He gave the beat to the world

He would pick up the rhythms of each experience of mobility and weave them into his taals. Thus it was that he reflected joy and laughter in rhythmic cycles...such was the magic of Zakir's fingersText and photographs by Raghu Rai

- Raghu Rai

Mortality has struck music's high citadel. The sixth beat of the dadra, the eighth of the keherwa, once the fingers fall there, the cycle reaches back to the first, where it began: the silence from which they were born. There's no coming back from this sam. All the grand pillars that came in rhythmic succession—the entire range of Padma awards, the four Grammys, three of them conferred this year—stood mute and helpless. All the sounds of acclaim too will recede. Pt Kumar Gandharva, before he exited from the stage in 1992, had reminded us of Kabir's words: Jum ke doot bade majboot, Jum se pada hai jhamela (The Messengers of Yama are strong; this entanglement is with Yama himself). This game of chess with Death was played under the grey skies of San Francisco. When it was lost finally, after two weeks of ICU, it was early on December 16, Indian time. Zakir Hussain has gone where everyone finally will. But what an apparition this was that flashed by! That passage, that rich gait of life: no one was ever like him, no one will ever be again.

Zakir was a handsome, fuzzy-haired, flamboyant and romantic explorer who went much beyond the bols his great father, Ustad Alla Rakha, lent him. After listening to them in a jugalbandi in Bombay, I asked Zakir, “Tell me honestly, who is a better player, you or your dad?” There was a long silence, a mischievous smile on his face—he took a deep breath, looked into my eyes and said, “Of course, me.” Both of us laughed.