‘Chandan Kiwad’: Why Malini Awasthi’s memoir is essential reading on folk tradition

The life-force of folk song

Awasthi writes that every song carries a life-force. When she sings, she often feels that she is no longer the one performing; the heroine of the song enters her being and sings through her. At first glance, this may appear mystical. Yet anyone familiar with oral traditions understands that folk song is always larger than the individual. It is not authored in isolation. It is distilled from shared experience, layered over generations. It carries within it births, marriages, separations, harvests, migrations, grief and celebration.

One of the most striking discussions in the book revolves around the sohar Chhapak ped chhiyuliya. While it celebrates the birth of Rama, it also registers the suffering of a doe whose mate is killed for royal festivity. Celebration and violence coexist in the same lyrical space. The presence of compassion within festivity reveals the ethical complexity of folk consciousness. Folk songs do not merely amplify joy. They also contain self-reflection. Awasthi understands this layered moral imagination and invites the reader into it.

The Hindustani music tradition and Awasthi’s authority

When Malini Awasthi renders a folk composition on stage, she preserves its dialect, its cadence, its inner emotional grain.

To fully appreciate Awasthi’s literary and artistic voice, one must situate her within the larger tradition of Hindustani music. This tradition is not merely a repertoire of ragas. It is a civilisational discipline shaped by centuries of practice. From dhrupad to khayal, from thumri to tappa, each form evolved over time yet retained its internal grammar. The architecture of a raga, the discipline of time theory, the ethics of improvisation, the sanctity of the guru-shishya lineage—these are not technicalities but cultural commitments.

The divide we often draw between folk and classical is historically porous. Banaras thumri carries the fragrance of the soil. Dadra and kajri travelled from village courtyards to the classical stage. Malini Awasthi stands within this continuum. She received rigorous training under Vidushi Girija Devi, the legendary exponent of the Banaras gharana. Girija Devi’s music embodied both folk tenderness and classical rigor. In Awasthi’s singing too, one hears this balance.

When she renders a folk composition on stage, she preserves its dialect, its cadence, its inner emotional grain. Her pronunciation reflects lived familiarity with the regions whose songs she sings. At the same time, her command over raga structure, breath control, and improvisational nuance reveals disciplined training. This dual grounding explains why she is not merely a popular performer but a respected practitioner. The conferment of the Padma Shri and her sustained presence on national platforms testify to that recognition. Therefore, when she writes about the cultural meanings of folk songs, she does so from within the tradition, not as an external commentator.

Women, memory, and the unwritten archive

The most moving sections of Chandan Kiwad are its portraits of women. Figures such as Danno Bua Damayanti, whose life was shaped by deprivation and endurance, are brought into luminous focus. The account of Chhunnee, the guru-sister of Girija Devi, is particularly poignant. A gifted singer of raga Charukeshi, she receded into anonymity under the weight of domestic responsibilities. This is not merely a personal tragedy. It mirrors a broader social structure where women’s artistic brilliance often remains unarchived.

The heroines of folk songs inhabit similar emotional landscapes. They wait. They endure separation. They negotiate duty and longing. Yet they are not passive. They are resilient presences. Awasthi does not romanticize them. She listens to them. She restores them to narrative visibility. In doing so, Chandan Kiwad becomes a re-inscription of women’s memory within the folk imagination.

Literature and folk as a shared current

Awasthi’s reflections frequently draw upon Sanskrit texts, modern Hindi writers, and Rabindranath Tagore’s Shesher Kobita. This intertextuality signals that she is not only a singer but a reader shaped by literary traditions. For her, folk and classical literature are not antagonistic domains. They are currents within the same civilizational river. Her prose is suffused with emotion, yet it does not lose clarity. Memory carries warmth, but thought remains steady.

There are moments in the book that seem to gesture toward larger, independent volumes. Her recollections of Girija Devi invite deeper elaboration. Her engagement with the lives of folk artists could unfold into an extended cultural history. The sense of incompletion is not a flaw but an indication of future possibilities.

A personal recollection

In 2022, at the Kalinga Literary Festival in Bhubaneswar, I had the privilege of curating a conversation with Malini Awasthi alongside the acclaimed poet and cultural theorist Vyomesh Shukla. That evening remains vivid in my memory. Vyomesh does not ask ornamental questions. He pushes artists toward introspection. The conversation moved beyond biography into the philosophical terrain of folk, memory, and the spiritual dimensions of music.

Awasthi spoke with striking lucidity. She described folk song not as performance but as dialogue—dialogue with ancestors, with forgotten women, with landscapes that continue to breathe through melody. Vyomesh shaped the exchange into a meditation on cultural continuity. That evening convinced me that a book like Chandan Kiwad was inevitable. What was articulated orally on stage has here been given textual coherence.

Folk in the present tense

One of the central insights of Chandan Kiwad is that folk is not an artifact of the past. It is not preserved behind museum glass. It survives in migrant memory, in diaspora gatherings, in festivals such as the World Bhojpuri Conference in Mauritius. Songs cross oceans. They anchor identity. They adapt, yet retain their emotional core.

Awasthi’s enduring contribution lies in carrying folk traditions onto contemporary stages without diluting their essence, and then recording that journey in writing. Balancing popularity and depth is never easy. She manages this balance with integrity.

The fragrance of sandalwood

Chandan Kiwad is more than a book. It is a fragrant ledger of memory. It records a life lived in music and music lived as memory. Songs here are not mere notes; they are lived experiences. Women are not characters; they are bearers of history. Hindustani music is not technique; it is civilizational breath.

To read this book is to encounter the folk within oneself. The sandalwood fragrance unfolds slowly. The door opens quietly. And one realizes that the music heard outside has always been resonating within. That resonance is the book’s deepest achievement.

Chandan Kiwad by Malini Awasthi
Vani Prakashan
Rs 325
240 pages 

(Ashutosh Kumar Thakur is a management professional and writes regularly on literature and the arts.)