A cover of coots is paddling furiously near Doodh Talai on Lake Pichola. Mist hangs heavily on the waters and boats glide past. The palaces of Jag Niwas and Jag Mandir, built between the 16th and 18th centuries, appear like ghostly galleons in the distance. A weak winter sun stripes the jetty with diffused light as we board the boat to Ambrai Ghat on the far side of the lake. There’s a nip in the air and the quiet thrum of the engine sets off a flock of pigeons that wheels over the City Palace and settles into its looming minarets. As we approach the ghat, colonised by a huge peepul tree in whose shade resides a Durga figurine astride a tiger, men dip themselves in the icy waters and offer salutations to the sun. The day stirs at Udaipur to the sound of Mico Kendes’ bouzouki, a lute.
At the ghat, the Syria-born, Switzerland-based Kurdish musician sings of lost lands and lost loves. He is one of many musicians from around the globe in the Mewari city for the fifth edition of the Vedanta Udaipur World Music Festival. Conceptualised by SeHer with ‘We are the world: Unity in Diversity’ as its focus, the festival has sounds from the breezy West coast of Africa, the sands of Rajasthan, the Iberian peninsula, rock music from mountainous Switzerland, Karelian music from Ukraine and multi-lingual voices from indie bands across the country.
The three venues — Ambrai Ghat in the mornings, Fateh Sagar Paal in the afternoons and Gandhi Ground in the evenings — echo the vast culture of the music, while showcasing a city that sits on the cusp of the medieval and the modern.
The mural of Shiva at Ambrai Ghat seems to watch the audience with half-closed eyes as they listen to Kendes sing a repertoire sunk in Sufism and mysticism. Strips of leheriya panels rise and fall with the breeze, marigolds scent the air, waves lap around the stone jetty of one of the city’s favourite hangout spots for the selfie-enthusiast, as Kendes passes over the political, the need for an identity and state for the Kurdish people, and instead sings of the country of his heart, a land he can never travel to, the citizen he can never claim to be. And yet his music is universal in theme, redolent of emotions that speak of unity in diversity.
In the afternoon, at the Fateh Sagar Paal that is framed by the lake constructed by Maharana Fateh Singh in the 1680s — its islands have a public park and an observatory — the Udaipur Jail University band, comprising convicted inmates belts out Sufi numbers with deep passion. I take Ankur Tewari and the Ghalat Family’s song ‘Sabse Peeche Hum Khade’ quite literally and walk to the last row of chairs. It is peppered with police personnel humming along to Tewari’s whistling, as the Aravalli mountains ringing the lake turn pink and then a sentinel grey. In the latticed balconies that garland Fateh Sagar, couples slow-dance as the sun sets.
Gandhi Ground sees a clash of civilizations as Bollywood’s Nikhita Gandhi meets Habib Koite’s Malian music, French jazz meets Thaikkudam Bridge’s guttural roar and peppy When Chai Met Toast is served with Mame Khan’s haunting Manganiyar tunes.
It is the wee hours of the morning, as dinner ends at the Sunset Terrace, the al fresco restaurant in the City Palace complex. The palace is surreal in the moonlight, a very different place from daytime, when the imposing grandeur of its structure that houses the famous Silver and Crystal galleries lords over the cityscape. Portuguese fado singer Sara Correia’s melancholic voice floats over its ramparts and settles on molten-silver Lake Pichola below — Udaipur’s own sound-and-light show for world music.
(The writer was in Udaipur at the invitation of SeHer.)