I was born in a family of musical illiterates, and had I not fallen in with a group of Bengalis at St Stephen's College I might never have developed a taste for our shastriya sangeet myself. My friends took me to hear Mallikarjun Mansur and Bhimsen Joshi sing at Kamani Auditorium, and to a memorable Ali Akbar-Ravi Shankar jugalbandi in the grounds of the Modern School. They also introduced me to the Saturday night National Programme on All India Radio, which I began to record on the first casette player I owned.

From Delhi I went to Calcutta for a doctorate, where my musical education continued. In my institute's campus in Joka, I listened to AIR, and from time to time made the long journey to the city to hear live concerts. Two great (and greatly underrated) maestros were based in Calcutta, and they became particular favourites of mine. These were the sarodiya, Buddhadev Dasgupta, and the vocalist, Nissar Hussain Khan of the Rampur gharana.

In 1986, I went to the United States of America to teach for a year, taking my collection of casettes with me. One of my students knew more, much more, about our classical music than his teacher, and outside class I willingly put myself in his hands. His name was Jeff Campbell. The child and grandchild of American missionaries, Jeff had grown up in Mussoorie, and played the bansuri. One day he called me over to listen to a recording of the great flautist, Pannalal Ghosh, playing Raga Yaman. As the gat began, he urged me to notice the sound of the tabla, playing all too softly in the background. That is how the tabalchi should be, said Jeff Campbell - an accompaniment to the main artist. Jeff had no time for the new, flamboyant, style of tabla playing, pioneered by the charismatic Zakir Hussain, which competed with the main artist for attention. Under my student's tutelage, I began to appreciate the classical restraint of past times, when the tabalchi understood that it was the flautist or the sitar player or the vocalist who was the real star.

I returned to India, to a position in a research institute in Delhi. Some years later, Jeff Campbell got a job in Delhi too. We renewed our friendship. One day he called to ask whether I would come with him for a series of concerts to be held in Pragati Maidan. Jeff had got hold of the programme; he said that while he did not recognize the names of the artists, several ended with 'kar', a happy augury in music as it was in cricket (Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Manjrekar, Vengsarkar and so on).

Jeff read out the list of performers to me. The names, suffix-wise, seemed promising. So, for one whole week, my student-turned-teacher would pick me up every evening en route to Pragati Maidan, where we heard a succession of 'kars', including Shruti Sadolikar, Padma Talwalkar, Aarti Ankalikar Tikekar, and Ulhas Kashalkar. All were then young, in their late twenties or early thirties, and all very accomplished (as we both had expected them to be). The kar Jeff (and I) liked best was the last-named. In later years I heard him often, live or on CD, and he became (with Mallikarjun, Bhimsen, Kumar Gandharva, Basavaraj Rajguru and Kishori Amonkar, all gone) my favourite living vocalist. I acquired a fairly large collection of his CDs, which my son later put on my iPod. I listened to these often, at home, and on long flights, when Kashalkar's Shuddh Nat and Basanti Kedar were the most splendid antidote to the weariness induced by spending many hours at 35,000 feet in the air.

In the year 2010 (or thereabouts) I was at the India International Centre, in New Delhi. Checking in next to me was Ulhas Kashalkar. When I heard him sing at Pragati Maidan back in the early 1990s, his hair was jet black. Now it was white, maturing as his music itself had. Standing next to Kashalkar at that check-in counter, I felt as I had when I was fifteen, and had just seen Tiger Pataudi or Bishan Bedi for the first time in the flesh. Back then I would have rushed to my hero, and gushed out some or many words of praise, and demanded an autograph. But I was now fifty, not fifteen, and this was not a cricketer, but a musician, a classical musician. He probably had a concert on that evening. I could not, must not, disturb him. So I quietly, silently, signed in and went up to my room. And so, I suppose, did he.

Some years later, back in Bangalore, I heard that Ulhas Kashalkar was to sing at the Chowdiah auditorium that evening. I went, of course. Back in my student days I could afford only back row seats in this very large hall. As I grew older I nudged towards the middle. As I grew even older, I would wait till the hall filled up, then occupy a vacant seat in the corner of the second or third row. If an usher asked for my ticket, I would say "Press! Press" (an Aswathama-the-elephant sort of lie, since although I wrote in the press it was never about music).

By the time of this concert, however, I did not need to resort to this deceit. I was by now well known enough in my home town to occupy as of right a seat in the front row, the one next to the aisle for choice. That is where I sat for this particular Kashalkar concert, held in the Chowdiah Hall in the month of June 2016.

The evening was organized by Sapthak, a music circle whose founder, G.S. Hegde, was himself the husband and father of classical vocalists. A junior artist sang and went away, but the interval was longer than usual. Kashalkar and his accompanists were eventually called on stage, where they sat for several minutes, while Hegde ji would not give the go-ahead. The problem was that an authentic and all-purpose VVIP (probably a minister) had been invited to do the honours, and this fellow would not turn up. Hegdeji eventually tired of waiting, and asked me (sitting prominently in the front row) to offer salutations to the artists instead. So I did, bowing respectfully to the tabalchi, the harmonium player, and, above all, to the main vocalist. No words were exchanged. No words were needed.

The concert was superb. Kashalkar sang a fine Bhoop and an even better Kamod. I went home, utterly content. A day or two later, a mail arrived from G.S. Hegde, with some photographs attached. One was of me bowing before Kashalkar while handing him a bouquet of flowers. I sent this photo to my friend Sumana Ramanan, a musicologist who had herself written knowledgeably about this artist's art, with the caption: "The absolute highlight of my life and career as a (not very knowledgeable but seriously sincere) lover of music." And so it was.

ramachandraguha@yahoo.in