‘My Life’: Ustad Allauddin Khan’s autobiography is occasionally impatient and always deeply human
· Scroll
There is a certain expectation we tend to associate with the autobiography of any genius, a maestro, a polymath, and so on. We imagine a life strung together in pearls of wisdom – aphorisms polished by age, hardship redeemed by discipline, genius explained as the only plausible outcome of suffering and transcendence. We expect hierarchies: guru above disciple, art above life, destiny above accident. My Life: Story of an Imperfect Musician, the English translation of Ustad Allauddin Khan’s autobiography, resists these expectations and convincingly so. It offers something far rarer: a voice that is intimate, digressive, occasionally impatient, and deeply human.
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Packed into this slim translation are stories that reveal how a master – or a magician – is sculpted over years of hardship, leaps of faith, perseverance, and unwavering dedication. Distilled from Khan’s spoken accounts and recollections to an attentive audience at Santiniketan in 1952, first transcribed in Bengali by Subhomay Ghosh as Amar Katha and now translated into English by Hemasri Chaudhuri, the strength of this book lies precisely in its informality. The genius does not perform for posterity; he narrates, recollects, and reflects.
Artistic commitment
At the age of eight, Khan ran away from home with twelve rupees stolen from his mother, travelling in search not of...