SHEILA DHAR (1929–2001)
Sheila Dhar was a musician and writer. She is best known for her amusing and poignant memoir, Here’s Someone I’d Like You to Meet (1995), and her work on the links between culinary and musical arts, The Cooking of Music. She had the rare gift of painting character with words, and in the towering personalities of Hindustani classical music, she found subjects worthy of her pen. An MA in English from Boston University, she was married to the economist and bureaucrat P. N. Dhar. This gave her an opportunity to observe the baroque world of politics and the services as well as the social circles of music. She served on the board of the Sangeet Natak Akademi and was advisor for music to the Indian Council of Cultural Relations. Her other books include A Children’s History of India (1961); This India (1973); and Raga ‘n’ Josh: Stories from a Musical Life (2005).
Sheila Dhar’s main talent, and the source of her charm, was her huge interest in people. " My musical utterance inalienably carries within it the flavour of everything that has ever happened to me and of all the emotional landscapes I have traversed", she aptly commented.
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