MUMBAI, Feb. 22 -- They stood in the arc of light, the greats of Indian classical music, voices and instruments poised to unfurl an evening's raga. Behind them, often just out of sight but never out of sound, was the steady, unassuming presence of Jayant Naidu - coaxing from four strings the unbroken sonic thread that holds Indian classical music together. For nearly five decades, until he breathed his last late Friday evening, Naidu lent his tanpura to a roll call that reads like a compendium of modern maestros: Amjad Ali Khan, Parveen Sultana, Ajoy Chakraborty, Birju Maharaj, Hariprasad Chaurasia, N Rajam, Girija Devi, Rashid Khan, Zakir Hussain, Ghulam Mustafa Khan, Shubha Mudgal and Shankar Mahadevan, among many others. What did these towering names have in common? They trusted Naidu with the drone - the seemingly simple yet infinitely complex bed of sound upon which melody rests. Jaipur-Atrauli gharana vocalist Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande likened it to Naidu himself. "Without it there can be no music, but it keeps itself quietly embedded," she said. "It was like he had imbibed the soul of the tanpura into himself." The sentiment echoes across gharanas. Gwalior doyenne Neela Bhagwat remembered him as "a true devotee of music who served the art form with his mind, body and soul". Knowing he was seated behind them reassured artistes, she said, "but he never tried to use that". She also hoped the rare tanpuras in his collection would be preserved, calling them repositories not only of sound but of memory. For flautist Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia, it was Naidu's quiet depth that stood out. "He wouldn't try to impress, but if you ever asked him for any information, he'd be most generous." Violin legend N Rajam echoed this sentiment. "He was not only very learned but had polished his craft sharing the stage with music's who's who. Yet he'd be the first to arrive and often the last to leave." It was not only veterans who felt his presence. Patiala gharana vocalist Kaushiki Chakraborty traced her memories of Naidu back to early childhood. "Even when I tagged along with Baba, I saw how towering legends respected him," she recalled. When she began performing, Naidu played at hundreds of her concerts. She spoke of a running joke between them before theatrically announcing that he was about to sing and asking if she would accompany him on the tanpura. "I often told him one day we would sing a duet together. Now sadly that will never be." Born in 1950 into a working-class family in central Mumbai, Naidu's first lessons were devotional. His father, a deeply religious head mechanic at General Motors in the British era, sang after evening puja - the attendance was compulsory if the children wished to eat dinner. Ragas entered Jayant's ears long before their names did. Money was scarce and music lessons were a luxury beyond reach. After an incomplete college education, he found stability at the Bank of Maharashtra, as a class-4 employee, where he remained for nearly three decades. Music, however, tugged steadily. In his early 20s, Naidu drifted into neighbourhood bhajan baithaks, where a local doctor once handed him a tanpura, remarking that it was easy to play-a moment that turned diversion into lifelong sadhana. Naidu quickly grasped that the acoustic tanpura required more than mechanical plucking: its four strings create not just the tonic but the entire harmonic universe of a raga. He taught himself the rudiments of singing and even tabla to better understand the music he was holding aloft. Devoted wholly to music-- his days were spent in riyaz, rehearsals and concerts. His silence, like his music, continues to resonate long after. Summing it up, Pt Chaurasia said: "Jayant Naidu's passing marks the quiet departure of a man who understood that greatness in Indian classical music is never solitary. It rests, quite literally, on a sustaining note. He was that note - constant, humble, indispensable."...