TURBO CHARGE
With his balding head and a jhola slung from a shoulder, it's easy to mistake Ulhas Kashalkar for a timid, small-town school teacher. But see him on stage and you'll look nowhere else: temperate is transformed to turbo-charged. Throughout, Kashalkar is in command; he allows, and his voice travels, spins dazzling pirouettes and engages in complex rhythmic acrobatics in khayal and thumri styles.

He has an ability to go so deep into his art that Kashalkar chooses his own route in a form that can be as rigid as one makes it, or as free. Trained in both the Gwalior and the Jaipur schools by his father K.D. Kashalkar and Gajanan Rao Joshi, Ulhas has also imbibed much from maestros such as Kumar Gandharva, Mallikarjun Mansur and Bhimsen Joshi. And long before he won widespread public acclaim -- he is feted from Calcutta to California -- Kashalkar caught the imagination of musicians themselves as the sole voice of his generation that seamlessly combines creativity and tradition. These days, he teaches others to be free. There's a queue out there.