Both, Shri Nathji and Mateshwari, were immensely interested in music. Mateshwari used to sing on the harmonium. She would sing after the end of many of Shri Nathji’s lectures.
Shri Nathji never sang in public, but he sang very frequently in private, in the bathroom. He had a deep, rich voice. Pran Nath and Priya Nath would often compare it to that of the famed Saigal! His tunes were self-composed and his words mostly Persian verses he had made up. He sang only once before people, and that was in Kohmuree, in 1933, when Sahadeva and Ram Gopal pressed him repeatedly.
The boys grew up playing the harmonium and learning Classical Indian Music on the violin. There was the long-haired musician, Master Mubaarik of Mussoorie, who could not play the violin himself but who taught Pran Nath and Priya Nath. They play better than you, would be an embarrassing remark he would have to face whenever he played with them. The music master, who was a very poor man at the time, had great faith in Shri Nathji. He would refuse the offer of a Maharaja if it came on June 23 in Mussoorie, when he would invariably come to sing on Shri Nathji’s birthday.
He had composed this ghazal–composition of Urdu verse put to music– on Shri Nathji:
He Nath tujhe yaad kiyaa kartaa hoon,
Teri hee yaad se dil shaad kiyaa kartaa hoon,
Jaab kabhi door main hotaa hoon rafaakat se teri
Iss dile shaad ko naa shaad kiyaa kartaa hoon
Teraa daavaa hai ke imaan jo laave mujh par
Us gunahgaar ki imdaad kiyaa kartaa hoon
O Nath! I remember thee all the time!
It is with thy remembrance I gladden my heart.
If ever I should wander far from thy fellowship,
I make sorrowful the heart made joyful by thee.
It is thy promise that he who believes in thee,
A sinner though he be, shall be redeemed by thee!
Mateshwari saw a large piano in Bevans, a music shop in Library, Mussoorie. She wished that Pran-Priya learn to play upon it. Pran Nath and Priya Nath visited the music shop frequently and played upon the piano, and grew very fond of it. The desire to bring it home began to grow in them. It would make Mateshwari happy.
But the grand piano was much too expensive a thing to purchase for the casual pursuit of a hobby. Just then, however, the music shop shut down in Mussoorie, and the owner became eager to sell everything there and shift his residence elsewhere.
He sold the piano at a very nominal price–almost gave it away–to Pran Nath and Priya Nath, whose fingers danced over its keys in jubilation, even as its vibrant notes resonated in the halls of Savitri Nivas, to the joy of Mateshwari.