I met him and heard him again in the year 1945. In the intervening period, he had been groomed with care by his illustrious father, the late Ustad Allaudin Khan. Although the sarod has always been his forte, Ali Akbar learnt to play various instruments in different styles - dhrupad, dhamar and khayal - from his father, and the percussion instruments pakhawaj and tabla from his uncle. He was made to practise for a gruelling 15 to 18 hours every day during his training period. No wonder that in due course he attained the status of an Ustad and emerged a shining and expertly chiselled model musician of world fame.

After the death of his patron the Maharaja of Jodhpur in an air crash, Ali Akbar set out to discover new horizons and bring more people under the spell of his music. Even today he is a globe-trotter, carrying the blazing torch of Indian classical music to distant lands. He has founded colleges to teach Indian music in Japan, Canada and the U.S.A. During my visit to the U.S.A. in 1977 he invited me to give a lecture demonstration in his college of music, at San Rafael in California. For me it was a revealing experience. The audience that evening consisted of his American students, one of whom provided me with very competent accompaniment on the harmonium. The entire group listened to my discourse and demonstration with appreciation and knowledgeable interest.

Although he has not had any formal academic education, by virtue of having lived in developed Western countries Ali Akbar Khan has a very progessive and broad outlook. In the year 1958, he gave me his wholehearted cooperation in conducting experiments to determine the moods of different ragas.

The notes of a raga have a character peculiar to itself. While expounding a melody through the skilful manipulation of these notes, a performer paints before his listeners an attractive musical picture of the raga, and during the development carries them through an emotional experience in keeping with the mood of that particular raga.

Experts in the art of drawing and painting have also attemptcd pictorial representations of ragas. These paintings are mostly in miniature and are to be found displayed in art museums in the big cities of India. They are in varied style - most prominent being the Rajput, the Mughal and the Bengali styles. In various books written on Indian music both by foreigners and Indians, these miniatures are displayed to enrich the attraction of the book with their attractive colours and interesting thematic character. Usually there is, at the top or bottom of the painting, an ancient Sanskrit or Hindi couplet describing the raga.

It is interesting to observe that in all these paintings by artists in different places, at different periods and in different styles, the subject and objects are almost the same. Usually the young maiden - lovelorn - is depicted in a garden in full bloom, in company with a parrot or peacock, a cow or a deer. Occasionally she is with a youth - her lover- or a female companion. These are painted in a riot of colours, mostly green, yellow, blue and red. There is no expression on the face of the maiden and one has to visualize and imagine her mental condition by reading the couplet and from the established conventions about the mood attached to the raga. Even if there is a change in the couplet or in the picture it would not be noticed nor would it affect the artistic merit of the picture. I felt that all these paintings were results of the artists' imaginations and had little to do with the notes or moods of the ragas. I was therefore eager to find out if there was any corelation between 'line and colour' on the one hand and 'music' on the other.

To arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, it was necessary to conduct an experiment. I therefore invited a galaxy of painters of nationwide and international repute to our studios one night. I explained to them individually the purpose of the get-together and I brought Ustad Ali Akbar to perform for the experiment.

To be continued

Excerpts from Down Memory Lane by G.N. Joshi.