Zakir Hussain (1951-2024): Who will teach the tablas to laugh again?

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. There are musicians, there are magicians, and then there is Ustad Zakir Hussain—a man with hands so incredible that he could, quite frankly, have been either, but chose, with infinite grace, to be both. To watch Hussain play the tabla was to believe in miracles: he seemed, always, in conversation with the instrument, his fingers squeezing out an unexpected question, the skin whispering secrets back into his palms.

Zakir was an elemental force, one of those rare beings who seemed to be in perfect communion with an ancient, divine rhythm—a rhythm that belonged to the universe and yet was unmistakably all his own. Also read: Dayanita Singh's photographs of Zakir Hussain When I was 12, I started learning the tabla. In an effort to make me persist with the instrument—and, indeed, to convince me of its coolth—my mother took me to watch the Ustad.

A few lessons old, I trained my bespectacled eyes on his tablas and thought I’ll learn something. His fingers, obviously were too blurry to teach me anything, except that playing an instrument literally is an act of play: he was teasing, cajoling the tablas, making them laugh, cry and argue back. Born to the great Ustad Alla Rakha—who emphasized precision and the rigorous clarity of the Punjab gharana—Zakir infused his playing with an unparalleled sense of theatre, a storyteller using bols(tabla syllables) as words.