Touted as the folk queen of India, Malini Awasthi closed the debut edition of the Jaigarh Heritage Festival with a bang. Ten minutes into her performance, and the crowd was on its feet dancing and ...

Her father, a doctor, would often be visited by Bhojpuri-speaking patients and a young Malini would pick up the dialects from them. "So when I sing classical music, ghazals — and especially when I ...