Raag Bhimpalasi

Bhimpalasi is a Kafi raag with its Ni and Ga komal. It spends most of its time on Ma. Resting on Ma is all that keeps it apart from Dhanashree, which uses those notes too and rests on Pa. The phrase that gives it away starts on the Ni below Sa, climbs to Ma and stays there, turns Ma Ga Pa Ma, and comes home Ga Ma Ga Re Sa. Someone who has listened to a fair amount of this music will know the raag before the phrase gets to Re.

Its hour

The table says afternoon. The old Indian day was counted in eight prahars of about three hours. Bhimpalasi gets the third, noon to roughly three. Do I actually hear noon to three in it? I don’t know.

Where you’ll have heard it

Both my traditions play it, dhrupad and khayal. I play it in both, on the surbahar and on the sitar. It works as well in a slow aalap as in a fast composition. The Dagar brothers have a dhrupad recording of it - the Dagar family’s line is the one I learn dhrupad in. Nearly every khayal singer of the last century recorded it as well. The first composition a student usually gets in it is Sadarang’s “Ja ja re apne mandirwa”, in teentaal. It’s the one I hum.

My favourite on the surbahar is Ustad Irshad Khan’s. On the sitar it’s Nikhil Banerjee’s, on his album “Afternoon Ragas”, and in dhrupad I love the rendition by Pushpraj Koshti. Of the sung ones, I absolutely love Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande’s.

Outside classical music it turns up in bhajans, folk and stage songs - anyone who grew up in India has hummed it without knowing the name. “Naino Mein Badra Chhaye” from Mera Saaya is Bhimpalasi, and so is “Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast Mast” from Mohra. In Carnatic music the same notes make the raag Abheri. Tyagaraja’s “Nagumomu Ganaleni” is the composition every student there meets in it.

What it’s supposed to make you feel

My guruji described it to me as a sweet raag with an ache under the sweetness. The quiet ache is what I hear when I play it, and what I go after in the recordings below. I love Bhimpalasi for that ache, which comes out of the komal Ga and Ni, and out of how long Ma is left to ring before the next note.