'I made tablas for him, he made my life': Zakir Hussain and the man he termed the 'Steinway of tabla'

Sitting in his workshop at Kanjurmarg in Mumbai, Vhatkar said the two first met on Guru Poornima where a lot of his admirers had gathered.

Mumbai: “I made tablas for him, he made my life,” says Haridas Vhatkar who was termed the “Steinway of the tabla” by his most celebrated client - Ustad Zakir Hussain.

On Monday, as the world mourned the death of the legendary musician whose fame crossed the boundaries of geography and whose music blurred the lines between Hindustani, western and jazz, Vhatkar remembered the man who made it all possible for him. And also perhaps how his tablas made it possible for the world renowned percussionist.

“I first began making tablas for his father Alla Rakha and have been making tablas for Zakir Hussain saab since 1998,” an emotional Vhatkar, 59, told PTI.

Sitting in his workshop at Kanjurmarg in Mumbai, the tablas lined up in shelves behind him, Vhatkar said the two first met on Guru Poornima where a lot of his admirers had gathered.

“The next day, I went to his house in Simla House Cooperative Society on Nepean Sea Road neighbourhood and were engrossed in conversation for a couple of hours,” Vhatkar said.

And a lifelong relationship was born - even if they were not regularly in touch.

“He was very particular about what sort of tabla he wanted and when. He paid a lot of attention to the tuning' aspect of the musical instrument,” said Vhatkar, a third generation tabla maker, from Miraj in western Maharashtra.

Hussain, who passed away in a San Francisco hospital at the age of 73, has also spoken in detail about Vhatkar.

“He used to live in Miraj, near Kolhapur, and as a young man he came to Bombay because he heard me play. He decided to learn how to make the tabla, so he could make them for me,” he has said in “Zakir Hussain: A Life in Music - A Conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabir”.

The late Ustad detailed the painstaking effort that goes into each instrument.

“Sometimes the parts are made in machines and then assembled together by someone who has the ear and knowledge, while Haridasji does everything from scratch -- he gets the buffalo hide straps, polishes and cleans the goat skin to get the rough edges out, etc. It's all done by hand. The whole process can take weeks…” “You can of course buy a standard tabla, which will not have even 10 per cent of the quality of Haridasji's work. He has become the Steinway of the tabla!” he famously said.

Hussain said he had put the artisan, who also went to the US, on a stipend.

“So, if I'm gone for eight months, he does not have to worry, he will still have some money coming in.” And how many tablas did Vhatkar make for legendary percussionist over the last two decades? Innumerable, was Vhatkar's reply.

He also said he has many tablas left behind for him by Hussain.

“Besides making new instruments, I was also his sort of repair department for maintaining the collection of the older ones,” said Vhatkar.

“I made tablas for him and he made my life,” he added simply.

The star musician would call whenever needed, whether to ask about a new tabla or about the repair of an old one.

“Our conversations were after a gap of months and not what you would categorise as regular calls,” said Vhatkar who is following in the footsteps of his grandfather Kerappa Ramchandra Vhatkar and father Ramchandra Kerappa Vhatkar.

His sons Kishore and Manoj have carried forward the family tradition of tabla making.

Haridas learnt the art of tabla making at an early age and developed a keen sense of innovation and perfection. He came to Mumbai in 1994 and started working as a tabla maker for the famous Haribhau Vishwanath company in Mumbai.