Where the ustads sing for both gods and commoners

Varanasi’s dusk-to-dawn Sankat Mochan music fest is a spirited, secular event where huge crowds pack the temple courtryard
Pandit Jasraj is a revered name on the classical circuit. But even in a searing April, the 86-year-old has taken residence for a few days in a chaotic corner of Varanasi — the Sankat Mochan temple complex. On these days, you see him around the shrine, joining in the melee of aarti, chatting with devotees and joining the throngs in the ebb and tide of rituals through the day.
It is 4am on Wednesday, and as Jasraj finally sits down to sing in the courtyard — he has performed here for 45 years of the festival that is now nearly a 100 years old — it is hard to believe that the city is still cocooned in pre-dawn darkness.The crush of fans is so heavy that you have to pick your way over bodies, some slumped over in a sleepy daze after a night of wakefulness. This, after all, is Varanasi’s favourite music festival dedicated to Hanuman, a deity considered the very embodiment of music.
Spread over six days, over 100 of the country’s most sought after concert artistes are performing at the temple for its annual all-night musical jamboree. Sankat Mochan festival comes with a formidable reputation — of being a heady, independent spirited, deeply secular event backed entirely by music lovers. Which is why it has done what several state administrations could not — provide a safe venue and affectionate audience for Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali’s concert last Tuesday.
“Its reputation pulls people from across the country, and now from across the border too,” jokes flautist Hari Prasad Chaurasia, an old regular at the festival. “For me it is the pull of the soil.”
This is not exactly the usual setting for high art — it is a muggy, dusty 43 degrees, noisy, there are few comforts and if you are weary all you can do is stretch out on the floor alongside villagers, sadhus, college kids, housewives, office-goers and the devout.

Yet the best music is here, and all for free. Even big-league musicians whose concert fees rarely dip below Rs 5 lakh an appearance don’t charge a penny. So what pulls them to this uniquely egalitarian mela, where the rickshaw-walla and the gyani say wah together?
“I am completely re-energized when I perform here. Where else will you find these crowds, ordinary people listening with so much interest? It is a divine experience,” says percussionist Sivamani.
Seasoned vocalist Ulhas Kashalkar says it has a charm like no other. “This place evokes the traditional setting of classical concerts — the small halls in our old towns, the temple courtyards where music was always played,” says Kashalkar who has been performing here for a decade.
It isn’t just the veterans. “The festival’s culture is very robust. It is like engaging in a dangal and I find it challenging to perform for the audience here,” says 29-year-old tabla player Anubrata, son of the legendary Anindo Chatterjee.
It’s a discerning audience. Stray comments on the brilliance of an artiste or the inadequacies of another are often pointed and devastating. “If a cup of tea just needs one spoon of sugar, you don’t over-sweeten it. A thumri should have just so much mithas (sweetness), anything more and it becomes cloying. Kaushiki (Chakraborty) needs to remember that,” mutters Satya Narayan Pandey, a retired photographer from Sonebhadra, who has been coming to the festival for three decades now. His musical high, he recalls, came in 1994 when Rajan and Sajan Mishra sang Gunkali at dawn. “I suddenly felt as though I was lifted on a cloud, weightless,” he says. That is what great music is like.”