The hall of the India International Centre’s Terrace Pergola was hushed on October 8 as a handful of folks arrived early to pay their homage to Ustad Ali Zaki Hader, the Rudra veena exponent who breathed his last exactly a month earlier in New Delhi’s Jamia Nagar.
Ali Zaki Hader was the adopted son of the late Rudra veena maestro Ustad Asad Ali Khan, who trained him from childhood in this difficult discipline. The young ustad, who turned 50 on April 18 this year, was the only recognised performer of the Khandahar bani of the Jaipur beenkar gharana, a tradition within the Dhrupad genre. His demise marks the end of a tradition. But that searing truth became an indelible image when his disciples and family brought in his veena and placed it carefully behind the photo of the late Zaki Hader. Reverently, they garlanded the photo of their beloved ustad, and they garlanded his beloved veena, custom-made decades earlier just for him. There could not have been a more telling realisation of the fact that his instrument would resonate no more.
Shashi Bhushan opened the sombre gathering, after which Ustad Bahuddin Dagar, young Rudra veena representative of the famed Dagarvani, who has been a pillar of support for the Hader family, also spoke briefly. His words were quiet and sorrowful, not only for the departed but for the musical lineage that had been allowed to evaporate. “In a way, we all failed him,” he said. He then played for a short while, accompanied on the pakhawaj by Ustad Mohan Shyam Sharma.
Photo: By arrangement
The sadness of the occasion, heightened by the solemnity of the raga alaap, resonated in the hearts of the listeners, who included young and old friends, and students of music. Bahauddin’s strings seemed to sing quietly of the subtle truths that can be felt but not verbalised. The music of the Rudra veena is perhaps as close as one could imagine to the concept of anhad naad (the unheard cosmic sound). Music critic Manjari Sinha, remarking how Asad Ali Khan used to liken the subtleness of a musical note to a wafting perfume, said that Zaki’s life had ended just as he was ready to take musical flight. If India’s classical arts require years of sadhana, penance, then the Rudra veena exacts the most trying sadhana of all.
This is perhaps why this music is too difficult, meditative, and demanding of total presence by both exponent and listener, to be widely popular. But these qualities, in a country that prides itself as the ground where the Vedas originated, should make it all the more precious. Its practitioners, as reservoirs of an ephemeral oral tradition, surely deserve more support than the thousands of other artists who practise more robust traditions in today’s superficial times. It is a knowledge source to be particularly protected by those empowered to promote the arts.
Bahauddin and others including Shashi reminded the audience that though the worst neglect had happened to bring Zaki Hader’s life and lineage to an end, we should all be mindful as a society that the same mistake not be repeated with other artists. Shashi in particular delivered an impassioned plea towards the close of the proceedings. Artists can be found on nearly every corner and side street, he noted, and supporting one’s local artists by taking lessons or seeing to their needs would only bring immense satisfaction, not monetary loss, to ordinary citizens. Not everyone can or needs to be a successful performer, but music in itself is a great healer, he emphasised.
To many readers, the mention of the loss of a tradition may be just words with little significance, because most people don’t know what a musical gharana is, or what a Rudra veena is for that matter. However, even an ordinary, musically untrained person understands what it means to be in need of shelter and the most basic human necessities. The painful lack of these necessities shadowed not just the last days but the last years of Zaki Hader’s life.
Behind the death of the Khandahar bani and its last living representative lies a story of neglect and a strangely duplicitous culture. As a country, we officially project on the world stage an exalted image of a living ancient civilisation that has seamlessly evolved into modern times. In reality, the genuine representatives of that ancient culture – the beenkars, the handloom weavers, the potters and the carpet knotters to name just a few – are relegated to dark corners of the collective psyche or to incidental videos shared on social media.
After Ali Zaki Hader died suddenly on September 8, 2023, his three disciples, Prasad, Shashi Bhushan and Yogesh, fulfilled their duties to their guru in full measure. They participated in the funeral preparations, helped carry him on his final journey, and importantly, were constantly by the side of his bereaved sister Shazia. In his lifetime also, these disciples helped him with financial, practical and moral support, through the daily challenges of life in urban India. Rent, paperwork, groceries, utility bills – these mundane requirements pave a thorny path to the stage.
There were also other people from various walks of life who despite having no relationship with the musical world, helped. There was the advocate who filed appeals on behalf of Hader when he was requesting to be allowed to continue residence in Khel Gaon under the artists’ quota, in the flat that had been allotted to his deceased guru. Lawyers are not known for attachment to their clients, or for being overly reverent. But this young man, having lost the case after years of effort, was present like a son of the family at the last rites. For the rest, there were neighbours and a few distant relatives.
The apartment into which Ali Zaki Hader and his sister moved after vacating the Khel Gaon flat was minuscule. Located on the ground floor of a multistorey building among the lanes of Jamia Nagar, it is an example of the many constructions carved up into tiny flats that serve as income generators for their owners in a market where the supplier has the upper hand.
Ali Zaki Hader. Photo: By arrangement
The Jamia Nagar residence provided barely enough space for the ustad and his sister — two small rooms within which to practise, teach, live, eat and sleep. Therefore, some of Hader’s heirloom instruments had been stored on his request in locations where they would be willingly and carefully looked after until his situation stabilised — a hope that was belied. The mythological grandeur of the Rudra veena’s history dwarfs such quarters.
Again and again, the same questions arise. What do we mean as a nation when we refer to our ‘rich culture’ and the soul-cleansing power of our arts, yet allow our greatest artists to languish in indigence? For what do our cultural institutions exist, if they are helpless in the face of an artist’s struggle to keep body and soul together? The Sangeet Natak Akademi, All India Radio, Doordarshan, numerous regional bodies representing the map of the country, the state Akademies and departments – the list is extensive – are publicly funded bodies. Do their officials have no duty to reach out to, or even search for, if they profess ignorance, highly qualified artists in need of financial support? To help keep alive a tradition bombastically described as ‘ancient’, ‘sacred’ and ‘profound’, are they incapable of doing even as much as three or four dazed young men and a bunch of sorrowing neighbours did?
In the manuscript of his forthcoming book, Glimpses of 20th Century Hindustani Music, well-known author and musicologist Deepak Raja states:
“The Rudra Veena is irreversibly headed for the museums, with a steadily depleting reservoir of musicianship. The first half of the 20th century saw the departure of twenty-one significant Beenkars. In the latter half of the 20th century, ten significant Beenkars departed from the scene. And the first decade of the 21st century witnessed the demise of two significant beenkars.”
The text was written in June 2020.
Ali Zaki Hader’s name can now be included in those dismal numbers. How many more valuable specimens of our intangible heritage will we lose before a healthy collaboration is created between government bodies, artists, the wealthy corporate sector (that has influence in health, insurance, and housing) and civil society?
Such a collaboration, shorn of political expediency and executed by knowledgeable as well as objective stewards, could repair our damaged cultural scene. It could be the only real tribute to Ali Zaki Hader, a musician who was forced to put his heirloom instruments on sale to meet his mortal needs. No one bought them. No one, it seems, noticed.
Anjana Rajan has been writing on the arts, literature and society for nearly 20 years. She is a former deputy editor of The Hindu, a dance exponent and theatre practitioner.
