Your music reflects a free flow of divine feeling. Some listeners say that they feel a sort of stirring of God in them when they listen to your music. How do you create this sublime effect on the mind of the audience?
When you visit a temple, and stand in front of the deity, some inexplicable power takes hold of you. Indian classical music is of meditative type. If you take your music as a form of prayer and surrender yourself wholeheartedly to it, some sort of miracle takes place. You completely forget your own self, and so does the audience. I believe that if your performance is stunt-free, you always reach out to the heart of the audience.
Proficiency in any medium of self-expression, be it painting, writing, or music, demands unremitting toil, both physical and mental. Could you recall the days when you were an artist in the making?
I never, during my formative years, dreamt of success. Learning and practice, learning and practice that is what I did for years on end. I fed my imagination on the composition selected by my Guru. I lived with my instrument day and night. Along with rigorous practice, one has to curb one’s tendency to show off right from the start. I saw to it that my first love did not suffer for it.