The Doyen of Urdu ghazals
July 05,2015, THE HANS INDIA Vithal Rao For more than seven decades, one voice brought laurels to the city of the Nizams. People knew this voice by the name Vithal Rao. Born in Hyderabad to a poor family, Vithal Rao started singing from a young age. He was a part of courtly gatherings and later, he garnered accolades for teaching ghazals to his disciples. Many of his students now carry his legacy in Hyderabad and across India. This artiste dedicated all his life to ghazal singing. However, irony is, the honour he should have received in the music world, he did not get. Yet, he relentlessly continued singing, and till date he has many followers. His death in recent past has brought a wave of grief among the music aficionados. In 2009, I spoke with him for three hours at his residence in Hindi Nagar. I was searching for anecdotes of prominent personalities of old Hyderabad. Over to Vithal Rao I was born in the year 1930 (according to records, 1931) in a