When the two media giants Ahmad Noorani and Haroon Rashid stated that Najam Sethi is not a journalist, I had to change my business card from “the senior-most junior journalist” to “the senior-most junior!”
Their jugalbandi took me to the 1940s, when Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan (Kasur-gharana) and Ustad Amir Khan (Indore gharana) were the two stalwarts in khayal gaiki. None used the title ‘ustad’. The two would attend listen to each other’s music without admiration. “Dheela gaata hay!” (He is weak in singing), said Ghulam Ali about Amir Khan. “Thumri gaa leta hay!” (He can sing light classical), said Amir Khan about Bade Ghulam Ali.
Irony becomes absurdity some 50 years later when a much junior artist claims: “Mein tau hamesha Bade Ghulam Ali say oopar hee gaya hoon.” (I am above Bade Ghulam Ali Khan). “Amir Khan sur say utartay thay!” (Amir Khan would become baisura!) These were the words of the late Ustad Salamat Ali Khan (Sham Chaurasi gharana) to me in 1992 in Islamabad.
Salamat was deeply influenced by Bade Ghulam Ali’s music, and he was his gandaband shagird (formal disciple). But he never acknowledged it for the shagirdi rasam (the apprenticeship ceremony) was attended by a very few who soon passed away and Salamat was a celebrity.
Rais Khan’s mamoo (uncle) Aaftabe Sitar (the Sun of Sitar) the late Ustad Vilayat Khan trains him, introduces him in the concerts as his disciple and things are hunky-dory. When Rais becomes a brand, he says he never learnt from Vilayat Khan, but the latter learnt from him!
Zakir bhai (Zakir Hussain for others but for me always Zakir Bhai), a child prodigy and a genius (like Mozart), having received the Padma Shri in his teens, is now 71. The world calls him ‘ustad’ and he is hellbent to introduce himself as ‘student’.
Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Amir Khan and Ustad Vilayat Khan will remain pillars of music; there is none like Zakir Hussain nor there will be one in future – this is the universal truth. But there is no dearth of ‘Socrates’ like Rashid and Noorani who exclaim that Zakir is not a tablist. Lahore has a juggler, Tafu Khan. Neither fish nor fowl in tabla, he openly propagates that he does not recognise anyone except himself in tabla-playing.
Today, everybody is either a maestro, legend, Ustad or Pandit in music. I had to scold Shakir Shahid Parvez (the son of my friend Ustad Shahid Parvez) when I saw the word ‘legend’ in front of his name on YouTube. The real legend, you see, is his father – who says he is still learning music. I laugh when I see the students of Zakir Bhai’s students introducing themselves as ‘Pandit’ or ‘Ustad.’
No education, not a single skill, no experience, not a fraction of command of English or Urdu is required to become journalist, anchor or analyst – as long as you own an empire i.e. a smart phone and a Youtube channel. Garnish yourself with ‘senior’ once you have 99 subscribers. Nobody will sue you, for you are the producer, director, cameraman, set designer, writer, editor and blah-blah-blah!
YouTube babies have also broken the records set by Sherlock Holmes or James Bond. One of them Iqrarul Hassan reaches Kenya and shows us the bullets that were fired at Arshad Sharif’s vehicles. He should now visit Liaquat Bagh to find such evidence to solve the murders of Liaquat Ali Khan and Benazir Bhutto! If YouTube were to be gone, who will remember these jokers?
I always found Haroon Rashid rude, but he did not use filthy words against Sethi like Noorani did. By the way, I found Sethi praising Noorani in Karan Thapar’s show.
Great journalists like Noorani should be cracking stories in Pakistan on issues such as climate change, injustice, poverty, crisis of governance, pathetic delivery of justice, etc. and blah-blah-blah! Any monk can impress subscribers with loquacity live from the US!
