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Agra:
One of the last exponents of the Agra Gharana of Hindustani
classical music, 86-year-old Ustad Akeel Ahmad Khan is not only
unwell but is also a disenchanted man. He has no government support
and says this city “honours only the dead”.
Tracing his lineage to the legendary
Tansen and grandson of khayal maestro Ustad Faiyaz Khan, Akeel Khan
began his career in the 1940s with Ashok Kumar and Naseem Bano, sang
with Mohammed Rafi, worked with Ghulam Hussain and other leading
lights of the Hindi film industry.
For years, he kept the tradition of
his gharana alive in the Taj city.
But nothing in his glorious past can
dispel the mood of gloom at the shoddy treatment meted out to him by
government agencies. Even the meagre pension of Rs.2,000 he used to
get from the culture ministry has been held up after 2008 due to
bureaucratic wrangles, he says.
“With no other financial support I am
just managing to barely survive,” Khan laments. He has already been
compelled to sell off five gold medals to survive in his humble
Ashoor Beg Gali home.
Hardly able to see, he broke his hip
bone a few months ago.
He said his daughter had to go
frequently to New Delhi to persuade officials to release the pension
for senior artists. He had several times requested the government to
increase the pension but there had been no response.
Having toured Iran, Afghanistan and
other countries with his illustrious grandfather, the ustaad is
currently grooming his grandson in the intricacies of the Agra
Gharana, which ironically is more popular outside the Taj city than
in the place of its origin.
“This is a city that honours only the
dead,” he says of Agra, which was home to Urdu poets Mirza Ghalib,
Nazeer Akbarabadi, Mir Taqi Mir and so many others, but all of whom
left and found fame elsewhere.
Akeel Khan’s plight has evoked
sympathy.
Braj Mandal Heritage Conservation
Society president Surendra Sharma told IANS: “The Agra Gharana
tradition of classical music began in the courts of the Mughals and
there are marked Rajput traits discernible in the compositions. The
gharana and its exponents have to be recognised and promoted.”
Culture critic Mahesh Dhakar asked the
people of the city to “wake up and mobilise support for this great
talent whose contribution to enriching Agra’s classical music
traditions remains unparalleled”.
“Ustad Akeel Ahmad sahab’s
contribution to the Agra Gharana has been unique and significant. It
is sad that official patronage is not being provided for such
artists who have dedicated their whole life to enriching musical
traditions,” Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) general
secretary Jitendra Raghvanshi told IANS.
(Brij Khandelwal can be
contacted at brij.k@ians.in)
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