The Fascinating Universe of the Bandish: Saas-Bahu and Beyond
Illustrated presentation by Malini Nair

Chair: Ms Vidya Shah

The bandish is at once critical as well as irrelevant to the khayal. It provides the framework around which the raga unfurls with limitless possibilities. But the poetry is often simplistic, spinning around the themes of domesticity and romance, the concerns stuck in time and place. A look at how gharanas and musicians have dealt with this poetry, some conventional, a few off-beat and how popular culture treats bandishes.

Malini is a senior editor and a feature writer with special interest in how India's classical traditions and how these have evolved over time, and is constantly taking cues from society and politics. She works as a consulting editor with gender platform behanbox.com and is a columnist at Scroll