They say students of classical music practise for hours, and this must be true, because I had to. And I’d heard that classical singers begi...
They say students of classical music practise for hours, and this must be true, because I had to. And I’d heard that classical singers begin at the age of six or seven (since the mythology is romantic, the age decreases, and the number of hours goes up); I felt inwardly at a disadvantage, like a person who’s moved to a new country, tries to learn a new language, then write a novel in it, while other novelists there have of course known the language since they were born.
My good fortune wasn’t my talent (if I had any), but my parents. Despite misgivings, they stood by my idiosyncratic impulses. Part of my mother’s doubts about me taking on Hindustani classical music was her knowledge of the effort involved, and her extreme concerns about my health.
I’d had a congenital heart condition detected when I was three years old. In 1979, I went to America for the first time, where I was seen by a cardiologist in San Diego, where my cousin lived. He, unlike the doctors in Bombay I’d been seeing regularly for fourteen years, said I didn’t need to be operated on till I was much older. My parents relaxed with...
