There is a sitar case covered with faded stickers resting on a couch when we meet Hidayat Husain Khan, ahead of a concert that he'll play in the city tomorrow. We are at the swish rented apartment in Bandra's Hill Road where the US-based Indian classical maestro has been put up, though looking at him — dressed in jeans and a T-shirt — you'd be hard-pressed to imagine the sort of legendary gharana he was born into, which includes his father, Ustad Vilayat Khan, arguably India's greatest ever sitar player. And as he settles down for a chat, we point out how well travelled his case looks when Khan laughs and says, "It has been through many battles across different borders," referring to how baggage handlers at airports are notorious for treating musical instruments with disregard.

His own musical journey, however, began even before he was born. Khan tells us about how, when his mother was pregnant with him, she was taught how to play the sitar so that the child would have music running in his veins from the get go. He adds, "There is actually an instrument in our house that's a toy sitar about this big [indicates a three-foot size with his hands]. It would be passed around among all the children, who'd outgrow it when they were only two or three years old, and you know, this whole small electronic sitar that came about happened because of that very baby sitar. So, that's how early on music starts for people in our family and when you hear khandani musicians saying, 'Oh, I played my first concert when I was eight or nine years old,' it's not some anomaly. It's natural. You were doing it even before you were born."