Being a legend’s son can be more pain than pleasure: sitar maestro Shujaat Husain Khan

New Delhi, Aug 25 (PTI) A lot of children of “extremely big geniuses” land up in rehab because they can’t cope with the pressure society puts on them and he can understand that, says sitar maestro Shujaat Husain Khan, the son of doyen Vilayat Khan.

Being the son of a legend can be “more pain than pleasure”, Khan said. He grew up navigating a world where he was constantly compared to his legendary father and has been able to come out of the giant shadow after years of hard work and dedication.

“A lot of children of extremely, extremely big geniuses land up in rehab. They do drugs because they can’t cope with the pressures that society puts on them, expectations that society puts on them and I can understand that. It must be terribly, terribly difficult,” Khan told PTI.

The 63-year-old, who gave his first public performance when he was just six, admitted that children of “great individuals” have easy access to opportunities and “can walk into situations, concerts and see things happening for them”.

But that is also the point where it all ends and after that it is “only the pain of being son of the big legend”, he said.

Khan is a seventh generation musician from the Imdadkhani Gharana. His grandfather was Ustad Inayat Khan, great grandfather Ustad Imdad Khan and great-great grandfather Ustad Sahebdad Khan — all leading artists of their generation.

His father Vilayat Khan was a tough taskmaster, he said, recalling his fingers getting cut and bleeding while playing the sitar when he was just four or five years old. But he was told to carry on playing as that would make him “get used to the pain”.

Perhaps why he never pushed his son into being a sitarist.

“I don’t have a strong heart. I realised that if my child is in pain, I could not tolerate it. So I would probably have been a bad teacher. I have got some wonderful students who are playing music, and I am very proud to say that this motivation to practice and go ahead in their lives they find themselves. I tell them this is what is needed but they find that motivation themselves,” Khan said.

His son Azaan is a music composer based out of Goa.

Khan is amongst India’s best known Hindustani classical musicians, has more than 100 albums to his credit and global renown but a Padma award has long eluded him. He said it’s now too late and he will never ask for one anyway.

The musician, who was also nominated for a Grammy in 2004, said he understood three decades ago that people “coming again and again to his concerts, listening and enjoying his music is much more important than getting little awards”.

“I, according to the government, probably don’t deserve these (Padma) awards and that’s very possible… I am happy my students, people who have learnt from me and gone away, have got these awards,” Khan told PTI.

“It is probably too late now (for me to accept the award). I think, considering my achievements, I should have probably got a Padma award when I was 20-25 years old,” he said.

He has performed at the Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall and in 2001 received the Madhya Pradesh government’s ‘Rashtriya Kumar Gandharva Samman’, touted to be India’s highest honour for a classical musician under the age of 45.

His style, known as the gayaki ang’, is imitative of the subtleties of the human voice.

Khan, who is based in Goa and was in the city for a concert organised by the Gunjan Foundation, said he gets “feelers every year” from someone or the other in the government asking him to write a letter requesting that his name be considered for the Padma awards.

“Aap apna politics karo, ek dusre ko marwao, pure desh mein ashanti falao, apni jeebe bharo (You do your politics, make people fight against each other, stir up trouble in the country and fill your pockets). That is the work of a politician. I can’t go to them and say, ‘Please endorse me as a musician’. I am sorry, I can’t bring myself to do that.”

Khan’s album “The Rain” — a collaboration between him on the sitar, Iranian spike fiddler Kayhan Kalhor and Sandeep Das on the tabla — was nominated for a Grammy in the ‘Traditional World Music category’. He lost out but has little regret.

“This again is not something that I have chased anyway in my life … But funnily enough, when I did not win the Grammy no one really remembers the one who actually won the Grammy that year. That’s my point,” Khan said.