The listeners sitting expectantly before Sharada are an invitation and a challenge to her creativity. That's how it is in Hindustani music. No score, only the notes of a raag as framework and songs of three or four lines set to rhythmic cycles of varying numbers of beats. The songs are skeletons on which Sharada will improvise flesh. At this moment she has no idea how big the song will grow. She will know only as the notes pour out of her in response to her musical ideas, the audience's involvement and even atmospheric features like light, air and how the audience is seated. She has years of practice and a few concerts behind her, but that is no guarantee that her singing today will soar. If it does, she will give deep but transient pleasure. The emotion she will pour into the words; the imagination that will prompt her play with notes, words and beat; and the musical ideas with which she will elaborate the theme will fill the air, then fade away. The audience might say of the concert later, ‘She sang well,’ or ‘She has a beautiful voice,’ but the details of her work will be lost.

If her music does not soar, the audience might be, at least partly, responsible. They must be alert, participate actively in the creation of the music with their informed responses, knowing that the music on that day, in that space, at that hour, is being created exclusively for and with them. Sharada looks for signs of pride in the body language of the audience that should come from knowledge and sensitivity.

The tanpuras are tuned. Sharada folds her hands and bows her head in humble greeting. She is dressed in a ruby-red silk sari. Her neck and ears are adorned with pearls. Her eyes shine.

Sharada closes her eyes again, silent for a few moments. The drone of the tanpuras fills the air. She slides her opening ‘sa’ imperceptibly into their ‘sa’. The two notes blend so perfectly that it is difficult to tell the instrument from the human voice. The opening notes tell the audience which raag she is presenting. ‘Poorvi,’ the murmur goes around. Recognizing a raag is like being on the road home to your village. Recognizing a song is like arriving there. Sharada has chosen to sing ‘Charan paarasat’. It is not a song often sung; but those who have heard it before know that the composition by the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya sets up a clever play between words and rhythm to deepen meaning and emotion. The fast-tempo composition that follows praises the beauteous form of Lord Ram. The Sufi and the anonymous Hindu poet, who have both poured their devotion into the mighty flow of Hindustani music, unite in Sharada's shimmering rendition.