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Dayanita Singh first photographed Ustad Zakir Hussain in 1980s when she was a student at National Institute of Design at Ahmedabad , for a class assignment.
She had joined NID to become a typographer ! Destiny had some other plans - Dayanita eventually developed a lifelong career as a photographer and continued photographing the Master for the next almost 45 years.
Dear Guruji,
On Sunday
night, as I watched the full moon rise, I thought to myself that the next Guru
Purnima I had to spend the day with you and photograph you with your students.
It would have been 45 years since I met you. Just two weeks ago, while I was
talking about your influence on my life – showing the audience in the Indian
Museum in Kolkata the Zakir Hussain maquette wall – I said, “I will continue to
photograph Zakir until I die.” I told them how you had said at the release of
the maquette, “I play the tabla and she plays the photograph.”
And now, all
your life lessons that I carry within me, will guide me. You taught me how to
learn and to never stop learning. You taught me rigour and that single-minded
focus: to learn one’s medium like the back of one’s hand, you said, and only
then attempt to play with it. I did not realise at the time as we rode around
India in the musicians’ bus, that annual road trip of three weeks, what a
privileged world you had led me into. I was the kid on the bus, the young woman
with a camera, and because of your introduction everyone adopted and indulged
me.
You always
said riyaaz has to be in your every breath. I was lucky to witness this in your
life, even when the tabla was not in front of you and you were still building
new bols in your head. You made the tabla speak in unimaginable ways. When I
first photographed you, the tabla was an accompanying instrument. I watched you
turn it into a solo instrument and so much more. And yet when you had to
accompany someone, you slipped right into being the accompanist.
I saw you
engage with all kinds of people, making each person feel “seen” and special,
from the security guard to the most senior musician. Yet when VIPs would
interfere with the performance, you asked them to finish what they had to do
and then you would play. You charmed everyone, even those who had not heard
your music. Like the chaat wala in Delhi’s Old Bengali Market or the waiter at
Karim’s who recited the menu in different taal for you and abbaji (Ustad Alla
Rakha Khan). I wish I had also learned your incredible humility, your ability
to just walk away from anything unsavoury, to never make anyone feel small. And
equally, how you found humour in every situation.
Your “kaun hain” resounds in my ears, as you would greet people in the green room. In a way, you led me into the green room of life – the tayyari, the preparation that goes into each performance, each work.
I feel
completely shattered now but I am sitting at the press and trying to print a
catalogue for my Bombay exhibition. This, too, I learned from you – to carry
on. The only time I saw you shaken was when abbaji passed, and how difficult
the first concert after his passing was. I do not know how I will enter the
room in Kolkata’s Indian Museum, which is filled with your photographs as part
of my show at the Bengal Biennale. I had hoped you would visit and that I could
thank you in person for the invaluable world you opened to me. What you showed
me was the commitment to the life of an artist, the unending enquiry of one’s
medium.
I am sorry
we collectively were unable to manifest the miracle of your survival. But then
you are a miracle and a miracle never dies.
Your
unlikely student,
Dayanita Singh
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