The unique man with the little red light
By Majid Sheikh
Published in Dawn, 20 February 2005
The ancient city of Lahore has always been about people first and foremost. Over time the actions of these unique people take their place in our collective psyche. Today’s story is about one such very unique person, a person with the unique art of listening, and of making sure that every word, or musical note, listened to was in its correct place and time.
Our story begins in the square opposite the beautiful Wazir Khan’s mosque inside Delhi Gate. This is the place where, over the centuries, the trade caravans used to come and camp.
At night over camp fires stories from all over the world were told and recorded. The mosque of Wazir Khan, undoubtedly the finest in Lahore, is where, some time in 1925, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan was reciting the Holy Quran.
He moved from verse to verse, as if his tone and tenor was designed for this celestial task. In one corner a little boy of four sat listening to the maestro. He lived just round the corner inside Delhi Gate, and every time the ‘ustad’ would come to recite the Holy Quran, he would find the little lad in rasp attention.
This is where the musical life of Hayat Ahmad Khan started. His long 83 year old journey of life ended last week. His is a story that must be told, little that he wished it to be.
The experience of listening to Bade Ghulam Ali Khan must have been a unique one for the boy to come every day, for all he did was listen. It was, as if, the musical words of the Almighty entered the very soul and spirit of the man the musicians of Pakistan learned to call ‘Khan Sahib’.
The elders of Hayat Ahmad Khan belonged to an Afghan family that had fled the royal infightings of the Kabul court. They settled, initially, in the Soan Valley near Khushab at a village called Chak Kazian, named probably because they belonged to a family of ‘kazis’.
Education, administration and business ran in the family, and as was the wont of such people, they happened to be very modern and religious in disposition. It might seem a dichotomy to many today, but till recently the mix went very well.
In the square opposite the mosque are a number of old buildings. One of them was owned by the grandfather of Hayat Ahmad Khan. Here sat the calligraphists, who recorded the stories of old and far away.
The hand-written pages were decorated with golden floral outlines, and after leather-binding the books would be sold as unique pieces of art. A few lie today in the best museums of the world.
Hayat Ahmad Khan grew up in the streets around the mosque of Wazir Khan inside the old walled city of Lahore. In his school and college days he was a good sportsman, being a champion in 100 metres swimming.
It was in those heady days, just before the making of Pakistan, that he met his wonderful wife Syeda Khanum, who happened to live just a few houses away. It was a match made “in heaven”, for their love affair never ceased. She backed him in his enterprises and he loved her more for doing so.
When she died a few years ago, Hayat Ahmad Khan was never the same. “Had it not been her desire that we save our music for the future children of our country, I would have loved to go with her. But I meet her every night that I sleep, and I always assure her that I will come soon,” he mentioned recently to a friend. The mystic in him was emerging slowly. It was only the mention of Syeda Khanum that ever saw his eyes moist up and he would be a wee bit lost. To the world, however, he was a strict disciplinarian and a man with a mission.
From Delhi Gate the family moved to Davis Road. The family business was known as the Abdul Rahim Khan, the famous auctioneers and furniture mart on McLeod Road. It was, in its days, one of the city’s major business house. The family tradition of education and business was very much intact.
Like his father, Hayat Ahmad Khan was also a businessman, and till very recently he maintained his office on McLeod Road, though most of his time was spent meeting musicians from all over the country.
He was among the very first to recognize that the future business opportunities lay in Japan and Germany. I once asked him how he had opted to do business with the defeated Japanese and Germans after the Second World War. “Oh, very simple. Culturally great nations cannot be killed by atom bombs. They have a habit of standing tall again. In that process business is always good.” His reply stunned me. Here was a man who knew how to look beyond the horizon and through time.
The Japanese honoured this unique Lahori on his death like they have seldom honoured a foreign person. He had understood their psyche well, and more importantly, respected them like few in those days did. After one of his scores of visits to Japan, he set up the Japan Karate Association.
He had sown the seed and that was enough. He introduced an annual Japanese calender exhibition, showing the world that simple lines mean so much to those with an eye.
His daughter Lala Rukh, now a teacher in the National College of Arts, is also very frugal with her lines. Few understand her lines yet, but a time will surely come when the beauty and responsibility of the artist’s line will be appreciated.
I remember as a young schoolboy going to the Pakistan Music conference with my father, where we listened all night to Roshan Ara Begum. On the way back I got a lesson on why listening was the most important human trait.
“People have stopped listening to one another, which is why they are no longer communicating with one another.” He spoke in general terms always. Many years later I recalled this conversation to Hayat Ahmad Khan while having dinner with him in an Islamabad hotel.
He got up and ordered me to hug him. Who was I to disobey? I mentioned Roshan Ara Begum as it was because of her that the All-Pakistan Music Conference (APMC) came about. The great classical music queen of the sub-continent had announced that she was giving up singing as people were no longer interested.
Hayat Ahmad Khan’s time had come. He then had the foresight to see that the ‘red light’ had to be shown to the emerging forces of obscurantism, a force that was likely to rob us of one of our greatest traditions, the tradition of sub-continental classical music.
For the first time in 1959, over 45 years ago, the APMC started, and Hayat Ahmad Khan set the rules straight and simple. “We will start on time, and every performer, no matter how famous or great, or young or even a novice, will begin and end his performance on time”.
The rules were simple and in 45 years he saw to it that the rules were never violated. To enforce these rules, he had a small red light installed in front of the performer.
He operated the red light himself, and if anyone refused to see it, he would make sure that he was shown the red light. “The art of performing means discipline, and the APMC makes sure its proceedings are disciplined”, he would inform everyone.
Over the years the greatest of our musicians, classical and semi-classical, have been through the routine set by the quiet man that Hayat Sahib was. He had learnt his music at the Ghandharav Mahahvidala Academy in India.
He lived a full life in every respect. His interests were diverse. He was an avid hiker and mountaineer. He was among the very first to climb the K-36, also known as Siachin Glacier, not to speak of even higher peaks like Nangaparbat, Trichmir and other similar peaks.
Recently, as his daughter Gul Rukh mentioned, a little child started crying during a classical music recital in the APMC. Everyone was irked. Hayat Sahib rushed to the distressed woman’s help, saw her to the gate and instructed her strictly: “Comfort the little angel, and once he is quiet you must bring him back. Let him start his life listening to pure sounds”. The woman did return and the child sat through the performance in rapt attention, just like the little child listening to Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali in the mosque of Wazir Khan almost 80 years ago.
His unique role in our lives was that he saved sub-continental classical music from being forgotten. His work has been done, and done well. His red light worked. That is reward enough for a life well lived.
