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Post-partition Delhi's classical music scene was one big kitty party. Feudal patronage changed from ustads and tawaifs to a line of women from "respectable homes". Among the respectable women were Nirmala Joshi, Naina Devi and Sumitra Charatram. And then came Kapila Vatsyayan, Sharan Rani Mathur and Sheila Dhar. Vatsyayan went on to become a reputed scholar of aesthetics and philosophy. Mathur and Naina Devi emerged as performers of merit. Dhar was the least involved in the music scene but she was the most intellectually interesting, irreverent and articulate. The wife of an important adviser to former prime minister Indira Gandhi, she was a pleasant enough drawing-room singer.

THE COOKING OF MUSIC By Sheila Dhar Permanent Black Price: Rs 195 Pages: 114

But where Dhar excelled was in the subtle art of kissa-goyi (story-telling). A brilliant raconteur, she was sharp, witty and dazzling. To the westernised elite of that era, she was not only a source of many laughs but also a magical interpreter of an area of Indian tradition that they themselves were vaguely reverential about.

RANDOM NOTES: Dhar

As the title suggests, this is a truly delicious book. It is a random collection of stories, essays and two obituaries (the editorial reasons for their inclusion though is mystifying). However, much of what Dhar recounts is what she had collected from a variety of sources. While narrating a funny story (picked up from others) at a party can be taken as a continuance of our oral tradition, lifting whole musicological arguments and not attributing the source is a betrayal of the same. The essay, "Fear of Recording", came about after a series of conversations I had with her-some in public and some in private. The part about the transfer of musical memory from one generation to the next, including all the examples, especially came from me. Similarly, her hilarious take on Narayanrao Vyas's ode to Lady Linlithgow, I am told, comes from Kumar Mukherjee. Had Dhar been alive during the publication of this volume, perhaps she would have acknowledged her sources. As there seems to be some reluctance on the part of the editor to take the responsibility, it may also be mentioned that the pupil of Aman Ali of Bhendibazar gharana was Shiv Kumar Shukla not Shiv Kumar Sharma who is a santoor maestro.