Shhh... Ustad Amjad Ali Khan Is Speaking

Even if Amjad Ali Khan wasn’t the greatest sarod player in the country, it wouldn’t have mattered. For someone with such good looks, he would’ve eventually found fame and fortune in the tinsel town. It’s just as well, it didn’t happen so. It was written that Amjad Ali Khan would pick up the instrument, modified and created by his own forefathers. In December 1986, Society caught up with India’s famed sarod player, who was at his humourous best and in the mood to say it all.

- Sanjay A Sayani

Everything about Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, the sarod maestro, is classy. Right from the delicate embroidery on his kurta to his clean manicured fingernails. A shock of silvery hair sits neatly in place on a head containing oodles of grey matter, which mastermind the intricate artistry of his fingers, racing across unmarked strings like so many thoroughbreds racing together to the winning post.

The music that emanates from his sarod has a magical quality, ethereal at times, sometimes transcendental, and quite simply mellifluous always. The man himself is simple. He shuns title or prefixes to his famous name. All the glided flourishes of Ustad and Padmashree are scrupulously avoided on his calling cards, which simply bears his name. He prefers to remain aloof, away from the headlines, and remain unaffected by the not-so-sporadic barbs of his critics and detractors.

Society called on Ustad Amjad Ali Khan during the latter’s recent trip to Bombay, for an interview. The sarodist or ‘sarodiya’ as they say in Hindustani, spoke at length about his craft, his instruments, his private passions, the false notes in his life, went briefly to the time he used to hit the bottle, speaking mostly in chaste Urdu, laced with Hindustani and Inglistani as well….

Khan saheb, let us begin with a very basic question. What is a sarod? Does the name have any meaning and where did the instrument originate?