mumbai rarely has the small span of few hundred square feet amassed such a treasure that is worth its weight in gold the shanmukhananda sabha in sion on sunday inaugurated a precious gallery of musical instruments that have been donated by the topmost hindustani and carnatic classical musicians of the countrythe maestros treasures gallery has on display the shehnai of ustad bismillah khan the sarangi of pt ram narayan flute by carnatic genius t r mahalingam another by hariprasad chaurasia and violins by lalgudi jayaraman tn krishnan and ms gopalakrishnanthere is a sarod owned by ustad amjad ali khan apart from a set of tablas belonging to ustad zakir hussain the gift of a mandolin donated by u shrinivas ghatam by vikku vinayakram mridangam by palghat mani iyer and vishwa mohan bhatts mohan veena also adorn the displayit is to shanmukhanandas credit that it assembled this collection by 14 artistes within a short period of three months especially during the ongoing covid19 pandemic sabha president v shankar said all the contributors agreed to donate their instruments to us on the very first phone call they know that the sabha will not exploit them for commercial purposes and that lakhs of music lovers will be able to appreciate their history approximately six lakh visitors arrive at shanmukhananda each yearshankar recalled how tn krishnan finalised the logistics of transporting his violin from chennai one morning and passed away that very evening he is overwhelmed to think that pt ram narayan approached him to ask if he would retain a precious gift should he give it to him i said i will retain anything you give me even if it is not precious he then gave me this flute used by the legendary tr mahalingam mali mali had gifted it to panditji after they performed together at the french radio festival in 1979 that was malis last performance on the international stage shankar saidanother artefact was owned by the veteran mridangam artiste dr umayalapuram sivaraman he had played the instrument which is 100 years old when he visited the sabha in 2019 and then donated it for the project such ventures are commonly undertaken by the government but unfortunately successive authorities in mumbai have not thought of curating such treasures our gallery will evoke nostalgia among elderly music lovers who will remember seeing these artistes perform at the sabha it will also inspire young musicians and patrons to achieve more and appreciate our culture shankar said