A festival takes root in Aarey Forest

With nature as its starting point, the Aarey Music Festival is turning attention to the idea of ecological and social wealth

- Tarang Mohnot

(from top) Tarpa performance by Aarey residents; Adivasi activist Prakash Bhoir speaking on human-leopard conflict; and a stall selling pressed flowers.

A month ago, I turned to Instagram to ask fellow Mumbai residents for recommendations on things to do in the city that didn’t involve cafés or bars, sensory overload, or spending unreasonable amounts of money on experiences that can feel hollow. I was imagining nature walks, community gatherings and spaces that make you feel part of something. Did such spaces even exist anymore?

While many offered suggestions, almost as many asked me to share the recommendations. It was a telling indication of how urgently city dwellers seek third spaces: places that are neither home nor work, within a hypercapitalist, consumer-driven urban life.

A week later, I came across news of a pay-what-you-want music festival set to unfold inside Mumbai's Aarey Forest within the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. It felt destined. The three-day gathering was organised by Seeds of Banyan, a volunteer-led collective whose roots trace back to the Save Aarey movement in the later 2010s, when many of its members first crossed paths while protesting the felling of hundreds of trees for the Mumbai Metro project.

“Everything in this world runs on money, but we believe there are different kinds of wealth, like ecological and social wealth,” says Sagar Singh, 32, a member of the collective. He speaks of the widening gap between forest life and city life, especially for children growing up with little contact with nature. For Singh, a Mumbai-based environmentalist and sustainability practitioner, it is paramount, now more than ever, to learn from indigenous communities whose world view sees forests, animals and humans as part of the same living system.