 "Prolific Indian jazz musician Adil Manuel. Photo: Kamlesh Pednekar")
The first song Adil Manuel learnt to play in full on a guitar was British rock and roll star Cliff Richard’s Teenager in Love. Manuel was a teenager himself, smitten with music. He quickly picked up the three chords he was taught by a friend and new chords began forming under his fingers as if they had always lived there. Richard, in a poetic coincidence, had grown up in the same compound in Lucknow where Manuel also spent a period in his childhood.
As much as this tryst with music sounds like it was meant to be, Manuel also had to
