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Published on Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 10.24

The book had been percolating in my head for years,

waiting for an opportunity to be ‘outed’ as it were! Since it is a memoir about my journey into the world of Indian classical music, a lot of the material was drawn from my memory bank and the time I spent with my music teacher Dhondutai.

I wasn’t really thinking about the reader when writing. But I knew that I was writing for someone who had little or no exposure to this enchanting musical universe — so it could be a western reader, or a ‘firangi’ Indian who has grown up looking down on tradition. I wanted to bring alive this world that has, regrettably, been viewed as arcane, inaccessible, esoteric. I wanted to give it a human face.

“The Music Room” is about many different things. On one level it is a coming-of-age book about a little girl who is sent for music classes and how she grapples with the embarrassment of living in two worlds — her south Mumbai western elite world and her traditional musical world; on another level it is about the extraordinarily difficult life of a woman artiste, especially during the early and mid-twentieth century. Above all else, it is the story of music — the kind of pain and sacrifice that goes into its creation, and the kind of joy it can bring about, an experience closest to spirituality. It is the story of three great musicians whose paths would never have crossed because they each came from such different social backgrounds — (Muslim court musician, ‘bai’ singing girl, and Brahmin girl) – were it not for music, the great binder. In some ways, this is a story of India, and how modern coexists — and collides — with tradition, and what gets lost and gained in the process.

As I went back into my childhood experiences and wrote about the unconditional devotion of my teacher, the dogged persistence of my mother and, above all, the special quality of this music and all the characters it brings with it, I think for the first time, I began to realize how blessed I was to have been taken into that world. Until then, I suspect I took it for granted.

The protagonist, my teacher Dhondutai Kulkarni, has had a very deep impact on my life, perhaps a lot of it not even entirely obvious to me. While we occupy dramatically opposing worlds—she is a purist, completely traditional and devoted to music, and I am dilettante, modern, westernized—we have a funny sort of connection which goes well beyond music. That is what keeps me coming back to her, year after year, for the last 30 years. I think I identify with her on a deeper spiritual level.

My friends sometimes ask me what it is that makes me such a calm, collected person. And after reading the book, they all say it is because of this music that seeped into my being from the time I was so young, and because of my teacher, who gave me so many spiritual nuggets of wisdom along the way! So I have learned to appreciate and value these things even more since I wrote the book.

I think there is very little good narrative non-fiction coming out of India, so the success of The Music Room makes it clear that there is room for a lot more. The publishing industry is really coming of age and, I think, looking for new voices.
My publisher Chiki Sarkar was a tremendous force behind the book and really made to happen. She really treated it with thought and care, not as if it were just another book in her portfolio. The most significant thing she did, apart from the final edit, was to conceptualise the beautiful cover, which I think has gone a long way in attracting people to the book. Also, she created a memorable email trailer which was, I believe, the first of its kind in the book business in India.


	Namita Devidayal was born in 1968 and graduated from Princeton University. She is a journalist with The Times of India and lives in Mumbai. This is her first book.