"Here's Someone I'd Like You to Meet"

the long version

In this book, Sheila Dhar sketches some of the personalities and events that coloured her life. She describes the sprawling joint family home of her formative years with its musical ambience and complex interrelationships, illuminating for the reader the now all but vanished life style of the Mathur Kayasthas of Delhi in the nineteen forties and fifties. She also gives an insider's view of the world of Indian musicians which she knew closely and strove to enter, and draws some extraordinary portraits of people in other spheres as well. The author shows us the eccentricities of individuals without malice, and their virtues with a good deal of enthusiasm. Some of the people she writes about are famous, and some are not. But each is treated as an entity of great value, worthy of the most detailed attention. There is material here to interest the sociologist, the historian and the musicologist, and her style makes reading an experience of pure pleasure for the general reader as well.