In the early 20th century, when classical music lovers attended concerts, they saw magic. But music scholar Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860-1936) saw a yawning gap. Until that point, Hindustani classical music was an oral tradition, passed down from teacher to pupil, as Chinese whispers in the air. A trained lawyer, Bhatkhande understood that everything needed to be on paper. He travelled across the country, to musically-rich centres of Gwalior, Jaipur, Baroda, Lucknow and Madras, and corralled bandishes. He studied ancient texts and "documented and analysed" performing traditions. As ustads and pandits sang the notes of a raga, he took copious notes.

His life's work resulted in the four-part series, Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati, the first modern treatise on Hindustani classical music, which looked at the science behind the art. According to Ramdas Bhatkal, the 84-year-old founder of Popular Prakashan, who took up singing as a 50-year-old, and will be presenting a lec-dem on Bhatkhande at the NCPA, he did a lot more than that. Bhatkhande laid the seed for democratising Hindustani classical music, much in the way his peers, the freedom fighters, were laying the seed for democratising Hindustan. Bhatkal says, "I think Bhatkhande tried to make gharanas comparatively irrelevant. In his big tome, he doesn't talk about gharana; he talks about ragas, thaats and singing. Gharanas are restrictive and repetitive. They were probably necessary at one point of time as they preserved a lot [of traditions]. But, that was not the approach of Bhatkhande and his followers."