Rana Dasgupta is a British novelist living in Delhi. His first novel, Tokyo Cancelled (2005), a 13-part story cycle in the tradition of Chaucer and Boccaccio, was translated into eight languages and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His follow-up, Solo, the story of the life and dreams of a blind 100-year-old Bulgarian chemist, won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. To mark the South Asian Literature Festival which continues in London until 31 October, we published this exclusive micro-non-fiction which charmingly illustrates through music the long history of cultural cross-fertilisation between East and West.