In the space of a month I have attended concerts of two musical legends – the jazz drummer, Billy Kilson, and Hindustani classical vocalist Shubha Mudgal.

Both had a hypnotic pull on me.

What drew me in to their performance was not the mastery of their craft – immense as it is – but the smile on their face. They weren’t performing. They were playing – like a toddler who has just been handed their first bubble gun.

In between songs, Kilson reminisced – “like an old man” – about the mentors who shaped him as a musician. He was unfazed when a four-year-old kid ran up to the front rows to see him at close quarters. He beamed throughout the performance and winked every time he pulled off something clever. (The kid even got a pair of drumsticks and a standing ovation when Kilson invited him on stage!)

Shubhaji didn’t forget that she was playing for her audience two days before Holi – a festival of rang (colour) and rasiya (pleasure).

She seemed to me less a singer and more a fisherwoman.

Her skills were the fishing line. Her smile, the hook. Except she wasn’t here to catch fish but to make the very ocean dance.

With one note, it became gulal tinging the air. With another, it teased Radha. It became yearning one second. Bliss another.

Through it all Shubhaji smiled like Nandalal (Lord Krishna) himself.

The audience was bobbing their head along. Swinging their arms to match her beat. And then I realised the trick she had pulled.

It wasn’t the ocean she commanded. It was our very hearts.