Zakir Hussain (1951-2024) | ‘A miracle never dies’
The HinduDear Guruji, On Sunday night, as I watched the full moon rise, I thought to myself that the next Guru Purnima I had to spend the day with you and photograph you with all your students. Just two weeks ago, while I was talking about your influence on my life — showing the audience in the Indian Museum in Kolkata the Zakir Hussain maquette wall — I said, “I will continue to photograph Zakir until I die.” I told them how you had said at the release of the maquette, “I play the tabla and she plays the photograph.” And now, all your life lessons that I carry within me, will guide me. You taught me rigour and that single-minded focus: to learn one’s medium like the back of one’s hand, you said, and only then attempt to play with it. I did not realise at the time as we rode around India in the musicians’ bus, that annual road trip of three weeks, what a privileged world you had led me into. Your unlikely student, — Dayanita Singh Singh started her career by photographing Zakir Hussain.
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