap at a Kalbaishakhi? Why do you clap now? If you can see true Beauty, you will be unable to react.
Mayukh and I became instant celebrities in school. We were heroes. Even the teachers looked at us starry-eyed. That was the confidence boost we needed. All of a sudden we were revered musicians.
Academics took the back burner. Zakir and the tabla were all we could think of. We sat on the same bench in class planning our next show. We were so lost that we often started drumming on the desk and had to be hauled up by the teacher. But celebrities are usually let off with mild chastisements...
We were on a roll after that. When some music school came on a lecture tour to St. Xavier's and starting acting too smart, Mayukh and I were called in (by the teachers believe it or not) to put them in their place. We did. When some Western Classical musicians came visiting St. Xavier's, we were asked to play at a private concert for them. We did.
But the icing on the cake came on Prize Distribution Day. The school band always performed on Prize Distribution - it was the norm. But that year, Father Headmaster and Father Prefect asked Mayukh and me to play on Prize Distribution Day.
Parents came up after the concert and asked us who we learnt from. We wanted to say Zakir Hussain, but kept quiet and smiled politely. But really, that is what either of us wanted to do. We were sick of having to imitate him. We harboured dreams of one day studying the tabla at his feet...
I lost touch with Mayukh 15 years ago when I moved to a different city to pursue my engineering degree.
Its been an hour. Ustadji shifts to madhyam Teentaal. There is a change in mood. A certain light-heartedness as he recites bols, attaches funny stories to them and plays them (immaculately). The audience takes in the stories very amused. Clever Zakir. While the stories are for the rag-tag, the bol's are for the the connossieur. One never knows the dividing line.
Blitzkrieg after blitzkrieg they arrive. I have been away from him for too long.
I reminisced about how when 7 years old, I had increased my daily tabla practice time from 10 minutes to 45 minutes on hearing my first live concert - Ustad Alla Rakha Khansaheb with his worthy son in jugalbandi. I had hated the monotony of the tabla till then and my parents had given up hope in those one and a half years.
After that concert, my parents had to deal with a completely different devil. By the time I was 10 years old, I could effortlessly do around two hours. My parents were proud I think. Till I reached the 8th class, they remained proud. Then they realised that something was wrong. My friends were joining tuition classes and I was locking myself up in a room for steadily increasing times. I was listening to Zakir tapes, rewinding them. I must have seen 100 live concerts of him by then and my parents had always been very supportive.
But when I reached my 9th they weren't any more. My friends could solve complex engineering problems already whereas I didn't display the slightest interest in them. I was practising for 7 to 8 hours daily and doing it without flinching. I was seeing within myself a love so great that I couldn't stay away. I played the tabla for hours. In my mind's eye, I saw Ustad Zakir Hussain and I wanted to be able to play like him. I analysed and corrected my music in a mental comparison with him...
I am jolted out of my reverie. Ustad Zakir Hussain has just fumbled on stage. Of course, I was the only person who knew it. I look up at him amused.
For a split second he looks befuddled. Then he goes berserk. I see what he is doing. He is making it up to everyone. His drumming starts to reach an alarming volume. A volume which seems like it will hurt the ears but actually doesn't. Even at this volume, he barely lifts his hands. I grip my seat handles bracing for impact. I know I am going to witness something I will cherish forever. Only, I don't know what it is going to be.
Zakir is saying sorry and vindicating himself at the same time. His entire body stiffens. The drumming has become spectacular. The volume is high and unwavering. The bnaya adds thunderous bass. The speed is frightening. The auditorium is reverberating. You feel scared. The audience dares not make a noise. For we witness naad-brahma.
Do you know what this is like? It is like the feeling you would get at the moment of bungee-jumping off a cliff. It is the feeling you get when India gets a wicket in the dying overs of a cliffhanger. Only - this carries on and on. You have never experienced this before. Every nerve and sinew in your body is bursting with the rush of emotions, the high point of emotions. Yet this doesn't pass like it would when you actually bungee-jump or you actually celebrate the wicket.
Zakir has hit the pause button for the rest of the world. I am suspended in time, waiting to scream out in release. But he drums on. Same volume, same bass, same speed - unfaltering and unwavering. I begin to sweat. I think I will cry because I cannot take it any longer. I have never experienced so much Beauty.
One and a half minutes later, he releases me from my temporal imprisonment. I cover my face with my hands. Thank you God for having put me on Earth in the same time as this genius. Does Zakir look at me and smile? I am not sure. He is pretending that nothing ever happened.
1 hour 45 minutes, the concert is drawing to a close. Ustadji's rela's come out thick and fast and little mellow - adding perfect contrast to what just transpired. The sound is still perfect - as if he just started. There are thin streams of perspiration down the side of his cheeks. He changes from one pattern to another. There is one person in the whole world who can keep playing without loss of tonal integrity after almost 2 hours of solid percussion - and that is Ustad Zakir Hussain. Over and over, he defies limits imposed by mere human muscles and tissues.
Again there is a rumbling from his tabla. Another storm is coming. I am familiar with this one. It is the grand climax. Ustad Zakir Hussain is pumping out 32 strokes per second and I can hear each and every one of them. Foolish people start clapping again. Any moment now, I think.
Tihai part one, tihai part two, tihai part three. Crash, bang, and then boom and sum collide in an impossible flurry of hits. Zakir gets up, thanks the audience like he had just had a cup of tea with them and melts away back stage. Everyone runs after him and the police are forced to form a barricade.
If there is something that I wanted to do very badly, it was to learn the tabla from Ustad Zakir Hussain. It had been my dream. Of course, now I will be too ashamed to even tell him that I once played the tabla.
Mayukh and I enjoyed a friendly rivalry over Zakir Hussain. At his concerts, we would try to outdo each other at how close we could get to him. Sometimes, we would manage to exchange a few words with the Ustad after the concert and then decide who he spoke more to.
Once, I beat Mayukh convincingly at the game. Zakir was playing with my (sarod) guru (Aashish Khan) and much to Guruji's dislike, I sneaked up behind him and sat on stage. Mayukh watched dismally from the audience. After the show, I rubbed it in but telling him how it felt like an earthquake when Zakir set off.
Mayukh however, had the last laugh. I got in touch with him last month after 15 years at a chance meeting. He has become a professional tabla player.
And he rubbed it in when he told me that he was learning the tabla from Ustad Zakir Hussain...
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Zakir's photo I took at a concert backstage and later had it autographed by him at another concert. Was lucky to have caught him in that pose...
Mayukh in blue and me in red. Sometimes I played the sarod, but mostly it was the tabla. This snap was taken when the Western musicians came visiting. We did play the tabla duet as the grand finale...
