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Music’s don battles for survival
IT is still raining cheques in the Bismillah Khan household at Benia Bagh in Benares. Right from the President and the Prime Minister of India to sundry chief ministers, NRIs, artistes, philanthropists and well-wishers, everybody seems anxious to help out the 87-year-old shehnai maestro in his hour of crisis. Nobody, however, knows whether his grandson, Mohammad Sippin, will get the job Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had promised two years ago. Or was it a licence to run a gas agency? Some say, the Ustad went public in June when the Prime Minister did not honour his promise to allot a petrol station to the young man. All that is irrelevant. The fact remains that India’s finest exponent in shehnai and an all-time musical great is having to worry about his financial security and out of sheer desperation, has petitioned the premier for help. And that is what has put the fraternity of artistes in a tizzy. "It is a matter of
national shame that an artiste of the stature of Ustad Bismillah Khan
has to go around with a begging bowl now", commented sarod wizard
Amjad Ali Khan on television. "He has been honoured with every
conceivable national award, including the Bharat Ratna. But what is the
use of all this, if the government cannot guarantee its national
treasures with two square meals a day?" |
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Indeed, while all his contemporaries, including Amjad Ali Khan and sitar guru Pt Ravi Shankar have turned globetrotters, running music schools in their name abroad, Bismillah Khan leads a spartan life in his ancestral home in Benares and needs to be provoked to accept a foreign invite. "Not unless I can take my family, my musicians, my Benares, the ghats and the Ganga itself..." is the Ustad’s famous quote, when he was once requested by his admirers to settle down in the USA like the other sitar guru, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. It is this fierce loyalty to certain forgotten values and not being worldly wise that many feel account for the maestro’s straitened circumstances today. Raised in the court of Bihar’s Raja of Dumraon, "where we were expected to do nothing but produce music", he stubbornly refuses to change with the times. For that matter, Khan is unlike any other artiste, anxious to promote the careers of his progeny. "If they have it in them, someone will spot their talent," he told his biographer, Rita Ganguly. This clearly explains why none of his 42 grandchildren has taken to the musical instrument he had singularly promoted. But more than these factors, it is the size of his family that he supports that many feel, accounts for his financial distress. Nearly 100 members share his ancestral haveli — a run-down warren of 16 tiny rooms with a common kitchen. Khan insists that they together with him, under one roof. And if this were not enough, he has made it a practice of doling out whatever little money he saves to his musicians when they are out of work and to the widows and dependents of musicians who had once shared the stage with him. "He doesn’t believe in saving," says Zarina Begum, who runs her father’s chaotic household. "He gives away everything he earns, a little bit to me to run the house, and the rest to God knows how many people. For him, music is the beginning and end of life." Agrees son Mehtab Hussain — who, like two of his four brothers, has been playing the shehnai in his father’s troupe for many years now, without ever emerging from his benevolent shadow. "He believes you shouldn’t run after money. You will get what you are fated to receive". Fate, in fact, has given the Ustad a lot to cherish, but not enough for his gargantuan family to fall back on. Clearly, it was this concern that promoted him to dash off a letter to the Home Secretary when he learnt about his Bharat Ratna two years back. "Does it mean any money for me?" He asked innocently. This time around, he decided to touch base with the Prime Minister direct. — MF |
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