Sufi strains in your city

By Abhilasha Ojha - Business Standard - India
Sunday, November 26, 2006

A husband-wife duo's initiative has resulted in one of the biggest Sufi festivals in India.

“Don’t look at your form, however ugly or beautiful,
Look at love and at the aim of your quest.”
Rumi (translation available on www.poetseers.com )

This couplet by a renowned Sufi poet almost encapsulates the thought that has helped husband-wife duo Mahesh Babu and Nandini in their mission, over the past 10 years, to patronise Indian arts in the corporate world.

“Mahesh and I have been trained in Indian classical music. Setting up Banyan Tree Events and launching Neenad Music seemed a natural progression for us,” says Nandini.

The going, predictably, wasn’t easy with no one really wanting to invest in the strains of Indian classical music, opting instead for rock bands and an ambience in which the bubbly could flow easily and people could let their hair down.

“Those were exhausting days and we made many attempts to encourage companies and corporate houses to invest in this initiative,” says Mahesh, who quit his lucrative career in the oil sector.

The seed of the idea was sown sometime in 1993, when he quit his job and pooled his resources to form Banyan Tree Events. “I continued working in advertising and after three years joined Banyan Tree Events full-time,” says Nandini, who remembers friends advising her not to let Mahesh take such a drastic step.

This evening some of those very friends will settle down in the evening in the heritage garden of Mumbai’s Horniman Circle as a rapt audience, witnessing and listening to the works of Sufis and mystics with fakirs, monks, Sufi qawwals, mystic healers, folk musicians, Bauls, Shabad singers and Kabir panthis from India and other countries like Iran, Pakistan and Switzerland. The mellifluous journey for Banyan Tree Events is scaling higher notes with each passing year.

For nearly two years, this Sufi festival called Ruhaniyat was, as Nandini says, “sponsored from our own pockets”. The duo spent nearly Rs 5 lakh on the first two years of the festival, held in Mumbai.

“The second time we organised the fest, organisers like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and State Bank of India came willingly forward to sponsor the event,” smiles Mahesh.

It’s one reason why Ruhaniyat has, this year, extended to not just Mumbai but also to five other cities: Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Pune.

Ruhaniyat is actually a fine extension to what Muzaffar Ali has attempted time and again with Jahan-e-Khusrao, an annual festival that resonates with Sufi sounds against the backdrop of Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi. And though Ali’s Jahan-e-Khusrao is sponsored as an important event by Delhi Tourism, the big names of the music industry have stayed away from it.

Abida Parveen may be the face of the event but commercial successes like Daler Mehndi and Rabbi Shergill have given this event a miss all these years.

“Money is a big deterrent and at most times it is exceedingly difficult to attract big names for such events,” says Nandini. Lack of funds, however, never dampened the duo’s spirits and they continue to carry on promoting traditional Indian performing arts.

Which explains why their company has such a range of events that traverses the strains of Sufi qawwali, blending it with Bengal’s Baul, Kudiattam from Kerala and Pandou from the Garhwal hills.

“We don’t sit in the comfort of our home and chalk out a list of artistes. Instead, we travel into the interiors of the country and handpick the best,” says Mahesh.

Padma Ram is one such example. A cobbler by profession, he was discovered by the husband-wife duo who felt that he had a soulful voice for singing Meera bhajans.

“He enthralled us and though we had to make him comfortable and get used to the mike, we ended up recording an album with him for our music label Ninad Music,” says Nandini.

But what’s the musical future for people like Padma Ram? “To be honest, some go back to their respective professions, while others join us for the events that we organise. And though it is difficult for these people to leave their work for a full-time career in music, we do try our best to encourage them,” says Nandini.

Thankfully, for a majority of these singers who would otherwise have gone completely unnoticed, Banyan Tree offers a wide range of platforms for the artistes.

While we’ve already mentioned Ruhaniyat as the biggest Sufi festival spanning six different cities (the festival will go on till February 2007), there is also Dakshinayan, which is dedicated to Carnatic music. It was held recently in Mumbai and Delhi and featured popular artiste Bombay Jayshree too.

There’s also Flights of Freedom, a special event that celebrates India’s independence through a musical interpretation featuring music and dance artistes.

Banyan Tree also organises a monsoon music fest in Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi and Pune (the one held in July this year in Delhi featured Pandit Channulal Mishra rendering kajris and thumris, besides a jugalbandi by Ustad Shujaat Khan, Pandit Tejendra Majumdar and Ustad Rashid Khan).

To attract younger audiences, the company also hosts 2 Unwind and Positive Energy music, which blend Indian and Western music.

There’s also Nav Durga and New Face of Tradition, which offer a platform for young, amateur artistes to show off their skills in traditional Indian dance and music forms.

Rumi has said:
O you whose lips are parched,
keep looking for water
Those parched lips are proof
that eventually you will reach the source

If you want to carry a couplet of Bulle Shah and Rumi in your hearts, Ruhaniyat is the “source”.