{"id":218412,"date":"2014-06-02T15:58:32","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T10:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehelka.com\/?p=218412"},"modified":"2014-06-02T15:58:32","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T10:28:32","slug":"zarina-begum-the-last-court-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/zarina-begum-the-last-court-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Court Legend"},"content":{"rendered":"

[cycloneslider id=”chaturvedi”]
\nWearing a crisp maroon Banarasi sari, the frail woman, well into her 80s, took the stage. One hand on her throat, afraid perhaps of not finding her voice, she started with Behzaad Lakhnavi\u2019s ghazal:
\n\u201cDeewana banana hai to, deewana bana de <\/em>
\nVarna kahin taqdeer, tamasha na bana de\u201d<\/em>
\nThe crowd at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) was transfixed as she crooned ghazals by Moumin and Shakeel Badayuni. The mehfil<\/em> was complete when the begum sang Chhaa rahi kaali ghata<\/em>, replicating the mood of the rain outside.
\nThe long journey from the narrow lanes of Aminabad in Lucknow to the IGNCA auditorium has been an exhausting one for Zarina Begum, once a fixture at the mehfils<\/em> in Sheeshmahal, home to the Nawabs of Awadh. Arguably the last living singer from the court of Awadh, Zarina is quick to assert her status as a darbari gayika<\/em> (court singer) and not a tawaif<\/em> (courtesan). She is one of the very few disciples and practitioners of Akhtari Bai Faizabadi\u2019s (better known as Begum Akhtar) style of thumri, dadra and tappa.
\nBorn in Nanpara, Bahraich, it is difficult to calculate Zarina\u2019s exact age but if you try to extract an estimate out of her, she smiles, \u201cLikho ki pachas ki umar hai humari<\/em> (Write that I am only 50).\u2019\u2019 But Zarina distinctly remembers that she was all of 10 years when she bought a small harmonium for Rs 5 and made a daily ritual of practising at night under the lihaaf<\/em> (quilt). Her father, Shehenshah Hussain, a zamindar for the then Nawab of Nanpara, Raja Syed Mohammad Saadat Ali Khan, and a singer himself, overheard Zarina one night and was impressed with her voice.
\nTraditionally, music in Muslim families had a patriarchal set-up, where the hereditary art flowed from father to son. Wives and daughters were restricted to their domestic roles. However, Shahensha Hussain enrolled Zarina to train under the famous qawwal<\/em> Ghulam Hazarat. Still a teenager, she soon became a regular at the soirees of the Awadh court and the Nawab called her to perform at weddings, godh bharai<\/em> or any other royal occasion.
\n\u201cThough she was not from a courtesan background, Zarina performed as a mehfil<\/em> singer and, hence, became a quintessential outsider,\u201d explains Saba Dewan, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker, who heard about Zarina in 2003, while researching for her three-part project on the stigmatisation of female performers. \u201cI got her reference from very well-known musicians. She was obviously very popular in her time.\u201d
\nAbiding by the traditions of the old Lucknow gharanas, Zarina used to sing in purdah.<\/em> \u201cWomen were not allowed to sing in a male gathering without purdah<\/em>,\u201d she says. \u201cI mostly sang for the maharanis.\u2019\u2019 During one such mehfil<\/em> in Bahraich, Begum Akhtar heard Zarina sing and made her a shagird<\/em> (disciple). Zarina remembers her first encounter with Akhtaribai. When she went over to meet her idol, Begum was smoking. \u201cIt took me a while to recognise her,\u201d she recalls. Akhtaribai was known for her very impressionable teaching style that her disciples reflect in their singing. \u201cShe didn\u2019t teach by speaking but through singing,\u201d Zarina says. It was during this time that Zarina met her husband Qurban Hussain, who used to play the tabla for Begum Akhtar.
\nRenowned vocalist Ustad Iqbal Ahmad Khan of the Delhi gharana, who has known Zarina for 55 years, testifies to the purity of her style. \u201cShe could sing exactly like Begum Akhtar, maybe even better,\u201d says Khan. \u201cToday, people can barely differentiate between thumri and dadra.\u2019\u2019
\nZarina received a part of her training from the Bhatkhande Music Institute and performed extensively at private mehfils<\/em> and pubic concerts in Delhi, Kolkata, Patna, Rampur, Varanasi, Mumbai, Muzaffarnagar and many other places. Among those who became a regular audience of Zarina\u2019s performance were the Nawab and Rani of Rampur, where she spent five years at their insistence. She had to leave the place after she felt threatened. \u201cI used to be very attractive in my youth,\u201d she says. \u201cDacoits once chased me and forcibly made me sing.\u201d She takes deep breaths in between giggles as she narrates how she sang Majrooh Sultanpuri\u2019s Nazar lagi raja tore bangle pe<\/em> for the dacoits and ran for her life through the jungles with her eldest son Aslam in tow. The Raja of Mehmoodabad was another connoisseur of music for whom Zarina performed.
\nIn the late 50s, Zarina was a singer for the All India Radio (AIR). \u201cIt was an extraordinary experience but they stopped calling me because there was no dearth of singers like me then,\u201d she says. With the abolition of princely states, court musicians lost patronage. Zarina Begum and other female performers suffered because of their exclusion from mehfils<\/em> in post-colonial India.
\nZarina and\u00a0Qurban Hussain\u00a0had three children. After her only brother allegedly occupied the ancestral family house in Nanpara, she was forced to shift to a one-room dilapidated structure in Aminabad that belonged to her husband. Strangely, she did not introduce her children to her music. \u201cPehle ke log jahil the, tawaif aur randi bulate the<\/em> (Earlier people were illiterate, they used to call me a courtesan and prostitute),\u2019\u2019 she explains as a reason. For someone who was accustomed to a life under the limelight, Zarina and her family have been living in poverty for the past four decades.
\nOver the years, Zarina\u2019s health has deteriorated. She suffered from a partial loss of memory after the demise of her husband. \u201cShe even forgot the verses from the Quran,<\/em> I made her learn everything again,\u201d says daughter Rubina. She and her husband Mohammad Naved live with Zarina in their one-room Aminabad house and have no children of their own. \u201cMy mother means everything to me,\u201d says Rubina.
\nZarina\u2019s eldest son, Aslam, married and moved to Kanpur and has no standing familial ties with them while her younger son Ayyub, is mentally challenged. With no one else to rely on, Rubina takes care of her mother and brother. Owing to her inability to walk, Naved has to carry Zarina, even for short distances. The family receives a monthly pension of Rs 2,000 under a scheme run by the Sufi Kathak Foundation (SKF), a Delhi-based NGO. Although the amount is more than any assistance they ever got from the state government, it\u2019s almost inconsequential for a family whose medical expenses sometimes run up to Rs 30,000 a month. \u201cOur foundation provides musicians like Zarina\u00a0medical support and pensions as a service for their lifetime\u2019s work,\u201d says Manjari Chaturvedi, founder of SKF.
\nAs a registered society, the foundation performs a two-fold operation of archiving older traditions and artists and providing them with pension schemes and medical support. Chaturvedi, the pioneer of sufi kathak, asserts the need for research and documentation of music of the erstwhile courts as a serious form of art. \u201cThe court performances of Zarina ji<\/em> and the likes had class and etiquette, which is now widely displaced,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat people in those days sang has not been archived in any form. It was an oral tradition that is now lost.\u2019\u2019 She points towards the 200-odd ghazals and thumris Zarina wrote and sang herself, which will be lost after she is gone. \u201cThe lineage of mehfil<\/em> singers will die with her, because Zarina didn\u2019t pass on her craft to her daughter and there has also been no documentation of what she sang. We need to create a format in which if a Yo Yo Honey Singh can exist, so can Zarina Begum.\u201d
\nWajahat Hussain Badayuni, who performed alongside Chaturvedi at the Royal Festival Hall in London last year, was the grandnephew of illustrious qawwal<\/em> Jafar Hussain Badayuni. Wajahat was the only practicing qawwal of this rich lineage, but he died during a performance at Thane in February 2014. His wife and children are now supported by Wajahat\u2019s pension scheme under the SKF, which also organises annual qawwali<\/em> seminars in association with India International Centre.
\nVikram Lall, a music scholar and founder of The Society for Art Appreciation and Research (SAAR), says contextualising art could be a solution. \u201cArt does not have to die with a loss of patronage,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery art form undergoes change. It is important to create synergy between traditionalism and modernity. Indians have failed to appreciate their own heritage as a result of which we are not very culturally educated or sensitive.\u201d Lall also talks about the need for investing a share of corporate social responsibility for preservation of art forms (or artists) that are on the verge of extinction.
\n\u201cWhat Zarina Begum took back from her concert in a metro like Delhi is something that will allow her to die in peace. A need for reassurance was more urgent than money for her,\u201d adds Chaturvedi, explaining that in a city where people are wary of donating and sharing, it is worth applauding that they indulge in something that is not Bollywood.
\nAs the overflowing crowd at the IGNCA rose in standing ovation, Zarine Begum closed her eyes and bowed her head. Finally, her gayaki<\/em> had made a mark on the bada sheher<\/em>.
\naishwarya@tehelka.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Readers can send their contributions to Zarina Begum at the following address:<\/strong>
\nZarina Begum,
\nC\/o Qurban Hussain,
\nHouse No. C-33, Hata Khuda Baksh Colony,
\nPurana Ganeshganj,
\nAminabad, Lucknow – 226018
\n******
\nBank details: <\/strong>
\nZarina Begum
\nAccount No. – 02510100022066
\nBank – UCO Bank
\nBranch – Charbagh, Lucknow
\nIFSC code – UCBA0002022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once the cynosure of the royal mehfils, Zarina Begum now lives in appalling poverty. Aishwarya Gupta traces the journey of the songstress who refused to compromise <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":218876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[7766,7926,7921,7927,7928,7929,5884,7930,7931,7932,7933,7934,7935],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218412"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}