She can play all 18 musical instruments including the tabla, guitar, sitar, harmonium, sarod, flute, bongo, congo, etc, with above average skill. Durga Tandon, head of the department of music at DAV Public School, New Delhi is quite, a one-woman band. Also, she teaches vocal music (classical and light) Kathak, folk, western and ballet dancing at the CBSE-affiliated kindergarten-class XII school which has a total enrollment of 956 students. Tandon’s induction into the heady world of music began at age four when she began tinkering with her father’s tabla and sitar. Recognising her talent, her parents enrolled her in Kanya Sangeet Mahavidyalaya, a renowned but picky music school in Muradabad, where she impressed her teachers with her musical talent and won the best student of the year award three years in a row way back in the 1950s. However, it was during her post-graduate years in the Gokuldass Girls’ Degree College in Muradabad, that Tandon’s parents enrolled her for music and dance training with renowned artists. Thus, Shovna Narayan taught her the nuances of Kathak, while Shiv Kumar Sharma was instrumental in honing her tabla skills. Ashtaq Hussain Khan fine-tuned her sitar playing. Public performances resulted in a teaching assignment with the DAV school in 1985 where Tandon was hired as a tabla teacher. Since then she rose to the post of head of the music faculty in 2000. Despite her musical talent, Tandon describes herself as an educationist rather than a musician. That’s why she has been spearheading the Education For All and anti-polio campaigns in her school and villages nearby. "Education and health are two issues which need to be addressed urgently for the nation to progress.