I had the fortune of meeting Pandit Ravi Shankar on several occasions—in college, as a student of Indian classical music, as a concert organiser and, later, as a journalist who occasionally writes on music. Though I grew up listening to his soulful strings, my first encounter with him was in the mid-’80s at a concert in Delhi’s Modern School. The rasik in me was quite disappointed. For his famed sitar was absent, Panditji sang for most of the concert. His young audience spontaneously sang along. However, for me it seemed a lost opportunity, not being able to listen to his sitar ‘live’.