 "Sanjeev Bhargava, Seher")
A single event can change the course of one’s life. From Delhi’s Modern School, Barakhamba Road, to a degree in history from St Stephen’s College, Sanjeev Bhargava, founder and director of Seher, was one step away from joining his elder brother at Oxford University when his father died at the age of 47. Unexpectedly, Bhargava was flung deep into his father’s film distribution business, with 17 films lying unreleased in India. He says he was forced into something he didn’t really like but could see no option before him. He completed his father’s unfinished work but soon found himself sucked deeper into the world of films.
We are sitting in the outer section of Lodi — The Garden Restaurant, New Delhi, surrounded by greenery, for a somewhat hurried Lunch with BS between his hectic travels. He is leaving early the next morning for Udaipur where he is organising Seher’s first world music festival at the City Palace next February. The festival will, like all Seher events, attempt to democratise culture, music and dance and make them accessible to a wider audience. After Udaipur, Bhargava heads to Hungary, where he is planning to organise the Ganga-Danube festival, a meeting of sorts for the music, minds and spirit of the two countries, on the bank of the Danube in Budapest. He makes me want to drop everything and go there as he takes a few minutes to describe the festival that is still in the making.
Never attracted to the mainstream — at 18, Bhargava was acting in theatre — he changed the course of his father’s film company and moved into offbeat cinema. His first film was Aakrosh (1980), which he sold in Russia, Hungary and at international film festivals like Cannes and Berlin. A close friend of film-maker Shekhar Kapur, Bhargava went on to produce films like Masoom and Elizabeth: The Golden Age that were directed by Kapur. He invested in films like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and Ardh Satya, which were released in 1983. In a couple of years, however, his brief affair with offbeat cinema ended when the home VHS system overtook theatre screening as the preferred consumer format for watching films. “People started watching everything in their drawing rooms and bedrooms. Business fell by 50 per cent and the film distribution business — especially for offbeat cinema — almost vanished.”
Suddenly adrift, Bhargava took up a dealership of the new hit of the 1980s, Maruti cars. He sold the first order of Maruti’s Gypsy to Rajasthan Police. The business grew till around 1992 — he was earning good money and flying to Japan and other countries at the drop of a hat.
At some point, restlessness set in. “Making money alone simply wasn’t enough,” he says. Somewhat early to qualify as a mid-life crisis, at 35, he’d begun to question everything. “The fighting, the tension of running a business — nothing seemed to make sense.” He felt that if he carried on with the business the way it was, he was going to end up like his father — with a heart attack at 38, he jokes.
Soup — asparagus with hazelnuts — with some garlic bread arrives for both of us. We linger over it. He’s not interested in the food and says he will share a bit of whatever I have. Both of us are vegetarian and we settle for a rocket salad with pears and sunflower seeds.
In 1992, he found himself drawn once again to his first love. Bhargava had learnt classical music for several years and sang ghazals for All India Radio’s youth programmes at that time. He was greatly influenced by vocalist Pandit Kumar Gandharva whom he knew personally. It was Gandharva who spotted his restlessness. “That changed my life. His bhajans, his teachings and influence showed me the way forward. It was the genesis of Seher (breaking of dawn).”
“By 1993, I couldn’t do it anymore. I decided to give it all up.” The birth of Seher — named by Gandharva prior to his death in 1992 — was literally the breaking of a new dawn for Bhargava. In its early days, Seher had no money. “I had friends and people who volunteered — a payable-when-able kind of thing.” The idea was not to run another business. The original Seher team was just three-four people; even today, when it organises large festivals like Ananya, Bhakti Utsav and the South Asian Bands Festival, the core team remains small at 16.
In 1994, Bhargava organised a small festival at the India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi, Basant Utsav, dedicated to Gandharva. He started presenting young, new dancers and musicians. Innovatively designed, the festival had music lovers listening to ragas at the time when they were supposed to be heard. “It wasn’t morning ragas, afternoon ragas and evening ragas all at 6.30 pm. People seemed to like that.”
If innovative design and perfect execution were part of his plan, the main idea was to take music to the masses. “Music, dance and culture in India had for too long been the exclusive preserve of the elite. Shows for a select lot at Kamani, IIC or Siri Fort auditorium. I wanted it to touch many more. The idea was to democratise it. Make it available openly, free and to everyone. No small exclusive theatres.” He wanted to host festivals at public parks, old monuments, surrounded by India’s rich heritage or simply the lush greens.
The food at Lodi is not much to speak of — neither the soup nor the salad can be called exceptional, though service is alarmingly quick. To prolong — and justify — our time at the restaurant, Bhargava orders some green tea.
In the early 2000s, Bhargava was roped in by ITC as its cultural consultant and happened to meet then Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit in 2001. He requested her to let him hold a dance event at a public monument. Once there was political will, things fell into place. In 2002, Bhargava organised his first dance festival, Ananya, with the stunning Purana Quila as the backdrop. “When I first suggested it, I used to get this question a lot: ‘Kaun aayega? Only about 500-600 people in the city might be interested in this sort of a thing’.” Bharatanatyam and Odissi saw larger draws as Kathakali and Mohiniyattam were not familiar territory for most. “But my objective was to expose people to all seven classical forms of dance.”
Things changed quickly. The outdoor setting, the attention to detail (Bhargava says god exists in the details, even offering tubes of mosquito repellant at events to ensure a pleasant viewing), the lovely ambience, the fact that it is free — the Delhi government sponsors many of the events — have all played a role in attracting audiences, young and old, to Ananya, the South Asian Bands Festival (both held at Purana Quila), the Bhakti Utsav and the Delhi Jazz Festival (both held in Nehru Park). For artistes, dancers and musicians, Ananya, with its flawless conception, execution and unique setting, is today an institution in its own right.
Bhargava has slowly carved a niche for himself. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre sought him out to curate the cultural evening during US President Barack Obama’s Delhi visit in January 2015.
As he sips his green tea, Bhargava says that in some ways, his life resembles the Bollywood potboiler he has consciously stayed away from: winding, with unexpected twists and turns. Where it will take him next he doesn’t quite know but it probably won’t be far from his first love.
