They take their own directions and create their own paths. According to pandit Rajshekhar Mansoor, no musician can rein in ragas, as they, like a river, gush through from your inner soul, making their own channels enroute.

"The only thing a musician can do is to humbly and with dedication request the ragas to come to him. The ragas decide whether they will come to the musician or not. A musician can just make a request to them." And with this, the humble worshipper of ragas closes his eyes and joins his hands not to put up a display of his dedication for ragas but to grab the opportunity of being close to music once again. Slowly, as he opens his eyes to come back to the real world, he adds, "No one can master them, we all are learners and will remain so forever," says the singer from Dharwad, who cast a hypnotic spell on the audience at FTII this Tuesday with his recital of Hindustani classical vocal.

The absolute purity of swaras and the unflinching aalaps were complemented with equally vibrant scattings and bandishein floated in air gliding over raag jod and gauri. Mansoor's earnestness in treating the melody left the audience spellbound and as the crowd applauded hard on every aalap, Mansoor's vibrant jugalbandi with Suyog Kadalkar on harmonium electrified the atmosphere.

Pandit Rajshekhar Mansoor, the musical heir of sangeet maestro Mallikarjun Mansoor, who unlike his father started late on his musical journey feels music is of the moment. Having retired as a professor of English from Karnataka University, he strongly believes that music can't be taught. "Performance comes first rather than theory. How can you write Indian classical music?" he questions and stresses on gurus taking shishyas along with them on a musical journey. "If you sit and teach music to someone, the moment you will instruct — yeh vilambit gati mein teen taal hai — the essence will be lost. Instead, you sing and ask your shishya to follow. To make a child learn swimming, you take the child along with you to the river. Can sitting at the bank and studying the laws of physics be of any help in learning swimming? The same goes for music. When it comes to Indian Classical Music, the guru- shishya relationship should be one-to-one," stresses Mansoor.

He cites the absence of a methodology for teaching music as an academic subject as the reason behind the failure of academic institutions in producing good musicians. "These institutions sadly produce only jaankar of music and not performers. And I can vouch for that," says Mansoor. Also, to Mansoor, learning music means confining it to boundaries. "You have to live music and not learn it as music is of the moment largely depending upon the kind of riyaaz you do," avers he.