'I wish he had lived to see it'

Filmmaker Nasreen Munni Kabir on why she chose to document the life of shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan in her latest work.

Multi-faceted genius... Photo: PTI

When Nasreen Munni Kabir first experienced the magic of Ustad Bismillah Khan's shehnai in the early 1970s, she was enraptured. But never did she think that this would lead her to chronicle the Ustad's life via a documentary, “Bismillah of Benares”. “I have always been an avid film buff; which explains why much of my work so far has revolved around films and film personalities,” she begins as we settle down to a tête-à-tête about her latest project. “I have been a fan of Ustad Bismillah Khan's music ever since I first heard him play at an auditorium in Paris way back in the 1970s,” reminisces Kabir describing how Khan sahib held a largely Western audience captivated. “I remember thinking, ‘his music comes straight from his heart!' At another concert in London in the 1990s I began to feel the need to document this great man's life and times.”

Research took time

It took Kabir 20 long years before her work saw the light of the day. “The research took a lot of time, especially because I have no background in music. However, Khan sahib and his family were very accommodating of my requests to interview and film him though he was almost 86 years old by then,” says Kabir.

She initially pitched the idea of the documentary to the BBC in 2002 but was unable to find a distributor for the DVD. But fate intervened in the form of A.R. Rahman who was the subject of Kabir's book (

A.R. Rahman: The Spirit of Music was released recently.) “During one interview, we got talking about Ustad Bismillah Khan. We shared a mutual admiration for the maestro. When he heard about my documentary languishing due to lack of distributors, Rahman decided to present it himself,” says Kabir, who describes the time spent with the Ustad as an unforgettable and a humbling experience.

“It took me barely three months to shoot this 50-minute documentary and I attribute this to Ustadji's wholehearted involvement. From the beginning, I was clear about making a documentary that would unearth different aspects of Khan sahib. I wanted him to revisit his childhood spent near the ghats of Benares; his memories of learning the shehnai from his guru-uncle Ali Buksh; his first concert... He did so with such an open heart that I felt like I had stumbled upon a treasure-trove of precious vignettes.”

Kabir remembers Khan sahib being excited at the prospect of travelling down memory lane to narrate how he played pranks; prayed as ardently at the local Balaji temple as at a

dargah ; his tutelage under his

maamu (uncle). “He was a very witty person; very jocular and had a childlike innocence that was very endearing. But what I found most fascinating was his ability to narrate an incident in a way that would grab the listener's attention! His voice modulation, expressions, and inherent story-telling skills contributed towards making Khansahib the fine performer that he was.”

Live feel

“I wanted a ‘live' feel to the documentary and, instead of inserting clippings of his past performances, I requested Khan sahib to play for our cameras. I feel extremely humbled to have been given with that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! His lungs had lost much of their capacity but still he rendered several unforgettable pieces that have been incorporated in the documentary. I wish he had lived to see it.”

‘Bismillah of Benares', produced by Nasreen Munni Kabir's Hyphen Films with support from the BBC, is being presented by A.R. Rahman's KM Musiq and distributed by Sony Music. From the narrow by-lanes behind bustling markets, the documentary takes us to Ustadji's ancestral home from where he began his career. Interspersed with informative nuggets from musicologist Sandeep Bagchee and historian Shashank Singh, ‘Bismillah of Benares' unravels a personal facet to the legend who let his shehnai do all the talking.

With her labour of two decades having borne fruit, Nasreen Munni Kabir now returns to her familiar turf of Bollywood to begin work on her next dialogue book on Bimal Roy's classic “Devdas”. Asked if she'd consider a documentary on another classical musician, Kabir replies in the negative. “I haven't got the musical background required to do a series, if that's what you mean,” but agrees that “classical music is finding lesser takers by the day. One of the ways to get the youth interested in it is to expose them to the beauty of classical music through DVDs/CDs that they relate to.”