The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan

Namita Devidayal

The classical musician Vilayat Khan had a layered personality: vivid, volatile, funny, as well as sensitive, meditative, and mindful. The journalist and author Namita Devidayal traces the ustad’s journey from Gowripur—now in Bangladesh—to Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay, Shimla, Dehradun, and Princeton, where he spent his final years. She chronicles his life, including the untimely death of his father, the extreme penury of his teenaged years and the peaks of his success in Bombay and across the world.

WESTLAND, 264 PAGES, Rs 699