Vilayat Khan had once told him, ‘Diya se hi diya jalta hai.’ A lamp can only be lit by another lamp. He was alluding to an important element of Indian classical music: it has no known beginning and no one knows when it changes along the way. When you listen to an artiste, you may hear elements and influences of past masters, sometimes decipherable, at other times less obvious. A single musician’s rendering is like a wave, individualistic and whole when it washes up, but dissolving into a larger ocean when it recedes.
