Shoonya Shikhar

Shoonya: emptiness, the zero, the point past which nothing further needs saying. This is where the evening is headed. Rather than build to a peak, this is a night that quietens, note by note, until only stillness remains.

Vedanth Bharadwaj and Gurupriya Atreya begin. They start with the Bhakti poets, songs that still have some movement and argument in them, lullabies from across the world, and then turn gradually towards gentler pieces, the kind that ask the room to lean in rather than sit back.

Vasu Dixit, singer-songwriter and frontman of the folk-fusion band Swarathma, brings Kabir to the evening with a guitar in hand. His Kabir is sung the way it might be on a long road: plain, warm and close, carrying the poet's questions into the sound of indie folk before the room settles further.

Mir Rajak and Group follow, Mirasi musicians from Pugal in Rajasthan, whose families have sung the Sufiyana kalam for generations. Their music is often full-throated, built for courtyards and long nights. Tonight they sing Kabir, Bulleh Shah and other Sufi poets in its softer, more inward register, the way these songs are sung when the gathering is small and no one is in a hurry.