Coming Back to ‘Dhaa’: Zakir Hussain Exists in Every Beat of Rhythm We Hear
- The 73-year-old tabla maestro who died over the weekend, was my go-to person when I was faced with a personal or professional crisis, and he responded with genteel kindness.
Zakir Hussain’s hands with which he touched the world were very soft. I wondered how someone who hammered on the tabla continuously did not have calloused and hardened hands. Those hands took him far and wide across the universe.
Zakir is not dead to that universe — he exists in every beat of rhythm we hear in this life from raindrops, to the balance of my breathing, to the din and clatter of pots and pans in my kitchen, to the pitter patter of my dogs’ feet, the oscillating tires of a car that comes back to “dhaa.” The beauty of an artist like Zakir (like Rabindranath Tagore or Ravishankar) is that he is not gone. “Na Hanyate.” Physically, he may be gone but he is not his physical body — he is truth, consciousness and bliss. (Satchitananda)
I used to organize his concerts as an impresario in Southern California in the 1990s. I got to know his family and he got to know mine. I met many famous people because of him, notably George Harrison, Sally Fields, Goldie Hawn, Dimple Kapadia, Vanessa Redgrave and many other artists and creative minds. These memories live in my head.
The very first concert we did was a jugalbandhi with Dr. L. Subramaniam (Mani) at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Viji, Mani’s wife played the tanpura, and this was before she was diagnosed with cancer. Just before she died she played the tanpura once again with her husband and Zakir in San Diego. Zakir had set up a Moment Records label by then and gave me boxes of his first 8 offerings to sell during the interval. We sold out all in a matter of minutes. Another memorable occasion was presenting ‘The Rhythm Experience’ at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall. About 2 hours before the show Zakir said, “Pia, you have to clear the front row —Raviji is coming with 14 people.” I was aghast —those were donor tickets! I went to each and every person and explained what happened. We had 15 seats open in the next half hour and we welcomed Raviji to the concert, where he was given a standing ovation. Memories are made of these!
Another very interesting memory was with Pandit V.G.Jog. The musicians were staying at my house in Anaheim Hills—every nook and cranny of my house was stashed with extremely talented musicians from the SRA Calcutta. Pandit Jog had an early morning flight at LAX. He was nervous that I wouldn’t wake up at 5am to take him because I had cooked biryani for them all day! So he called Zakir and said ‘you play the tabla and I will play all raags Pia wants to hear!’ They played all night in my living room and I was spellbound. God has been very kind to me.
Zakir himself was a wonderful teacher in two important ways. Firstly, of course was his instruction to students in India and America. He said, ‘I wish I could have the two sets of people meet and play with each other.’ This was way before the world became flat and this actually happened on zoom. The second way he taught was by his own example of living. Michelle Obama says, when they go low, we go high. Zakir never went low. He stayed in that rarefied sphere of living where there was no question of any pettiness. Only the positive was possible and he sailed through doors that magically opened for him. Most importantly and this is a great example to our GenZ youngsters, he had every opportunity to indulge in substances like marijuana or alcohol but never did. His self discipline was a great example.
Zakir was my go-to person when I was faced with a crisis, personal or professional, and he responded with genteel kindness. His voice was always refined and kind no matter how problematic the situation at hand was. I have never ever seen him raise his voice.
Zakir saw things clearly and his advice always was on point. He was a great supporter of Pia Ka Ghar, my clothing enterprise. He said to me, “stand on your feet and learn to walk – you can do anything.” He gave me our first testimonial—“Pia’s kantha shawls are a treasure to own.” During covid I sent him some kantha masks asking him to use his celebrity status to help me sell these for the subalterns I was working with. He promptly send me pictures of him wearing the masks at his home in San Rafael and then at Disneyland, where he took his granddaughter, Zara. He always cautioned me never to grow beyond measure —“whatever you can do from your kitchen table is good, beyond that it is not fun anymore.”
Zakir is one person who was gracious with everyone and was never sycophantic towards the rich or sought their patronage overtly. One day after a concert at Brea Olinda High School, he found a dusty piano and sang John Lennon’s ‘Imagine!’ He saw the world as one, cared for everyone and his music was his prayer for all. Music was his religion, his essence, his aesthetic and his anesthetic. It transcended all borders, all conflicts and all worlds. Musicians were his brethren and he was respectful to each and every one of them.
The solid truth about Zakir that I learned from one of his greatest fans, Kay, is that he did not belong to anyone, to any family, to any community or country, Zakir belonged to the world and was cherished by millions. He had a phenomenal memory for faces, names and the detailed stories of people’s lives, and this added to his charisma. Unlike many famous people, who are arrogant, Zakir was a “People’s Prince.”
Zakir’s sense of humor is some thing else. He once told an audience in SoCal, “I thought that the concert would start late because Pia couldn’t make up her mind on which sari to wear —I told her to wear a jamdaani and go!” (My jamdaani collection bears his words today.) If I said to him, ‘you played fabulously! ‘ he would say ‘I played the tabla.’
One time I had taken my parents to Ramkrishna Mission in Golpark, Calcutta to his solo concert. My mother asked him that “you travel so much, how do you know which city you are in?” He asked her, “isn’t this Bangalore?”
The one time that I really saw him sad was when Abbaji (his father) and Razia (his sister) died within a day of each other. These incidents broke him but his music pulled him back up the rabbit hole. One other time he was forlorn was when Shivji died. At that time again his music was his recourse.
Zakir cannot ever be gone. He had found the seed sound at the heart of rhythm, the Naadbrahma and that is what sustains us every day. Every tap of his finger reminds me not to spare a moment and then come back to “dhaa” to start the cycle all over again.
Piyali Ganguly is the CEO of Pia Ka Ghar, a California company. The mission of PKG is to make someone’s next day a little bit better, be it dogs or people anywhere in the world. Piyali is a History Major from Presidency College, Calcutta and University of California at Irvine. Currently, she studies Religious Literacy at a Harvard University program. She’s an avid reader and writes poetry.