Go Unlimited with Magzter GOLD
Get unlimited access to 10,000+ magazines, newspapers and Premium stories for just
Mewat In The Mirror
Outlook
|August 31, 2020
Jasraj was one of the early popularisers of Hindustani classical, his voice timbrally pleasing and rich, but ductile enough to be drawn into thin filigree
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?
This story is from the August 31, 2020 edition of Outlook.
Subscribe to Magzter GOLD to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 10,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
MORE STORIES FROM Outlook
Outlook
The Big Blind Spot
Caste boundaries still shape social relations in Tamil Nadu-a state long rooted in self-respect politics
8 mins
December 11, 2025
Outlook
Jat Yamla Pagla Deewana
Dharmendra's tenderness revealed itself without any threats to his masculinity. He adapted himself throughout his 65-year-long career as both a product and creature of the times he lived through
5 mins
December 11, 2025
Outlook
Fairytale of a Fallow Land
Hope Bihar can once again be that impossibly noisy village in Phanishwar Nath Renu's Parti Parikatha-divided, yes, but still capable of insisting that rights are not favours and development is more than a slogan shouted from a stage
14 mins
December 11, 2025
Outlook
The Lesser Daughters of the Goddess
The Dravidian movement waged an ideological war against the devadasi system. As former devadasis lead a new wave of resistance, the practice is quietly sustained by caste, poverty, superstition and inherited ritual
2 mins
December 11, 2025
Outlook
The Meaning of Mariadhai
After a hundred years, what has happened to the idea of self-respect in contemporary Tamil society?
5 mins
December 11, 2025
Outlook
When the State is the Killer
The war on drugs continues to be a war on the poor
5 mins
December 11, 2025
Outlook
We Are Intellectuals
A senior law officer argued in the Supreme Court that \"intellectuals\" could be more dangerous than \"ground-level terrorists\"
5 mins
December 11, 2025
Outlook
An Equal Stage
The Dravidian Movement used novels, plays, films and even politics to spread its ideology
12 mins
December 11, 2025
Outlook
The Dignity in Self-Respect
How Periyar and the Self-Respect Movement took shape in Tamil Nadu and why the state has done better than the rest of the country on many social, civil and public parameters
5 mins
December 11, 2025
Outlook
When Sukumaar Met Elakkiya
Self-respect marriage remains a force of socio-political change even a century later
7 mins
December 11, 2025
Translate
Change font size