New Delhi, Jan. 31 -- Recently my friend Jugal and I said to each other that Jean-Michel Basquiat quote, "Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time." I say, we said it to each other because, I don't remember who said it to whom. It's the kind of 50% senti, 50% crystalline idea that he loved. I did too. I knew and listened to one-hundredth of the music he listened to.

I have none of the historical or technical interest in music that he had but Jugal understood what music means to me at a physical level and constantly fed the beast. He had no expectations that my very mid tastes would ever improve or that it would acquire any intellectual underpinnings. The music exchange programme that began nearly two decades ago just c...