PANDIT JASRAJ
1930-2020
DENSE swirling clouds blur the horizon, but I know they are there, the low hills of Mewat, slung like mute sentinel around this plastic matchbox city. Young Jasraj is playing, Kunj Bihari, all spry and sombre at once; recorded perhaps in the year I was born…. There’s been a belated systolic rush of monsoon, and the glass door of my eyrie is fogged over. A flotilla of aural shards and fragments swim into memory; a mélange of things heard. Rifling through them, I absent-mindedly play a little game of mirrors. Place three canonical, popular figures of Hindustani vocal music—Ustad Amir Khan, Bhimsen Joshi and Pt Jasraj—in front of a mirror. What happens?
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