Hariprasad Chaurasia At 80 - A Fairytale

If ever there was a fairytale involving a musician, it must be that of flute maestro Hariprasad Chaurasia, who turned eighty last month.

- V. Ramnarayan

Here was a near genetic oddity—in that he was born to a wrestler father (and unschooled homemaker with no artistic pretensions) who had ambitions for his sons, dreaming they would follow in his footsteps and achieve glory in the akhada. Remarkably, the youngest son Hariprasad, born on 1 July 1938, discovered the joy of music even as a child, and yearned to become an ustad—a musical, not fighting one. He in fact developed a distaste for wrestling early.

Little Hari showed a talent for singing in a sweet voice, joining the chorus of devotional singing in a nearby temple, encouraged by the family’s neighbours and the temple priests. His introduction to the bamboo flute was accidental, almost serendipitous. He one day followed a street child who was playing a plaintive tune on his humble bansuri, and actually stole it from him! Quite the little Krishna!

Hari’s first music teacher was a Pandit Raja Ram, a reputed dhrupadiya from the neighbourhood. Raja Ram took the nine-year old under his wing when he realised how keen the little fellow was on music.

Hari also benefited from his association with the family of an Ayurvedic doctor and neighbour Kailashnath Chaturvedi, regularly joining in the impromptu practice sessions in which father and two sons sang and played the harmonium and tabla.