He romanced Kathak like few others ever did, his mastery over the classical dance form writing him into lasting fame as one of India's greatest performing artistes.

Birju Maharaj lived as he died. He grew up with the ghungroo, tabla and harmonium striking rhythms of harmony and as took his last breath in the early hours of Monday his home was quite fittingly alive with the sound of music this time old songs he so loved.

He had his dinner and we were playing antakshari' because he loved old music suddenly his breathing became uneven. We think it was cardiac arrest as he was also a heart patient He was laughing and smiling in his last moments," said his granddaughter Ragini recalling the last moments of a life dedicated to dance.

The legendary dancer, a guru in the traditional sense who not just took Kathak to the world but also passed on his craft to generations of students, would have been 84 on February 4.

He was the consummate artiste, a poet, writing under the pen-name 'Brijshyam', a vocalist who had mastered thumri and other forms too, and also an instrumentalist. But it was Kathak, that most graceful Indian classical dance form, which became his calling in life. He dedicated every waking minute to finetuning and popularising the craft in India and beyond its shores.

Born the more prosaic Brijmohan Nath Mishra, Birju Maharaj, who would go on to rule many a stage with his impeccable footwork and emotive, stylised story telling the Kathak way, once recalled how he was just three when he would walk and waddle towards the taleemkhana where young students were taught dance skills as well as the harmonium and the tabla.

It was those early growing up years at his ancestral home in Lucknow that gradually moulded the young Mishra into Birju Maharaj, the leader of Lucknow's Kalka-Bindadin Gharana.