SOLD OUT THE REAL STORY BEHIND INDIA'S BIGGEST CELEBRATIONS

BEYOND RITUALS AND CROWDS, HERE'S A CLOSER LOOK AT HOW FESTIVALS POWER SPENDING, SHAPE TRAVEL, AND SUPPORT LIVELIHOODS ACROSS MODERN INDIA

- Words ROOPLEKHA DAS

I WAS NUMBER 999,999+ IN the queue. I know this because BookMyShow told me so, with the kind of cheerful precision that only software can deploy while delivering genuinely bad news. It was a Sunday morning in September 2024, and I had decided this was the moment to buy Coldplay tickets, like the rest of the country.

I did not get the tickets, obviously. Neither, it seemed, did most of India. BookMyShow crashed with all tickets selling out within 30 minutes. Resellers materialised within minutes, offering the same tickets for the price of a modest holiday. I found myself thinking—when did this happen? When did a concert become something you needed a strategy for?

The answer is that it didn't happen suddenly at all. India has been quietly building one of the most extraordinary festival economies in the world, and most of us were too busy being inside it to notice.

THE MAJOR SHIFT IN TOURISM

Think about how you travelled five years ago. Or ten. A long weekend meant a hill station or a beach. Festivals were things you attended if you happened to be in the right place at the right time. Now the Ziro Festival of Music sells out its limited 10,000 spots months in advance, with people booking flights to Arunachal Pradesh, before they have sorted their accommodation. The Jaipur Literature Festival turns the Pink City into a carnival every January, with every hotel, from five-star to budget, fully booked for the same five days. And Hornbill in Nagaland has people planning December trips a year out.

Indians have started travelling to festivals rather than stumbling into them, and that small change in preposition has built an economy so large it is difficult to hold in your head all at once.