He is a reservoir of knowledge. Much of this sharing comes in the form of theoretical and particle underpinnings of music.
Time is ripe to honour the stalwart, Pandit Vidyadhar N Vyas, 75, a living legend of the Gwalior gharana, given his sonorous compositions.
And through a commemorative event, Amrit Mahotsav, he will showcase his Hindustani vocal virtuosity.
What you hear him sing is just the tip of the iceberg, he believes and says that to comprehend music, you must investigate what lies in its depths.
“You must understand where a musical genre sprouted, under what circumstances it was incubated, and how it thrived,” says Vyas, who committed himself to these contemplations fairly early on in life.
Having said that, music was never a matter of compulsion for him. It was a choice he made after significant calculation.
His father, the celebrated Pandit Narayanrao Vyas, wanted his son to follow his footsteps but never forced him to.
Vyas, on the other hand, respected his father greatly but didn’t show a keen interest in learning music until his grades in BA didn’t live up to expectations.
“I was a good student all my life and the examination result left my teachers, parents and myself utter shocked. In those days, there was no provision for re-evaluation so I reconciled to fate,” he says.
“At that time, I even got an opportunity to study at the University of Cambridge on account of my past good grades and accomplishments, but I was asked to take a six-month bridge course to bring me up to the mark.
"But I never joined the institution because I wanted to get in from the front door, like all other students, not the back alley,” he adds.
So he announced to his father that he would study music. But his father, not convinced that he’d stick to his decision, made him take oath on the Tanpura that he would never leave the path of musical learning.
Vyas kept that promise. “I would have been studying economics and not music had destiny not redirected my path. In retrospect, what happened with my BA degree was a good thing.”