Osho World: Osho World Past Events and Happenings

The emotion and devotion of Saint Kabir came alive when a renowned vocalist, Malashri Prasad, sang Kabir bhajans to inaugurate Kabir Week at Osho World Galleria, New Delhi on Friday, 20 June 2003. Some of Kabir's famous bhajans like "Man lago mera yaar fakiri main' were presented in a melodious and well trained voice that was more like meditation than music.

It was 'house full' in Osho World Galleria as Osho lovers were transported into the vibrations of Kabir in this atmosphere as they listened in rapt admiration for the music and the musician. Malashri Prasad also presented some little known Kabir bhajans and involved everyone in chorus for some of the more popular ones. It all ended in a crescendo with 'Bhaj man Ram Rahim' . The accompanying artistes - Ustad Ballu Khan on the tabla, Badlu Khan on the harmonium, Azad Nizami on the synthesizer and Razak Ali on the side rhythm - gave a good account of themselves.

Earlier, the artiste inaugurated the event with the release of a set of audiotapes of Osho discourses on Kabir entitled The Divine Melody and The Revolution.

Malashri Prasad, a senior officer of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service, is currently working as Principal Director of Commercial Audit and an Ex-Officio Member of the Audit Board-I, New Delhi. She has received training from a number of accomplished musicians. These include the late Padma Bhushan Pandit Gyan Prakash Ghosh; the late Ustad Munawar Ali Khan, son of the late Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan; Smt. Meera Banerjee, one of the foremost disciples of the late Ustan Bade Ghulam Ali Khan; Smt. Savita Devi, daughter of 'Thumri Queen', the late Smt. Siddheswari Devi of Banaras; and Padma Bhushan Smt. Shobha Gurtu.

Malashri Prasad has performed in many parts of India and abroad. Among her notable concerts are: North Central Zone Cultural Centre; Sur-Singar-Samsad, the National Centre for the Performing Arts and Nehru Centre, Mumbai; India Habitat Centre and India International Centre, New Delhi. Abroad, she has given concerts at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in New York, the World Bank and the Gandhi Centre in Washington D.C., and in Nairobi.

Osho explains Kabir in The Divine Melody with these words, "Kabir's words are unique. It is difficult to find a mystic like Kabir in the history of the whole world, because he is raw, uneducated; whatever he says, it has no way of coming from the scriptures. He is quite unacquainted with the scriptures; he has no treasure of great value in words. The words he uses are of the marketplace, of the day-to-day use. But in those words he has poured everything, which even for the seers of the Upanishads has been difficult to pour in all their purest of word forms.

Adds Osho, "Kabir is one of the greatest mystics of the world. Meditate on Kabir -- pay attention to him, to what he says. And he is a very simple man, not learned in any way -- all that he says is out of his experience. He is not a scholar; he does not know anything about the Veda and the Koran and the Bible. All that he says is out of his own existential experience. He is not a theoretician or a philosopher; he is a poet. And not only a poet, he is a mystic poet -- and the difference is that the poet sometimes has glimpses of God, and then he falls back again -- rare moments of flight."