To take classic music to the common masses remains something of a feat - and Vinay Chandra Maudgalya would be handily achieving that. Born in Pune, he would be heavily educated into classical music by the maestro Vinayakrao Patwardhan, into the Gwalior Gharana.

He would be faced with a tremendous task - and in that time, only elite industrialists of Delhi were remotely interested in classical mehfils, or some houses which had become upwardly mobile with British rule. However, all these would not serve him well, as he needed students, and students were hard to come.

His first students would come from his friends’ families, and thus started the career of one of the greatest musical schools, the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya. While not the first one at Delhi, it would still serve to create that spark missing from the cultural scene of the city.

As government-run academies bloomed in the city, he would aim to create much more beyond just musical performers - he would want to create a class of people who also loved classical music, so that it might become self sustaining and flourishing in the future.

Bade Ghulam Khan, Ravi Shankar, Bhimsen Joshi, Narayan Rao Vyas, Ali Akbar Khan, all these names would grace the school - even as they faced troubles with finding a large enough audience.

Maudgalya would expand his school and his following, eventually building up a larger institution, with its own choir, and giving timeless music like Hind desh ke niwasi. He would pass away on the 19th of March, 1995.