World-renowned tabla player and Padma Vibhushan Ustad Zakir Hussain has passed away. His family confirmed this on Monday morning. According to the family, Hussain was suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The family said that he was admitted to a hospital in San Francisco for the last two weeks. When his condition worsened, he was admitted to the ICU. He breathed his last there.
Zakir was born on 9 March 1951 in Mumbai. Ustad Zakir Hussain was awarded the Padma Shri in 1988, Padma Bhushan in 2002 and Padma Vibhushan in 2023.
They Had These Diseases
In idiopathic pulmonary chronic cancer, the lung tissue gets damaged, which makes breathing difficult. Shortness of breath and cough in the throat are its initial symptoms. Due to damage to the lung tissue, not enough oxygen reaches the blood. This causes problems in reaching oxygen to the organs of the body and gradually the organs also stop working.
Received many awards in music
Zakir Hussain also received a lot of respect in America. In 2016, former US President Barack Obama invited him to the White House to participate in the All Star Global Concert. Zakir Hussain was the first Indian musician to receive this invitation.
Ustad Zakir Hussain
Zakir Hussain had the talent of playing tunes since childhood. He would start playing tunes with his fingers on seeing any flat surface. He would not even spare the utensils in the kitchen. He would start playing on whatever he could find, be it a tawa, a pot or a thali.
In the early days, Ustad Zakir Hussain used to travel by train. Due to lack of money, he used to travel in the general coach. If he did not get a seat, he used to sleep on a newspaper spread on the floor. To ensure that no one’s feet touched the tabla, he used to sleep with it in his lap.
When Zakir Hussain was 12 years old, he went to a concert with his father. Music giants like Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Bismillah Khan, Pandit Shanta Prasad and Pandit Kishan Maharaj had attended that concert. Zakir Hussain went on stage with his father. After the performance was over, Zakir got 5 rupees. Referring to this in an interview, he said- I earned a lot of money in my life, but those 5 rupees were the most valuable.
Work done in this movie
Zakir Hussain has also acted in some films. He made his debut in a British film Hit and Dust in 1983. Shashi Kapoor also acted in this film. Zakir Hussain also worked in a 1998 film Saaz. Shabana Azmi was opposite Hussain in this film.
Zakir Hussain was also offered the role of Salim’s younger brother in the film Mughal-e-Azam (1960), but his father Ustad Allarakha refused to let him work in the film. He wanted his son to focus on music only.
