MS received awards too numerous to list. But the greatest tribute may well have been to compose and sing for the Mahatma himself. After a performance by her in Delhi a few months before Nathuram Godse’s bullets killed him, he said: “To sing a bhajan is one thing; to sing it by losing oneself in God is quite different.” It was only fitting that in the aftermath of that event, AIR played MS’ hari tum haro, a composition in Raga Darbari that she learnt for the Mahatma’s last birthday.