The words had me hooked.  Great music and great food always seemed to go together in this world,  Namita Devidayal writes in her new book on sitarist Vilayat Khan. I am greatly fond of his music and was flipping through the pages of the book when I came across a little nugget linking food with music.

So, of course, I had to read on. The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan is not just about the life and times of the great exponent of the Imdadkhani gharana, it also contains a great many delightful examples of food melding with music.

I got to know how Khan would go to Juhu in Mumbai for bhutta and bhel and how every Ramzan he would go to Saharanpur, Etawah or Kolkata — places where he had roots and family — and feed the poor his favourite sweet chicken pulao and mutton kofta biryani.

Songs for keema paratha

As a young man, Khan and his contemporaries eagerly listened as their seniors ate and chatted in a radio station.  One or the other of the ustads would bring kababs and parathas for all to share,  Devidayal writes.

One day, Khan mustered the courage to ask a senior vocalist if he could learn 10 compositions from him. The senior musician laughed.  Why 10? Take 100, mashallah. But in return you have to bring as many keema-parathas for us to share tomorrow, he replied.

Once, an income tax official visited Khan, to ask him about his earnings. Khan invited him to lunch — chicken curry, mutton korma and three kinds of vegetable dishes. After the meal, the sitarist said to the official, “Income tax? But what income are you referring to, sahib? I am a mere musician… Let me play for you, though.

 He did. A happy little piece in raga Bihari which he had composed for Satyajit Ray s Jalsaghar some years earlier. The income tax official sat quietly. When the music was over, he left with a quick goodbye, never to return,  Devidayal writes.

His children recall how he regaled them with travel stories, relating how, on his 40th birthday, King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan took him to Karez-e-Mir in the Hindukush mountains, where the king had a smaller palace.  There he told the cooks to get 40 different exotic pulaos and ensured that I tasted each of them, Khan narrated to them.

But the food stories I loved the most were about two other great musicians.

Hariprasad Chaurasia was performing in the U.S. Vilayat Khan sent his son, Hidayat, to invite Panditji to dinner, and to inform him that the sitarist had cooked partridge curry for the flautist.

Chaurasia wrapped up the concert in record time, muttering that he wasn t feeling too well.  At the house, he changed into a chequered lungi and the two musicians ate and laughed late into the night.

The other story was about tabla maestro Samta Prasad. During a trip to Russia, he swallowed a bowl of caviar, thinking it was boondi,  and then was so disgusted with the taste that he spat it out right there on his plate,  Khan told a gathering.  What rubbish food these people eat, bhaiyya,  the tabla player said, digging into an enormous pile of dal and rice and cauliflower cooked exactly to his liking.  Russia for me was berasiya, he said. Not the book, though.

The writer likes reading and writing about food as much as he does cooking and eating it. Well, almost.