From age zero to five, I lived with my parents in Saudi Arabia. We moved there from Bombay the year that I was conceived, first as an idea in my sister’s head, then carefully forged by my parents. Fragmented memories of my time there as a toddler remain uncolored by the strong feelings I later developed for the life my mother lead there, a life of being swathed in black and exchanging liberty and independence for family and financial security. There wasn’t much to do in the way of entertainment, and over the weekends my father would frequently take us all on long drives cross-country that sometimes lasted several days. Outside the window of our Datsun were miles of endless desert, shifting dunes sometimes peppered with camels and rarely, the camps of Bedouins. Inside the bubble of the car I remember the comfort of my mothers soft hair, cool AC air, and who I later learned were Olivia Newton John and Madonna on auto-replay.

On our annual visits to India I was terrified by the crowdedness of everything. We rode in odd suitcases called autorickshaws, everyone far too close to everyone else. It felt bad enough that I was dealing with a host of unfamiliar interactions - opening the door for the postman/ milkman/ electrician/ newspaperman, getting to know all my kind and loving relatives - and I wondered as I watched my cousins belong to Bombay and to each other whether one day I would too. It was in the background of this mayhem that I first listened to Khayal, noisy at first when slow and noisier later when it got fast. I dismissed it without pause.

Many of the things that make Khayal a rapturous, spiritual experience for afficionados also make it hard to listen to for the unexposed or westernized ear. It has a steep learning curve, one that the majority of its audience are not even aware of, learning as by osmosis within a subculture in which this music permeates through their lives. Musical structure is heavily rule based, and the methodical improvisation that characterizes most performances is only appreciated with at least some knowledge of the rules. In this way, the genre is a sport, with discerning audience members according points via verbal affirmations like “wah wah” (wow!), “kya baat hai” (what a thing you just did!) and “shabash!” (bravo!) when a musician executes a musical phrase that is pleasing but that also works within the framework of the rules. The scales used often contain notes and transitions that are either rarely or never used in Western music, making them sound weird or wrong to some people.

I began studying Khayal seriously about five years ago, as a way to remain connected to a friend who loved the genre and who I was in the process of losing to cancer. Struggling to understand, then appreciate and ultimately love this music has been a slow and extremely rewarding process.