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When will public toilets in ‘vikasit’ Bharat also become vikasit ?


As a frequent traveler in vikasit Bharat I eagerly await a time when public toilets might show signs of improvement. The photo in this post is from a popular joint on the Mumbai Pune expressway at Khalapur. The ladies’ toilet has no toilet paper, the...

Omkareshwar, Madhya Pradesh


  Some pictures from Omkareshwar Mahotsav at Omkareshwar, Madhya Pradesh. We performed on December 30, 2018. Photographs courtesy Raghav Pasricha  

A voice from Kumaon


Admirers of Indian Ocean, one of India’s leading rock bands are likely to be familiar with Himanshu Joshi as the band’s vocalist. What most may not be very familiar with is the rather special repertoire of songs from Kumaon in Uttarakhand that Joshi has collected...

The Streets as Performing Spaces


On the 4th of August, 2014 a public meeting to discuss issues associated with street performers has been initiated in Delhi by Ishamuddin, a magician from Kathputli Colony in the capital, which so recently faced and survived the imminent threat of demolition. As spaces and...

A vocabulary for studio sessions


If music in India is abundantly diverse, so is the terminology associated with its many genres and styles of music. Film music too has its own set of unique terms, short codes and phrases often coined and used almost exclusively by sessions musicians, particularly those...

On Pandit Ravi Shankar’s fusion projects


It has been a day of remembrance and eulogy. Great masters,musicians young and old, politicians and artistes have offered paeans to Pandit Ravi Shankar, and invariably talked of his contribution to both Indian music and what they call world music, referring possibly to his cross-cultural...

Remembering Pandit Ravi Shankar through some of his work for films


The involvement of stalwarts of Hindustani classical music in the sphere of Indian film music is by no means uncommon. The early history of film music in India is replete with names of great exponents of classical music who also chose to explore the then...

The Glorious Tradition of Etawah-Imdadkhani Gharana


Nesting snugly between the covers of an elegantly designed book titled “The Glorious Tradition of Etawah-Imdadkhani Gharana – The Greats of Seven Generations” is a compact disc with twenty-five very exclusive and rare tracks that are a collector’s delight. Authored by Arvind Parikh, octagenarian sitar...

The buffalo in song :)


The extraordinary media interest generated by the theft of SP leader Azam Khan’s eight buffalos, the investigation into their theft and finally the recovery of the stolen buffalos prompts me to focus my attention this fortnight on buffalo songs, and on songs focusing on animal...