Kudrat teri rang-birangee! Oh many-splendoured Creation! So went the bhajan Ustad Abdul Karim Khan sang before the saint Tajuddin Baba. The holy man, entranced by the song, clapped his hands and danced. Kumar Prasad Mukherji’s elegy to a vanishing age of musical giants comprises many such shared experiences between performer and audience, between recital and applause. It is his salute to a world receding into the shadows of history, peopled by ustads, pandits, ...
