The midnight mehfil is back
Small rooms, late hours, no amplification worth mentioning: the city's oldest way of hearing music is quietly filling up with the youngest audience.
The invitation comes by word of mouth, the venue is somebody's terrace, and the tabla begins after the neighbourhood's children are asleep. This is the mehfil — the intimate late-night sitting that recorded music was supposed to have killed.
It didn't. What streaming actually produced is an audience that has heard everything and been present for almost nothing. The mehfil sells presence: forty people close enough to hear the tabla player breathe, a vocalist who takes requests as challenges, and no screen anywhere.
Etiquette is taught by osmosis. Phones face down. Appreciation is a murmur at the right moment, not applause at the wrong one. First-timers learn within one raag that the silence between phrases is part of the music.
Organisers cap the crowd, split the collection among artists on the spot, and end with kahwa at 2 am. Nobody advertises. Everybody comes back.
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