If a Western pianist hits one note and then another, the listener hears two discrete pitches with silence-or-attack between them. If a Hindustani sitarist or vocalist moves from one note to another, the listener often hears a continuous glide — the note bending smoothly through every microtonal interval in between. That glide is meend.
Meend is not ornament — it is fundamental. Many raags are recognised partly by which intervals are traversed by meend and which are not. A clean meend from Sa to Pa across the full middle of the octave is a specific gesture, common in dhrupad. A subtle meend on the komal Dha in Darbari Kanada is one of the raag's defining signatures. The artist who plays a phrase in Darbari without that meend has not really played Darbari.
On vocal music, meend is produced by continuous breath and laryngeal control. On sitar, by pulling the string sideways across the fret to bend pitch up. On sarangi, by sliding the finger along the string. On flute, by gradually covering or uncovering the hole. Each instrument has its own meend technique, but the goal is the same: smooth, continuous pitch movement.
The opposite of meend is **andolan** (oscillation — quick repeated movement between two pitches) and **gamak** (forceful, fast-shaken ornamentation). All three are essential to raag interpretation; meend is the most contemplative.