Shubha Mudgal Offering Delicious Insights Into The Music World

Classical singer Shubha Mudgal turns fiction writer, offering delicious insights into the music world

- Mandira Nayar

Shubha Mudgal has found a voice after forty years as a classical musician of considerable repute. Looking For Miss Sargam, her collection of short stories, is her first performance. And Mudgal is pitch-perfect. Like her singing voice— deep, smoky, thrilling and memorable—her fictional one rings out loud and clear, filled with humour and warmth.

Mudgal, 60, lives in New Delhi, in a sunny, almost soundproof flat, with two dogs, 1,400 books and many tanpuras. Her flat is chaotic, if charming, with plants and sculptures by Radha Krishnan, one of her favourite artists. Her two dogs, Ringo and Nargis, run around wildly each time the doorbell rings. And it does so often. There is a brief lull when she sings in her room. “They are allowed in when I sing, but not when I teach,” she says with a smile. The dogs obediently sit by her feet as she strums the tanpura and sings for a bit.

“I am a recluse,’’ she admits. A compulsive book buyer, the books in her room—where she does her riyaaz—have now reached the roof. Mudgal uses a ladder to fetch books at the top. Yet, she still buys. And, she spends her day in devotion to music—listening, teaching, reading and singing. “Even past midnight. At least the room is now properly soundproofed,” she adds, with a laugh.