Ravi Shankar born as Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury.
Shankar was born on 7 April 1920 in Varanasi to a Bengali Brahmin family as the youngest of seven brothers.
Annapurna Devi, the first wife of Pandit Ravi Shankar, has said “India has lost one of the greatest musicians”.
Annapurna Devi can still remember the day in 1938 when Robu (as Ravi Shankar was known then), a pert westernised teenager then, first came to Maihar village in what is now Madhya Pradesh to learn from her father, sarod maestro Allauddin Khan. Ravi Shankar was 18 then, Annapurna 9.
Shankar married Allauddin Khan's daughter Annapurna Devi in 1941 and a son, Shubhendra Shankar, was born in 1942. Shankar separated from Devi during the 1940s and had a relationship with Kamala Shastri, a danseuse, beginning in the late 1940s. An affair with Sue Jones, a New York concert producer, led to the birth of Norah Jones in 1979. After separating from Kamala Shastri in 1981, Shankar lived with Sue Jones until 1986. He married Sukanya Rajan in 1989 at Chilkur Temple in Hyderabad, India. He had known her since the 1970s. In 1981, Anoushka Shankar was born to Shankar and Sukanya Rajan.