India, Aug. 3 -- Before he ever played a note, Ritik Chaurasia had already inherited a sound, not just a surname. It was a legacy carried in every bamboo joint and note, hung gently on a breath. In Ritik's world, silence carries memory. And melody, an expectation.

The grandson of Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia-who lifted the humble bansuri from pastoral anonymity to the grandest concert stages of the world-and the son of the virtuoso Rakesh Chaurasia, 25-year-old Ritik lives at the confluence of memory and music. But for a long time, he wondered if it would ever become his own music, his own memory.

Across the room where Ritik practises each morning, on a mantle stands a relic with quiet authority-the very first flute Chaurasia brought with hi...