Ustad Salamat Ali Khan was a child prodigy in undivided India. His radio recording at the age of ten remains to be a testament to this performance. But it was his performance at the Dover Lane Music Conference in Calcutta, in the 1950s, that made music lovers realise the talented genius that he was. In the 1950s, this music conference was one of the most defining events of Indian classical music, with the Who’s Who of classical music, elite audiences, and music connoisseurs from across the subcontinent assembling for it. It was here that Salamat’s performance of Raag Darbari enchanted the audience for the first time. Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan (sitar maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan’s father) presented him to the audience after his performance. He mentioned how Salamat’s talent surpassed his years (Salamat was barely a 20/21-year-old then) and, how his soul was that of the old ustads of the land. This validation from Ustad Hafiz Ali was not an easy one to get. Around this time, at the end of one his performances, Ustad Hafiz Ali was asked by the then Prime Minister if there was anything that he could do for him. The delighted Hafiz Ali had expressed his innocent and illogical wish, to grant Raag Darbari a special status. Ustadji wanted to maintain the sanctity of Raag Darbari — arguably, one of the greatest raagas of all times by restricting its meandering from its sanctity.  To perform and impress the same Hafiz Ali with Raag Darbari, of all raagas, was not easy for Salamat. But he achieved the feat with flair, as many kept wondering how. Ustad Hafiz Ali declared the young Salamat’s genius to the audience. The word spread, and so did Salamat’s music.  In the next decade to come, he came to the festival every year, rocked performances to packed audiences and travelled across India. His Miya ki Malhar starred in one of the most crucial scenes of auteur Satyajit Ray’s iconic Jalsaghar (1958). The several music festivals across the subcontinent witnessed his magic, his mastery.  He was simply a star. The newly formed Pakistan sometimes had certain restrictions about letting songs about Hindu gods being sung. This was frustrating for artists who were trained in a composite culture of the pre-partition times, like Salamat. What about the bandishes where they both had names of Allah (Karim) and Krishna (Shyama)? What about the songs that celebrated Hazrat Mohammad (PBOH) playing holi, for example (Mere Hazrat ne Madeene Manayi Holi)? So every time Salamat would come to Benares or Calcutta, he would pour his heart out with these songs that he wasn’t allowed to sing back home, and an enchanted Indian audience would lap it up. But then the war happened between the two countries and there was a breach in the routine of Salamat’s India trips. Now it was India’s turn with its rigidity and pettiness. In India, artists from across the border were not as welcome as before. The authorities of both countries set up their own restrictions. It was a war. The borders were really shut this time. It was the Indian audience who lost out on his performances as Salamat missed his annual recitals in Calcutta. The Ustad, however, devised a method to sing the same songs of the same Hindu gods in Pakistan through a loophole. Indian classical music has its subtleties, and there were these songs about gods, without ever mentioning their popular names. Often coming from cosmopolitan courts, the bandishes would be poetry that was carefully composed, with enough room for subtlety. There was no directness, but rather, constant reflection (in multiple sense of the word). Anokha Laadla was one such bandish. Based (yet again) on the royal Raag Darbari, this bandish was based on the mythical royal/god—Ram.

As it is mentioned in several versions of the Ramayan (in the Bala Kanda), in this story, the young Ram wanted to play with the moon. He had no other way and was annoying mother Kaushalya about it. Kaushalya devised a solution. She got a bowl of water and let the reflection of the moon fall on it. This new reflection of the moon was, for Ram, the moon itself, and he was more than happy to play with it. The reflection was as real as the object of fascination. Kaushalya, in turn, likened Ram to the moon itself and named him Ramchandra (Chandra, meaning the moon).The royal Mughal Darbari workshops, which were composite in nature, with artists and artisans from various ethno-religious backgrounds collaborating together to make art, went creative with their several miniature paintings, poems, songs, bandishes on this story. It was, after all, this idea of likeness that had pervaded in Indic thought for a long time. For example, if one couldn’t afford to donate horses as ritual offerings, their clay/doll versions counted as being of the same value. Such miniature paintings, poems, songs, bandishes from different periods and reigns, eventually percolated to the ateliers of the provincial courts across the country. And so the story travelled in its varied reflections. It was a story, and it didn’t matter as much, if it was shaped by Hindu or Muslim traditions, as long as it was classicised in accordance with a certain practice. It was the same for Salamat, with his fascination for Sadarang’s (Ustad Niyamat Khan, 18^th century) compositions, who would often combine the same. Salamat always had been a master at fusing bandishes. The Persian lyrics to braj bhasa—all came together in the same bandish in his performances, as long as they were tied to the same raag. So he sang his Darbari, the royal raag, with this story about reflections, without ever directly mentioning the names of gods, interjecting Anokha Laadla with Ameer Khusrau’s (13^th/14^th century) Persian lyrics of Yaar-e-man biya effortlessly. This pervaded to the point that the bandish was adapted by respective Pakistani singers into ghazals and songs, like Bilqees Khanum (in the 1980s) and even contemporary Pakistani singers in their Coke Studio versions (as recent as 2016). The tragedy, however, is that several contemporary Pakistani singers admit that they find the lyrics of several Indian classical bandishes incomprehensible, even though they might have grown up with them and have listened to/performed them for long. The Indian side of the contemporary audience, on the other hand, rarely get the exposure to these songs, as restrictions about Pakistani performers continue to be manifold. The moon, therefore, remains unreachable on one side, while on the other side, the individuals continue to capture it in its reflection and continue to play with it. Salamat, however, continued to be one of the best players in this game. He appealed, undivided by borders.  In his prolific career, spanning over six decades, he received several prestigious awards, both nationally and internationally, including Tamġa-ē Ḥusn-e Kārkardagī (President’s Pride of Performance), the highest national award in the field of performing arts in Pakistan. He left behind him over a thousand disciples across the world, a majority of them in his two favourites—India and Pakistan.