‘Not just that. I also thought that Carnatic musicians don’t adhere to rules of time and season. The Carnatic system and the Hindustani system have emerged from the same source. We have borrowed several raags from one another. When I attend Carnatic music concerts, I do not suffer loss of enjoyment because a raag has been sung out of its time or season. We too have made compromises with time rules.’

‘We have? Compromises?’

‘We don’t have too many night-long concerts because people don’t have the time. So we sing raags meant to be sung in the middle of the night much earlier. If we’ve stopped associating raags rigidly with sunrise and sunset for practical reasons, it shouldn’t matter greatly if one sings a raag that is right for the mood and the meaning of a song, at a time that is deemed wrong.’

‘Did you place this thought before the audience?’

‘No.’

‘So how did they respond to this innovation of yours?’

‘It did not go down well with their listening habits.’

‘Their listening habits? Or their faith in the rightness of tradition?’

Sharada says nothing to that. But to herself she says, people who once listened exclusively to dhrupad began to enjoy the khayal when they got used to it. Dhrupad was once tradition. Khayal was the innovation. If only some historian had recorded the stages by which that transition was made and received, we would not be arguing about this now.

She does not know how Guruji has interpreted her silence. After a while, he says quietly, ‘You are a free person, free to do what you wish. We live in the age of individual freedom. But if you want to continue with such experiments, please do me the favour of not naming me as your guru.’

He says this and rises. Madhavrao and Sharada also rise instantly. ‘I have to go out for a while now,’ he says. Madhavrao and Sharada glance at each other. Guruji never goes out, although several uncles, aunts, cousins and others from his huge extended family live in the city. He stopped visiting his relatives after his wife died. So when he says he has to go out, he is saying to them, please leave. Guruji's parting line is: ‘Give a thought to what I have said and make up your mind. You need not come here till you’ve decided which way to go.’