Annapurna Devi

The goddess of the sitar who remained in the shadows...

A musician, brilliant and little known, a woman whose talent far surpassed her fame. Annapurna Devi, born on 3 April 1927 in Maihar, India, the first wife of Ravi Shankar, was more talented than her husband, who went on to become a global superstar of the sitar. Yet she never recorded and sacrificed her career.

Annapurna Devi, stage name of Roshanara Khan, is considered one of the greatest representatives of Indian music and an expert on traditional stringed instruments, the surbahar and the sitar.

Shy and modest, Annapurna was only 14 when she got married. She understood English but had difficulty speaking it. Her mother tongue was Bengali. Shankar, then 21, was more educated and spoke fluent English and French, as well as Bengali and Hindi.

His genius was universally recognised, but his death on 13 October 2018 in Mumbai (Bombay) did not cause a stir.

In 1972, the French press honoured the memory of her father, Ustad (or Baba) Allauddin Khan (1881–1972), a revered master of Indian classical music. Raga aficionados were also familiar with his brother, Ali Akbar Khan (1922-2009), a great sarod player. And the whole world celebrated his first husband, the great sitar player...

In the fraternity of Hindustani classical music, the genius of Annapurna Devi is part of a growing mythology. Daughter of the great Ustad Allauddin Khan, sister of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and divorced wife of Pandit Ravi Shankar in 1962, she is considered one of the greatest living exponents of the surbahar and sitar.

The tragedy is that his music is lost to the world.

Four decades ago, following issues of notoriety and fame with Ravi Shankar, accusing her ex-husband of being jealous of her natural talent for music and far surpassing him, she vowed never to perform in public or record discs and albums.

Since then, she has lived in near solitude, in the shadows, rarely leaving her residence in Mumbai.

She is 74 years old, but has never made a recording.

No one has seen her play for nearly 50 years, except for George Harrison, who, in the 1970s, had the rare opportunity to sit in her daily journal, after a special request from the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi.

Annapurna Devi's virtuosity is attested to by the achievements of her students, who include some of the country's greatest musicians – Nikhil Banerjee, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Nityan and Haldipur, Basant Kabra, Amit Bhattacharya and Amit Roy.