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Aaj yaad tum behisaab aaye
R.L. Pathak
MEMORIES of melody queen Begum Akhtar come alive on October 7, the day of her birth anniversary.
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'Bibi', as she was called affectionately had deeply endeared herself to a large number of people. Begum Akhtar became a legend in her lifetime. From her early days, she 'fell in love with music and dance' and practised difficult khayals, thumri and dadra.
Begum's house in Faizabad, where she was born, was not big and the family did not have resources enough to give it a facelift or rebuild it. In the words of her mother, they could not even "afford a pair of silver earrings for her". She was six years' old then and would sing with her friends to the beats of a drum or dholak, whatever came handy. That's when people realised her singing potential.
'Bibi' was very fond of doing things different from the other children of her age and looked for some opportunity or the other to surprise everyone with her funny antics. She was so naughty that one day she even succeeded in "scissoring" the flowing hair of her teacher who was sitting on a chair and proudly took the "gift" home.
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Her first ustad was Patna's Imdad Khan. After some time, the family shifted to Kolkata, where Begum Akhtar started attending music programmes with regularity. She became very famous. Some megaphone recording companies even recorded her songs. She sang for one hour at a music conference held in aid of the Bihar Earthquake Fund in 1934. The lyrics of her first ghazal were thus: "Toone but har jai kuchh aisi ada payee Takta hai teri soorat har ek tamashayee." By now she had become so famous that she was even offered roles in films. In 1937, she acted in films like Ek din ki badshahat, Mumtaz, Roti etc. She even provided background music in films like Ramneti, Ehsan, Naach Rang. She played a role in Satyajit Ray's Bengali film Jalsa Ghar. Somehow, she felt that films were not her destiny. Soon she joined the Kairana Gharana where she had Ustad Abdul Waheed Khan train her suitably in light classical music. Though she was born in Faizabad, she finally settled in Lucknow and married Qazi Ishtiaq Ahmed Abhasi. After marriage she shied away from music programmes but resumed her singing, later. She sang ghazals of Shakeel Badayuni and Jigar Muradabadi, Anand Narain Mulla and Faiz and in doing so she elevated ghazal gayakee to a high pedestal. She even sang ghazals of Meer, Sauda, Ghalib, Momin, Daag with equal interest and dedication and continued to sing up to the age of 60. . Begum Akhtar suffered a stroke in 1973 and perhaps had a foreboding that her end was near. She reflected this feeling even through her ghazal: "Soz-e-gham Firaq Na raas aayega mujhe Le ja meri hayaat bhi Apni khushi ke saath. "Begum Akhtar even transcended the country's barriers and toured Afghanistan, erstwhile Soviet Union (now Russia) and Pakistan and regaled the audiences there. She had mastered khayal, thumri, dadra and ghazal and received innumerable awards — both national and international. She was India's Padma Shree 'nightingale', and though the bulbul has shed her earthy "garb", recollections of her artful singing still enliven souls. On her birth anniversary, one can only say in all sincerity and humility: "Aaj yaad tum behisaab aaye". |
SUNDAY SAUNTER
Tere anjam pe Rona aaya
The dilapidated Pasand Bagh still serves as a reminder of an unforgettable woman -- Begum Akhtar
Vaidehi Kapur
Driving through the convoluted alleys of Saadatganj, an important business hub of the Nawabs, you have to diligently hunt for Pasand Bagh. The area was once central but now it is nothing more than an obscure extremity of Lucknow. Once there; you immediately wonder where the bagh is for the name so overtly suggests its presence. Well, it's grudgingly lost in the jaws of time.
Somebody directs you to a lane and you realise it has a dead end. All that is visible is a rusted corrugated metal gate, shut in your face. Just as self-doubt begins to irk if the lane is the lane, it dawns that the misleading gate isn't actually locked. One is tempted to peep in, as one last effort before aborting the quest. And it comes more as a relief than as a pleasant surprise, but certainly well worth all the trouble taken especially for the thirsty music loving historian. For, entering the gate, the mazar confronts you... the grave of Begum Akhtar.
Begum Akhtar was born Akhtari Bai Faizabadi in Faizabad in 1914 in a traditional family where professional musicians were looked down upon. Her musical journey began at her enterprising uncle's initiative because of whom she got to train under Ustad Imdad Khan, the great sarangi exponent and later under Ata Mohammed Khan. Her burning desire for music led her to distant Calcutta with her mother to further hone her natural talents under the tutelage of great stalwarts like Mohammad Khan and Abdul Waheed Khan. Finally she became the disciple of Ustad Jhande Khan Sahib, which gave her the final sheen.
For the uninitiated (are there any?) Begum Akhtar was synonymous with ghazal, khayal and thumri gaayiki. She immortalized her own definitive style of singing, a style that few have been able to match. She was a spontaneous performer who sang whatever the audience requested for, branding each composition with her inimitable style. The Begum has nearly four hundred songs to her credit and was a regular performer on All India Radio and she usually composed her own ghazals with most of her compositions being raga-based.
She took the music world by storm with her maiden performance at the tender age of fifteen. The renowned poetess Sarojini Naidu had once immensely appreciated her recital at one of her first concerts organized for charity. This gave young Akhtari Bai all the confidence she needed to continue performing. Before she knew it, performing became a lifelong addiction. Soon, she made her first gramophone record carrying her ghazals, dadras and thumris and the storm raring inside her got an outlet.
With the advent of the talkies era in India, Begum Akhtar acted in some Hindi movies in the Thirties. Like all other contemporaries, she rendered her songs herself in all her films.
Soon, she moved back to Lucknow and married barrister Ishtiaq Ahmed Abbasi in 1944. She got a new name, Begum Akhtar as part and parcel of a new life. After the alliance, she disappeared from the scene for five long years. All that we know about her during this hiatus is from what her disciple Shanti Hiranand writes, "She enjoyed being Begum Abbasi for some time and flitted around the city as fit for an aristocrat's wife." However, her infatuation with the glamorous title did not last too long, and she soon found herself yearning for her only subterfuge. At the same time, she lost her mother which further heightened the restlessness brewing within. She fell seriously ill and ultimately physicians compelled Barrister Abbasi to relent and allow Begum Akhtar to take to music again.
So, in 1949, she returned to the recording studios, the Lucknow Radio Station and soon after, to stage performances. She continued performing right to the end of her life. She finally breathed her last soon after her last performance in Ahmedabad and was brought down to Lucknow and buried in Pasand Bagh.
With that one burial, we buried a life much larger than life. Imagine a woman who lived like a queen who ruled over the hearts of all her fans her entire life. She would shower gifts on all around her, to the extent that she would give away, there and then, even a shawl or a diamond if somebody would casually pay her a complement.
She loved her students like her children. 'Ammi', as she was so fondly called, epitomizes all that she meant to them. All her life, through thick and thin, she taught music to all who cared to learn from her, for not a single penny at all.
A liberated soul that she was,, she lived royally in her 'kothi' on Havelok Road in the city. She was extremely fond of perfumes and she would rave about it for days if somebody happened to gift one to her. Such was her simplicity. She won hearts wherever she went, including the pilots who flew her to various parts of the country for her numerous concerts and the ordinary people. In fact, there was a man who would sell lemons claiming them to be grown in her garden. He would scribble her name everywhere, from doors to roads. He was one die-hard fan who boosted her popularity immensely in the city.
Today, the compound around her tomb stands encroached. Near her tomb, in two make-shift shanties live some people. "Humein Begum Sahib ki bahu ne rakha tha maqbare pe seva ke liye," they say. They have never been paid for the job and they are indifferent. "Hum to mazdoori karte hain."
And amidst all this you suddenly realize that the place is hauntingly barren, maybe because her voice doesn't reverberate in the ambience when she practices.......maybe inside.
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