The audience waits in rapt attention as Ustaad Abdul Rashid Khan is wheeled on to the stage by his grandson, Bilal. Before he starts singing, even as he is helped from his wheel-chair, he bows to the stage, prays and then proceeds to sit. “Main 107 saal ka hoon (I am 107 years old),” he says, before pausing for a minute and then adding, “Nahi, nahi, main 108 saal ka hoon... bhul gaya (no, no, I’m 108 years. I forgot).” And then the audience bursts into laughter.
It’s not every day that you get to see a 108-year-old singer perform but when Khan did, there was not one note that he missed. “Forgive me if I go wrong... I’m such an old man,” he says. But despite that disclaimer, his performance was flawless.
And post that performance, backstage he is thronged by people who want to click photos with him and he politely obliges. “People are kind to me... and that’s one of the reasons that I still perform. Their love and adulation gives me strength,” he says.
Khan has been performing for decades but he got into singing all because of a cousin who was “mean” to him. “We were at a dargah where one of my cousin was performing. I was sitting in the audience and I couldn’t stop myself from singing and so I started humming along. My cousin stopped and scolded me for ‘spoiling his song’. I was so taken aback by what he said, but I told myself that I would sing in that same dargah and prove him wrong,” says Khan. After that, he started training with his father and he eventually did perform at that very dargah.
Khan, who is a descendent of Tansen, was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2013, making him the oldest to receive the honour. But he has no qualms about it. Bilal says, “When the news broke out he was doing his namaz. He remained unfazed and simply told me, ‘award aa raha hain toh aane do. Sab uski marzi hain’ (if I get the award, let it come. It’s all God’s choice). He was never affected by awards or the lack of it.”
The has a knack of surprising his guests. During his performance here, he performed a song on Lord Ram. Bilal, his grandson shares a story. “This was during the Babri Masjid demolition time... there was a lot of chaos back then. At that time we were in Nagpur. Baba then asked us to take him to the Hazrat Baba Tajjuddin Dargah. When we took him there, he started singing bhajans inside the dargah. I was shocked and worried... I thought we were going to get beaten up, but the people there just loved the bhajan so much that he even went on to sing another one!”
Khan is famous for his singing prowess, but there’s more to him. He’s also known for his wrestling skills and his poetry (he has written over 2,000 poems). “He has won over 11 wrestling championships,” says Bilal and Khan starts laughing while saying, “I love wrestling and singing equally.” But Khan’s journey was filled with a lot of obstacles. One was when he was poisoned. “Around 40 years ago, he was performing at a concert in Bairagpur. It was a jugalbandi and no one was ready to sing along, but then a local singer decided to join him. However, the audience loved Khan saab’s performance and the singer got jealous. So he paid a waiter to mix mercury in Khan saab’s food. The mercury ended up affecting his fingers,” says Bilal.
At 108-years-old, Khan has seen it all, he has faced setbacks, managed through tough times and currently even needs help to move around, but he has always shone through. And despite losing his fingers to poison, miraculously his voice remained untouched... which makes you want to believe that Khan was, in fact, born to sing.
