With the passing of singer Shanti Hiranand (1932-2020), early on Friday morning after a brief illness, an era, first shaken to its core by the passing of Begum Akhtar in 1974, finally comes to an end. For nearly five decades, almost single-handedly Shanti Hiranand kept the music of her legendary Ustad alive. With her gone, so has our last tangible link to Begum Akhtar. For nearly five decades Shantiji performed and recorded ghazals, dadras and thumris in the tradition of Begum Akhtar but also diligently taught it to many who wanted to be a part of the great singer’s tradition. Shantiji taught music almost until the last months of her life.
Shantiji was born in Lucknow into a forward-looking business family which encouraged education and did not frown on her interest in music and even enrolled her in Bhatkhande Music Institute at the age of six or seven. She moved to Lahore briefly with her parents where she first recorded for radio. After Partition, she returned to Lucknow and continued to sing for the radio. Around this time Begum Akhtar, after her brief retirement from music, had formally returned to recording for All India Radio.
In 1952, an official at the radio station suggested to the young Shanti that perhaps she could learn from Begum Akhtar. In her memoir Begum Akhtar: The Story of My Ammi , Shantiji recalls this first meeting. Without an appointment, she had taken a rickshaw and turned up at Begum Akhtar’s house and after a brief wait was granted an audience where a harmonium was forwarded towards her for an impromptu audition. She sang a bhajan in raag pilu.
She admits, “I had no idea what raag pilu was. I had just learnt the bhajan as one would learn any filmi song. Since I was performing on the radio at the time, I was used to the radio station sending me a song set to a particular tune and I would just go and record them. I also did a lot of choral singing. I had a high-pitched voice and I could sing loudly.” Begum Akhtar complimented her and asked her what she wanted to learn from her. Shanti didn’t know what to say because as she admits, “I had no idea about her music or what I wanted to learn from her.”
This fortuitous meeting led to classes from the next day onwards. Soon she had practically moved in with her teacher because Begum Akhtar, whimsical as she was, would teach only when she was in the mood. Soon Shanti was an appendage of the family. She was joined by another student, Anjali Banerji, and Begum Akhtar did what no other female artiste has done before – marked them as formal students and herself as a formal Ustad by conducting a ganda-bandh ceremony.
Begum Akhtar, being the tempestuous person she was, tested this guru-shishya relationship hard and it goes to Shantiji’s credit that she was never found wanting and stayed unquestionably loyal to her Ammi till her end. She never said a word that could be considered disrespectful of her Ustad though there is still today an audience hungry for salacious details of her Ustad’s life, and many egged her to tell tales.
She went even beyond keeping her mouth shut. She saw to it that the place which is the final resting place of her guru lived up, even if minimally, to the stature of the artiste she was. Along with keeping Begum Akhtar’s music alive, this will be to the eternal credit of Shanti Hiranand.
The Begum Akhtar era is formally over. As Shanti sang in her first recording, a Shakeel Badayuni ghazal:
Fasana e shab e gham khatm hone wala hai
‘ Shakeel’ chand sitaron men ji nahin lagta.
(The story of the night of grief is about to end
‘Shakeel’, the heart is no longer distracted by the moon or the stars.)
Saleem Kidwai is a Lucknow-based historian and author.
