For art's sake

Musicians often choose their path not out of choice, but from a persistent inner calling, a driving need for their being.

- NEHA KIRPAL

In her latest book, reputed Hindustani classical vocalist Priya Purushothaman traces the experiences of eight singular voices in Hindustani classical music that have deeply inspired her. As a musician, the journeys of these individuals reminded Ms Purushothaman of the hardships that artistes have endured purely for the sake of their art.

"Their stories, some heard and some unheard, form the contemporary landscape of this art," she writes in the book's Introduction.

During the pandemic, Ms Purushothaman felt an urgent need to document the inner stories of serious practitioners of music, many of whom are not in the limelight. Accordingly, she chose to include selected Hindustani musicians across a spectrum of ages in the collection.

"What a young artiste may lack in experience, they may compensate for in freshness of perspective," she explains. Each chapter in the book reads like a detailed biography, recounting incidents from the lives of the musicians. Ms Purushothaman devotes two chapters of the book to her own guru, Sudhindra Bhaumik, whose story was one of the first that motivated her to put together this collection.