The Music Room on the other hand, is a very different kind of biography. While at a very obvious and simple level, it is the story of a specific musician cum teacher, Dhondutai Kulkarni and her very special relationship with the author who became her disciple at the tender age of 11, it reveals a more complex and compelling narrative of individual musicians and patrons, who constituted the changing world of Hindustani classical music in the 20th century.

The circumstances in which the author herself came to learn music and how the experience intersected somewhat curiously with her social and socialising profile are very well drawn, and speak volumes for the changing social context of modern urban India.

The cameo like impressions that we get of Dhondutai s teacher, the legendary and mercurial Kesar Bai, are wonderful examples of the way a sensitive reading of anecdotes can help excavate what is ultimately a deeply layered and complex story of personal aspirations, disappointments and confusion enhanced by the enormous social changes that transformed the milieu of music performance in modern India.

The simplicity with which she records her own teacher s apparently Hindu sensibilities that preferred to see her guru Alladiya Khan as a Brahmin in disguise and at the same time her utter and complete devotion to him and his family speak eloquently of the limiting nature of modern categories associated with identity politics that have erased the infinite richness and depth of old and enduring social and artistic interactions.