Strings of Musical Remembrance

24th Khazana, the annual ghazal festival, blended tributes to legends with fresh voices and a new poet category

- Narendra Kusnur

Khazana, the ghazal festival is something that every ghazal lover in the city waits for. Last month, at this year's Khazana ghazal festival, the most interesting thing was the allotment of the slot for a new poet.

Ghazal maestro Pankaj Udhas's daughter Nayaab Udhas of the Event Co, which manages the festival, says her father always gave special importance to poets. She elaborates, "Whether it was Zameer Kazmi or Zafar Gorakhpuri, he always encouraged poets who wrote for him. Thus we thought it would be ideal to start a special category in our talent hunt contest."

The poet category winner, Uday Divakar Pandey, was selected by the jury of Aalok Shrivastava and Ajay Sahab. The winners in the singers' categories were selected by Jalota, Penaz Masani, Rekha Bhardwaj and Sudeep Banerji. The male winner was a tie between Saleem Raja and Fareed Ahmed Khan. The female winner was Hetvi Sethia, and the child's category winner was Manaswi Pandey.