September 14, 2002

I came close to Ali Imam on account of his interest in music. Not many people know of the musical side to his personality. It was 1972 and I had just started to learn music from Ustad Wilayat Ali Khan. The ustad had landed in Karachi penniless after having been denuded of all his worldly possessions in Bangladesh. He had to start life all over again and was in dire need of a few students who could take lessons from him and sustain him and his large family. I approached Ali Imam to try to sell the ustad to him and succeeded in creating one more shagird for the ustad — Ali Imam’s tuneful better-half, Shahnaz.

A harmonium and a pair of tablas were immediately arranged for her, lest she changed her mind. Soon the Indus Gallery reverberated with the sound of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa. Though appearing indifferent to this new din, Ali Imam’s body language suggested that he was enjoying it. I decided to drag him further into the net and suggested that he could make history by opening a much needed school of classical music in Karachi, the absence of which was causing a whole new generation to go astray. Ali Imam agreed.

However, neither of us had the money to invest in the venture. But he was a great innovator. To my delight he suggested that we could perhaps use the barrack-type room at the back of the house, which, at that time served as a workshop for making frames for his gallery. The place was in a dilapidated condition and he spent some money on whitewashing it, fixing the lights and spreading daris and chandanis to give it a semblance of a traditional music school.

To add ambience to the place, Ali Imam put up paintings on the walls and brought and kept there the few musical instruments he had bought from an antique shop across the road. A photographer was called to take pictures of the ustad, a leaflet was designed and printed for distribution to people coming to the Indus Gallery. A small advertisement was also made and released to the press.

We waited for the stream of boys and girls who would come to learn the great art and make their life meaningful. A few did come, three girls and a young Bengali man who was good at learning. But after a few months the ustad said: “Shahid Sahib, yeh school naheen chalay ga.” I asked him why and he replied: “Log ishtihar parh kar aa to jaatay hain magar hum se guitar aur pop music seekhne ki farmaish kartay hain. Mein yeh zillat bardasht naheen kar sakta.” (This school won’t last. People read the ad and come but then they want to learn pop music. I cannot take this insult!) Ali Imam had quietly watched the proceedings from the sidelines. After seven or eight months he told me: “We have tried. It is just bad luck that people are not interested in classical music. Now it is difficult to pay even the ustad’s salary. Let’s wind up the school.” And the school was closed down.

His next serious love affair with classical music started many years later. This time his devoted friend, Saleem Asmi, himself an avid listener of classical music, was responsible for it. A regular visitor to Ali Imam’s twice every week without fail, he gifted his friend with an expensive music system and flooded him with the best recordings of Rashid Khan, Parbha Attre, Kishori Amonkar, Rajan and Sajan, Veena Sahasrabudhe and others. Ali Imam listened to the ragas sung by these great vocalists for hours and with rapt attention. The ragas provided much comfort to his ailing heart in his last days.