Despite her apprehensions, Mum and I did end up performing together once, in 1983, the night India won the World Cup. As the wild celebrations ran well into the night, a few Indian team members, including Ranjit Singh, ended up in our living room along with my father. One of those rare nights when everyone in my family was together without me even knowing it. Mum, my father, Veena Ma, Vihaan uncle and Avantika, who I met for the first time that night – all giddy with excitement.

It was the players who requested Mum to sing a sports anthem from one of her films, and she obliged, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to refuse the excited and victorious team members. Midway through the performance, Veena Ma urged me to get on the tabla, and soon enough, as more songs followed, the humble tabla sidekick morphed into a singer. My father, the ever so stoic royal leader of men, gave me a smile of approval. The last song sung by Mum that night was one that no one had heard of. It was from her upcoming album, Winds of Time, which she had been working on in New York. A devotional album that would go on to win a Grammy Award for ‘Best World Music Album’. It’s not lost on me that the Bollywood songstress went back to her devotional devadasi roots after all. ‘Hari om,’ the song, was more an intense meditation of the soul than a devotional piece, carrying, both the serenity of the classical inflection of Mum’s beautiful voice and a fierce cry for help to the omnipresent lord. It was an Indian win for the ages – a classical lesson in the millennia-old tradition – and all too much for me to resist. With that, the seeds of my fascination with India, and the history of my parents were sown.

But this is the story of India I know – an achievement is followed by a disaster. For all the highs of 1983, the lows were never too far. My father’s health deteriorated later in the decade. For all that adulation and success, someone must have cast an evil eye, Veena Ma would say. After years of ignoring the symptoms, he went for a thorough check-up in a narrow window his schedule afforded him, only to find out he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. As family traditions go, it was kept a secret.

In 1992, just as India opened up with economic liberalization, Mum decided to open up the vault of secrets that she had been carrying around like a stone in her heart every waking minute. Knowing that my father hadn’t much time left, she decided it was just too cruel to deprive me of the truth.

‘I am so sorry, Abhi!’

‘Ma, what are you saying?’