Imagine a small stage, no crowds, or smoke machines—just a small group of poetry and qawwali enthusiasts sitting around, waiting for a sarangi to begin. This setting could have people visualising a crowd that is in their forties, fifties, or older. But they would be wrong, because twenty-somethings are now regulars at modern-day mehfils and baithaks.  This isn’t nostalgia, though, instead, a craving for something analogue in a digital world.

“There’s too much chaos in modern-day music,” says Sanya Gupta, an architect, who got hooked to ghazals in 2017 when she was in Standard 10. It was a hot afternoon when Jagjit Singh’s Koi Fariyaad was playing on the radio. “It was so hot, and I sat there visualising this song as it played… I don’t know how, but there was this coolness and calm that came over me,” describes Gupta. It prompted her to explore more of Jagjit Singh’s music and cemented a love for ghazals. Now her favourite artists also include Talat Aziz and Rekha Bhardwaj’s contemporary ghazals.