Untrained ears but a celestial mind

Revered by the Nation for his soulful traditional Gujarati music, Desai was a professor of Physics who surpassed many in music and spread his teachings without any formal training in it.

The couple together; Source: Wikimedia Commons

A person's environment often makes up a large part of their lives, from his interests to their career choices as well as their behaviour, Rasbihari Desai pursued a physics degree, but what lay inside his blood could not even be contained by him as a man of science turned into a singing sensation worth legendary status.

Belonging to a well-reputed family in Gujarat, his family had a history of vocal summits and lyrical translators of emotions, with his grandmother and father being quite well known in the scene too.

Even his marriage was with a well-known singer, Vibha, who had achieved her own pearls in the industry at a very young age.

The duo performed over a thousand performances together during their lifetime.

With all this going on, he still pursued a physics degree and even during his teaching career, he was often in the crux of many musical lectures and teachings during his time. With his ability to brief his teachings and also strip music and its theory to its fundamentals, he gave birth to many top students in musical academies.

Invited to the United States and the United Kingdom as well, his ability to teach and spread the spirituality of the Indian Classical music took him to various countries as well as around his own country.

He also founded Shruti, a group of untrained professionals who were gems in the industry due to their fresh perspectives and emotionality in the often traditionally locked classics of Indian music. Lata Mangeshkar, Madan Mohan, Manna Dey were one of the many famous singers who commended Shruti's fresh new talents and its aim to reach fresh heights in music.

As if his contributions to Gujrati music were not enough already, he even mentored the Bhavan’s Sangeet Vibhag, a branch of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, an educational trust. This continuous effort of 43 years would make him legendary in Gujarat.

His journey of spirituality has often been recounted in many articles about him, although the accounts are not verified, a man of science delving in spirituality should have been a fluid process and not a direct one as stories of him predicting Jawaharlal Nehru's death while he was in a cloud chamber experiment meditating, which is pretty absurd.

He never had any professional training in music, yet he came out as one of the most natural geniuses in Gujarati music.