A Monsoon Of Music

Four musicians: a bright, young, aspiring student, two highly respected gurus married to each other, and a globe-trotting star, each deeply immersed in the tradition of Hindustani Shastriya Sangeet. Their lives intersect in the small mofussil town of Tamulbari on the banks of the Brahmaputra. Against the backdrop of a magnificent musical heritage and the haunting and timeless ragas that sweep through the pages of this wonderfully evocative novel, Mitra Phukan presents the ambitious sitarist Kaushik Kashyap, already a ‘name’, who tours the world with his beautiful Italian student; Nomita, the shy, small-town vocalist, whom Kaushik’s parents have chosen for him; Nomita’s Guruma, the beautiful, calm Sandhya Senapati, and her husband, the handsome Tridib Barua, who seem to be hiding deep, dark secrets; and Guruma’s friendship with the well-known industrialist Deepak Rathod. As the eventful monsoon months give way to autumn, the characters come to a deeper understanding of themselves even as their lives change dramatically and forever. By turns serious, deeply moving and utterly irreverent, Mitra Phukan’s eye for detail, her immense knowledge of Hindustani music and her profound understanding of human nature come together in this remarkable novel.