While this drama takes place, Sharada fills Janaki in on the details of the quarrel between guru and disciple. Ten years ago Kamaladevi was invited to sing in Gwalior at the Tansen Music Festival. She had declined the invitation on account of ill health. She had expected the organizers to press her to come despite ill health, offering to do everything in their power to make her comfortable, asserting that the festival would be no festival at all without her presence. But they had promptly accepted her regrets instead and invited Pandit Mishra to sing in her stead. This was logical given that he was her seniormost disciple and an established performer. But the mortified Kamaladevi accused him of having engineered the whole thing. When this came to Pandit Mishra’s ears on the ever-obliging grapevine, he retorted to the grapevine, ‘How could I have wangled Kamaladevi’s bad health and her consequent turning down of the invitation?’ Kamaladevi had had no answer to this riposte when it came back to her on the grapevine. She had exploded with anger.

After this exchange over the grapevine, a lot of gossip about Pandit Mishra’s private life had begun to circulate in the music world. Everybody knew where the stories were coming from. Some people licked their lips over the possibilities of the situation and got busy whispering nourishment into the ears of both parties till the rift became unbridgeable. Sharada concludes her tale with a sigh. ‘She’s come with some drama in mind, I’m sure.’

‘That’ll be manna from heaven for the piece I’ve been asked to write.’

Pandit Omkar Mishra walks on to the stage. Sumitraben must have warned him of who is in the front row, giving him time to prepare his strategy. Descending from the stage, he goes directly to Shivanand Swami, apparently seeing nothing else in the vicinity. He bows low to touch the Swami’s feet for his blessings and returns to the stage. He sits down in the lotus position and closes his eyes in meditation. His disciples enter and sit around him. A while later, Pandit Mishra opens his eyes and says in a voice that is touched by the ethereality of what is about to happen, ‘The music I’m going to present before you today has not come to me from my guru. I have dared to create it because my spiritual guru commanded me to. My inspiration and the words of my songs both come from the rich treasures of our ancient literature. Performing with me will be my young fellow seeker of the spiritual path and one of the foremost painters of his generation, Prakashanand. He has lived twenty monsoons less than me but the maturity of his work is astounding. My performance is with words and music, his is with paper and paints.’