It is a weekday and Rahra Sarai in Banaras is buzzing. No sooner than you step away from the main road and into one of the many lanes that make up this busy marketplace, you are swept ahead by a human current. (The autos stop a good feet or two away.) No two full-grown adults can walk side by side in these lanes, and yet bikes vroom past you making you jump out of your skin and laidback hawkers display their wares - glass bangles, kurtis, multicoloured fezes - as if it were Champs-Elysées.

There is no signage, none whatsoever, to tell you that at the end of this utterly commonplace trek through a regular Indian bazaar lies a royal abode. The home of Ustad Bismillah Khan - the undisputed badshah of shehnai.

This is the birth centenary of Ustad ji, and a decade since his passing, but here in his hometown there are no signs of the great man or his music.

The main entrance to the two-storey house where Ustad ji lived and died is wide open. Nazeem Khan, a lean, swarthy man in his late 50s, ushers us inside. He is Ustadji's youngest son. A group of boys, sons of another brother, wrestle each other on a broken sofa in the living room. Nazeem leads us past them and up the stairs to a room on the second floor.

This is where Ustad ji composed his music - a small room with sunlight streaming in from two windows on either side. All that it holds are a stringed cot, an old trunk and three paintings. On the floor, below the bed, is a spittoon, a bedpan, a pair of shoes and a pair of slippers. On the cot rest three framed awards - the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan and the Bharat Ratna. What about the Padma Vibhushan? Nazeem looks blank. "It has gone for repair," mumbles a 12-year-old and runs away.

Ustad ji had five sons and four daughters of whom only four had some kind of a musical bent. Nazeem used to play the tabla. His brothers Mehtab, Nayyar (both dead) and Zaamin played the shehnai. Kazim, the only non-musical one, looked after their father's finances. You get a whiff of soured family ties and steer the conversation firmly shehnaiwards.

Does no one in the family play the shehnai anymore? "Zaamin's son Afaq has shown an interest," says Nazeem. "Nayyar would sit to the left of Abbajaan (at concerts), but he is gone. In the last 10 years, anyone and everyone who played with Abbajaan left us. There must be a majlis there," he adds, pointing heavenwards.

It is not only Ustad ji's gharana that is at stake. Orphaned by Ustadji's death, in the absence of any kind of patronage, the shehnai seems to have fallen by the roadside.

"Baba did not have any disciples. Other than his own sons he never really taught his music to anyone else," says Soma Ghosh, the accomplished classical vocalist, whom Ustad ji referred to as his daughter. "His music was as natural and graceful as the Ganga. But he felt he would not be able to impart that knowledge in its entirety."

Amitabha Bhattacharyya, a journalist and an expert on Banaras, tells the tale of the making of Ustad Bismillah Khan with authority and sensitivity. "In eastern UP and western Bihar there was a strong presence of mangal vadya - shehnai, nagada, dhol, etc. - at Hindu weddings. These instruments - as per the feudal arrangement - were played by the lower castes. Ustadji belonged to one such family."

Around the 1920s, when Ustad ji took to the stage formally, the shehnai had a peculiar status in the world of music. Shehnai players were paid to walk ahead of the bridal procession or they would be seated in the naubat khana (the raised platform at the entrance to the wedding venue) or on a mat on the wedding grounds or on the roshan chowki, a level below the main stage. "It is Ustadji who gave shehnai a central place in the music world, quite literally. But today, DJs have replaced shehnai vadaks," says Bhattacharyya.

According to him, Ustad ji learnt by listening to others. "Sitting in the sanctum sanctorum of Banaras's kothabaris with sazindas (accompanists), he would play to an invisible audience. And this is why he would often say that he was not a classical musician in the strictest sense of the term."

Badrinath Mishra is the dean of faculty of performing arts, Banaras Hindu University. He says, "It's a vicious cycle. No one wants to learn the shehnai, so there are no shehnai experts anymore. And because there are no experts even those who want to learn, cannot. A permanent vacancy has been created after Ustad ji's death."

Shehnai maestro Nandalal Mishra was a few years senior to Ustad ji. His son, Ramshankar Mishra played the shehnai on radio. But his grandson, Atul, has opted for the flute.

Alarmed by this musical ennui, the state government has floated an initiative called Subah-e-Benaras. Every day since 2014, musicians gather at the Assi Ghat at the crack of dawn. The programme starts with vedic chanting and Ganga aarti and culminates with a musical recital - sitar, sarod, shehnai... "No artiste has been repeated. On at least 50 occasions we have hosted shehnai players, but there were very few from Banaras," says Ajay Mishra, one of the organisers.

Ghosh is herself in talks with the central cultural department, the BHU and the district magistrate to start a residential training centre for classical music. She wants to call it Surgram.

In a separate effort by the ministry of culture, information centres on different literary and cultural exponents (from the city) have been set up across 32 schools and colleges in Banaras. The information centre on Ustad ji is at Sanatan Dharma Valika Vidyalaya. Says the principal, Harendra Kumar, "We have a dedicated shehnai teacher, but to date we don't have any students."

Just behind Rahra Sarai, a stone's throw from Ustad ji's house, lies Dalmandi. Bharat Band is a shop here. Its founder, Safi, used to make shehnais for Ustadji. Safi is no more. His eldest son, Mehboob, runs the shop now with his brother Maqsood. He says, "Even 10 years back we would sell one or two shehnais every day, but now there are hardly any buyers. The occasional order is from filmmakers in Mumbai." And the next generation?

"They have opened a tailoring shop," says Maqsood.