10 interesting facts about Pandit Ravi Shankar

New Delhi, Dec 12: India's best musician Pandit Ravi Shankar had a huge career span of nearly 70 years. He was a brand ambassador for Indian art, culture and music in the West. Few people know that Saare Jahan Se Accha Hindostan Hamara, penned by Allama Iqbal, was given the tune by Ravi Shankar during the British days. Here are 10 interesting facts about his life: 1. His real name is Robindro Shounkor Chowdhury and he belongs to Bengali Brahmin family. 2. Pandit Ravi Shankar started his career as a dancer, at the age of 10. But his life completey changed when he met Ustad Allauddin Khan. He gave up dancing and started learning sitar. 3. He won three Grammy awards in his long illustrious career. 4. He had an an affair with Sue Jones, a New York concert producer, which led to the birth of Norah Jones in 1979. Jones became a successful musician, winning eight Grammy Awards in 2003. 5.Anoushka Shankar, is the lovechild of sitarist Ravi Shankar. But later he married his mother Sukanya in 1989. 6. He last performed in California on November 4 along with his daughter Anoushka Shankar. 7. He was awarded the three top Indian national civil honours - Padma Bhushan in 1967, Padma Vibhushan in 1981, and Bharat Ratna in 1999. 8. When Mahatma Gandhi's died , Ravi Shankar, then in All India Radio had to play mournful music on the national radio broadcaster. Drawing from the name Gandhi, he took the three sargam notes that approximate it—“Ga” (third), “Ni” (seventh) and “Dha” (sixth)—and developed a new melodic theme. He called this new raga Mohankauns, since it was similar to raga Malkauns. He later used the same raga as a refrain in his score for Richard Attenborough's Gandhi. 9. A Magsaysay award winner, Shankar was nominated as a member of the Rajya Sabha in 1986. The song Sare Jahan se Achha Hindostan Hamara was set to tune by Ravi Shankar. Written by Muhammad Iqbal in 1904, it had a more drawn-out tune until Shankar was asked to reset it in 1945. Most people are unaware of this, including HMV, which attributes the tune as “traditional” in an album featuring patriotic songs by Lata Mangeshkar. 10. He had become the leading international emissary for Indian music between 1950s and the mid-1960s. He regretted for performing at Woodstock. He had a bad experience where the stoned audience reminded him of “the water buffaloes you see in India, submerged in the mud”. After that incident , he stopped performing in the US for a year and a half.