Zarin Daruwala Sharma | Guftagoo with Irfan

A 2014 recording.
Zareen Daruwala was born on 9 October 1946. She was a child prodigy and a celebrated sarod player of India.
Zarin had been known for her on-stage performances besides her trysts with the film studios in the tinsel city. She had been a pioneering female hand to play the sarod, a stringed instrument believed to have been an Indian adaptation of central Asia’s rabab. If its feature of having no frets makee many believe that sarod is tough to play, Zarin’s religion made her entry into north Indian classical look as someone all the more alien: ‘that Parsi girl’, as many referred to her initially.
Zarin was barely into her teens when she played for the title music for the 1960 movie Maasoom, though her steadier engagement with Bollywood began only by the middle of that decade. Her work in the studios also gifted the musician her future husband: sitarist Ashok Sharma.
Zarine Sharma, once a child prodigy, had kickstarted her career at the age of 4 on the harmonium. She was trained by Manohar Chimote, Bhishmadev Vedi and P Madhukar; all renowned harmonium players.
She was enthralled by the sound of the great Ali Akbar Khan’s sarod when she was all of six. “In 1952, I had gone to perform my harmonium solo recital at the ‘Sur Singar Sansad’ which would have its Haridas Sangeet Sammelan at the Cowasjee Jehangir Hall.After my performance was over, I listened to other musicians. The evening concluded with a sitar-sarod jugalbandi by Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. I was unaware what the instruments were called, but I was irresistibly drawn to the sound of the sarod,” recalls Sharma.Having begun her career in films with Rajesh Roshan in 1964, Sharma has embellished songs like Mere naina saawan bhaado and Naam gum jaayega with her Sarod strains.While her training with vocalists like Laxmanprasad Jaipurwale and violinists V G Jog, S N Ratnajankar and SCR Bhatt gave her insights into ragas, she mastered the technique of sarod-paying from Haripad Ghosh. “I have always learned with a sense of determination. I remember Jaipurwale humming a tappa once.I requested him to teach me the form. He thought it was not possible to reproduce the difficult patterns on the sarod. After rigorous practice, I could do that,” she says.Sharma performs her tappas with effortless ease on the Sarod and has fashioned her own style a fascinating marriage of gayaki and tant styles
She was trained by several eminent musicians like Pandit Haripad Ghosh, Pandit Bhishamdev Vedi, Khayal vocalist Pandit Laxman Prasad Jasperware (doyen of Jaipur & Goswami Gharana) , violinist Pandit V.G. Jog (1922-2004) and Pandit Shrikrishna Narayan Ratanjankar (1900-1974) of Agra Gharana.One of the very few female Sarod players represented on highest level the Hindustani vocal style Agra Gharana.
She became Zareen Sharma after she married the famous sitarist Pandit Ashok Sharma (youngest son of Bhagatram, the famous Husnalal-Bhagatram film music duo).As a musician of the top order she received several honours including Sangeet Natak Academy Award in 1988 and Maharashtra Gaurav Puraskar in 1990.
Zarin Daruwala passed away on 20 December 2014 in Mumbai.
Anchor-Producer: Irfan
Camera: Anirban Sadhu
Editing: Abaan