His fondest fan will not claim that his music is easy. The voice was far from sonorous, the style of singing wildly unusual. He would sing in short bursts of notes, refusing to hold notes to display his genius. But it was music that could stop you in your tracks, collar you, pin you back and make you listen. You had to react to it - you could not walk away from his music. In his lifetime, Kumar Gandharva had few musician friends, a few chosen disciples, a small but fiercely dedicated following - and a long list of critics unhappy about his musical mutinies. In fact, his closest friends were aesthetes from other fields: painter NS Bendre and writer Pu La Deshpande among others. There is a wonderful irony in the singer's rise as a cult figure today. For one, he shunned the personality cult. He never sought to raise a gharana or style, never yearned for eternal posterity;the only thing that should survive him, he said, was this bottomless search for the core of raga music.