Railway GK Questions 2026

Bajra, the pearl millet of the dry south western districts, is the grain of the traditional Haryanvi kitchen: the daily roti is made of bajra or of wheat, bajra khichdi and bajra aloo roti are standard dishes, and bajra rabri is drunk in the hot months.

During the nine nights of Navratri the unmarried girls of a Haryanvi household shape Sanjhi, a figure of the goddess, in clay and cow dung on the wall of the courtyard or the entrance, decorate her with mirrors, bangles and colour, sing to her every evening and at the end…

Gugga Naumi, also written Gugga Naumi or Gugga Navami, falls in Bhadrapad and honours Gugga Pir, revered as the lord of snakes and protector against snake bite.

Alsi ki pinni is made by roasting ground flaxseed, which is alsi, with wheat flour, ghee and jaggery or sugar and shaping it into balls; it is eaten in the cold months because it is held to give warmth and strength.

Hansli is the heavy silver neck ring of the Haryanvi woman, worn with the kanthi, the galsari and the hamel, and it is still described in folk songs and in Saang performances as the mark of a bride.

Panipat is the textile town of Haryana and the best known centre for the khes, the thick double woven cotton wrap used as a shawl and a bedcover, as well as for the panja durrie woven on the pit loom and for a large trade in furnishings.

Ghevar, the disc of fried batter soaked in syrup, is the sweet of the Hariyali Teej of Sawan, when swings are hung from the trees, a married daughter receives new clothes and sweets from her parents, and the women of the household sing Teej songs.

Bhaat is the gift of clothes, ornaments, cash and sweets that the mama brings at the marriage of his sister's son or daughter, and the ceremony of bringing it, bhaat bharna, is an event of its own, in which the family of the maternal uncle is received and honoured by…

Karewa, also called chadar dalna or chadar andazi from the sheet placed over the woman as the token of the new marriage, was practised widely in rural Haryana and is recorded in the colonial settlement reports of the region.

Pajeb is the anklet of the Haryanvi woman, worn with the kade on the ankles and the bichhua on the toes, and it was traditionally made of silver rather than gold because silver was within reach of a farming household.

The traditional dress of a Haryanvi woman is made of three pieces: the daaman, a long gathered skirt, the kurti or angi, a short upper garment, and the chunder or odhni, the long veil drawn over the head and shoulder.

Reshma-Chuharmal is sung and staged in the Magahi speaking tract south of the Ganga, around Patna, Nalanda and Mokama.

Sharda Sinha, called the Bihar Kokila, carried the Chhath songs of Bihar from the river ghats to recordings heard across the country, and she sang Maithili and Bhojpuri wedding, Sohar and Sama-Chakeva songs as well.

Domkach is a wedding dance of the women of the household: once the men go off with the barat, the women of the groom's family sing and dance through the night in the courtyard, taking the men's parts themselves in a comic imitation.

Vidyapati, the Maithili poet of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries who was honoured as the Maithil Kavi Kokil, wrote padas on Radha and Krishna that were sung in performance, and from this singing grew the Kirtaniya plays of Mithila, also staged as Bidapat Naach.

Sama-Chakeva is the Mithila festival in which girls make clay figures of the birds Sama and Chakeva, sing for the long life of their brothers through the Kartik nights and set the figures afloat or bid them farewell at the end; the songs are among the best known of Maithili…

Mahendar Misir of Misrauliya village in Saran district composed and sang Purbi, a light classical folk form built on the longing of a wife whose husband has gone away, and he is remembered as the emperor of Purbi.

The Darbhanga gharana, carried by the Mallick family under the patronage of the Darbhanga Raj, is one of the surviving gharanas of Dhrupad, the oldest form of Hindustani classical singing; Pandit Ram Chatur Mallick and Pandit Siyaram Tiwari belong to it.

Bismillah Khan was born at Dumraon in 1916, in the present Buxar district, into a family of shehnai players, and later settled at Varanasi.

Jat-Jatin is danced in the Mithila and Koshi tract of north Bihar, usually by a pair representing the husband Jat and the wife Jatin; the song moves through their quarrel, the failure of the rains and the husband leaving the village in search of work, which makes it the folk…