For thirty years, Vidwan Sundaresan Ramanujam has sung the same raga at the same hour, and in all that time no one has told him he is wrong. Then Karthik, a young filmmaker from Madurai, marries his daughter and spends two years learning that respect is not the same as obedience.

When pride ends the marriage, a handwritten letter asks the old master for one thing: not a role, but his notes. What follows is a film, a broken high note that no one calls cut on, and a family slowly learning to listen to the end of the sentence.

Sruti Bheda (The Shift in Pitch) is a novel of music, cinema and family. It asks what it costs to be listened to, and what it takes to listen.