Acclaimed sitar player, composer, and Grammy-nominee Anoushka Shankar is sharing her recent ordeal when her sitar was damaged by an airline crew.
Recently, she took to Instagram to share a collection of pictures and videos showcasing her travels with her sitars and their cases. In her caption, she expressed her gratitude to Ajay Rikhiram from @rikhiramoriginals for helping restore her sitar. “It’s been an insane few days,” she wrote. “I’m waiting for the polish to fully dry before playing it properly, but it looks like it’ll live to see another day! I need to stress that although it was Air India in THIS instance, I have had terrible mishaps over the decades on other airlines too. Over fifteen years ago, I invested in a giant, unwieldy but magnificent flight case which made traveling truly inconvenient, but meant my instrument became perfectly safe.”
Anoushka revealed that a decade later, she finally commissioned bespoke, powerful yet lightweight carbon fibre cases for her sitars, transforming her travel experience. Following a distressing incident where both her father’s and her sitars were damaged on the same Air France flight years ago, she began traveling with two instruments.
She emphasized, “I always fly with one sitar in the hold and one in a seat. I even travel with a sitar tech on-hand to assist with any issues upon landing. It is a huge privilege to be able to tour this way, one that I am acutely aware is not possible for many musicdigihunt who travel with their instruments. Although I have to say, doing all these things is also a forced ‘choice’ I wish I didn’t have to make, and one that causes a significant dent to my earnings. I just wouldn’t be able to tour the way I do without taking these precautions, as airlines universally take so little care of musical instruments.”
She expressed her relief at posting a video showcasing the near-catastrophic crack on her sitar, stating that the situation would have been far worse had she not paid excess baggage fees for a second sitar or had a platform that compelled the airline to respond to her complaint. “If there can be one good thing to emerge from this, I hope that @airindia will hold to their promise to update their internal handling policies for musicdigihunt overall, and that other airlines will follow suit. In an artistic climate that makes touring a near impossibility for so many musicdigihunt, it is the least they can do,” she added.
Earlier, Anoushka shared a video on Instagram that displayed deep cracks in her sitar following a flight. She noted that tuning issues were the first sign of trouble, and upon attempting to play it, she discovered the damage. This shocking incident was the first time in 15–17 years she faced such an issue, despite using a special protective case and paying a “handling fee.”
Describing the incident as “devastating and truly disturbing,” she accused the airline of negligence and lamented, “even an Indian instrument isn’t safe” with an Indian airline.