Travelling from her comfortable upper-class home to seedy Kennedy Bridge where Kulkarni lived as a paying guest in a tiny flat, Devidayal had to negotiate the complicated domains of the self and the world. Learning music meant confronting impetuous teenagerhood with maturity, waywardness with commitment, bonding with solitariness, success with failure.
This bildungsroman woven around music has many sterling qualities. The descriptions of Bombay localities are finely etched. Like many modern people who know the traditional arts well, there is an underlying didactic urge. Uninitiated readers are deftly introduced to the more esoteric practices of Hindustani music.
The memorable portraits enhanced suitably by fictive speech include that of the imperious and foul-mouthed Kesarbai. She apparently enjoyed a solitary cigarette before breakfast, once snubbed Indira Gandhi and forbade her only daughter to learn music because she did not want her to live the miserable low life of a courtesan.
There are a few typos and factual mistakes. Mallikarjun Mansur was not a Brahmin and religious enumeration did not begin with the 1931 Census. The late Sheila Dhar, whose luminous music memoirs are a model for this book, would have been delighted to read Devidayal’s account.
