The room was packed. The lights were warm. The tabla was slowly picking up the pace. And suddenly, the pitch went off, and Aditya Singh, tabla artist and engineer, swiftly pulled out a small hammer, and started fixing his instrument. The audience broke into applause and unknowingly clapped the same four beats. This wasn’t planned.At the Upstairs Immersive, a fest curated by Sukanya Banerjee and Tejas Jaishankar, the room followed the rhythm of a raag — a space defined by rules, but not designed by them. Where the sessions had a structure, the conversations often did not; where quantum physics, gharanas, and Instagram filters were discussed in the same breath; where mistakes were simply opportunities to experiment.“It’s [a raag] like a football field, where boundaries are in place, but how you play depends on you,” said Banerjee while explaining what a raag means to an audience who were primarily those with no background in Indian classical music. Banerjee and Jaishankar are co-founders of Upstairs With Us, a ticketed home-concert initiative that is designed to create an immersive experience for those curious about Indian classical music.As a group of curious listeners, we turned the fest into a raag. And I saw it pan out in three distinct phases over the course of two days, on February 21 and 22, at Delhi’s Colabitat.Introducing the notesIt starts slow.In the dimly lit hall, a handful of visitors walked in, and found their place: some occupied the front row, some sat on the stools at the back, and a few moved into the corner. The setting almost looked like a boundary in the initial hours. Everything felt unfamiliar, just as it does when a raag commences.You know the basics, but you don’t know where to go, and what to feel about it. “Mai kya bajaane wala hu, mujhe khud nahi pata (I don’t know what I am going to play today)”, said Singh. As an audience, we were clueless too. The invite cards didn’t have an artist bio. “Their art speaks for themselves. They don’t need to be introduced,” said Banerjee. Sukanya Banerjee and Tejas Jaishankar, co-founders of Upstairs With Us. Photo: Kaif.As the day progressed, the conversations moved from rhythm and raag to stories and insights. It somehow didn’t feel like a fest; it was more intimate, up close and personal — not the words you typically hear in an Indian classical music setting .“Often, when you go to fests and [Indian classical music] concerts, you feel out of place if you aren’t familiar with the art form. I did too. But with Upstairs, we’re trying to change that. Anyone can listen to it,” said Jaishankar, rolling down carpets and adjusting the mics.More visitors walked in, the gate outside was now lined with shoes, sandals, and chappals of varying sizes and shapes. The room was gearing up for the next session: How can we train our ears to become better listeners?The white board behind spoke of graphs (Fourier’s theorem) and images (ear diagram) one had never seen or heard of in a similar setting. The room – and the raag – was now slowly morphing into something far more complex, and intricate.And with that, we entered the second phase of reading a room like a raag.Playing with the rhythm and soundsWhen you start listening to a raag, you take some time to recognise the patterns, the signature notes, but after a point, the singer starts playing with your mind. It’s a game of smart manipulation. You are tricked into believing something and you predict the next steps, but the singer catches you there, and plays something else altogether. That’s what happened in the room too. Singh, the tabla player, took a lot of time to return to the sam, the origin of a rhythmic cycle. He kept us waiting. He was playing in one direction, and then was gently moving into another, catching us randomly at unexpected places. But what he did – repeating the same pattern and also breaking it – is how most artistes perform. In a session, speakers Mallika Banerjee, Shreya Aggarwal, and Jaishankar dissected the importance of repetition in Indian classical music, and how our brain responds to it.Tejas Jaishankar breaking down Fourier’s Theorem on Day 2 of the fest. Photo: Tanya Jha“The brain is constantly making predictions, and when it encounters something unexpected — like a surprising sound — it can trigger a feeling of pleasure,” said Jaishankar. In the middle of setting patterns and breaking them, artists also evoke a range of emotions. One moment you feel confused; the next, reflective; and by the end, sometimes you find your eyes welling up. It’s an emotional arc: you take the listener from a reflective mood to a state of conflict and confusion, and eventually to a state of bliss.Shatakshi Mishra, who performed on the last day of the fest, took us through the same beats. Both in one raag, but also throughout all her performances: she started with a pensive Madhubanti, moved into a slightly happier yet melancholic Shuddh Sarang, and ended with a Bhairavi Thumri ‘Baabul mora naihhar chhuto ri jaaye’.Just like a raag that starts slow, but later wanders into many directions, the discussions in the room meandered from the basics of what constitutes a raag, to the science of listening and repeating (riyaaz) and later to a fun ragewatch session where we laughed together at the hilarious representation of Indian classical musicians in popular imagination. Here’s one of the many clips: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Shatakshi Mishra (@classicalvocal_shatakshi)Closing the loopWhile you may internalise the grammar of a raag, you can’t always predict its presentation, and in the same vein, you can’t predict the mistakes. They are bound to happen. At the fest, a beat or two were missed on stage, the tabla had to be tuned a few times, and there was an off note (a kansura) walking among the audience (If you were there, you’d have easily guessed).Similarly, off stage, the lights went off for a minute or two, the remote went missing in between, the projector wasn’t casting the way we wanted, and the sessions went beyond their allocated time slots. But the fest didn’t stop, it continued.The room wasn’t on the same page at every single point. There were disagreements, there were debates, and there were opinions that came from various vantage points. Even structurally, the format could have incorporated a few more sessions that actively engaged and involved all the participants, to make it more immersive. But that’s what the space offered: for emotions, thoughts and questions of all kinds to co-exist.Audience at the Upstairs Immersive fest. Photo: KaifEven in a raag, an artist might drift off-key. However, they either integrate the deviation into the performance or find a way to pivot seamlessly back to the track. While they eventually return to the sam (the first beat) to close the loop, the performance, if plotted, would not look like a simple circle. Instead, it might look like a Fibonacci spiral; you return to the centre, but you never end exactly where you began.“I signed up for the fest thinking that it will be about music, but it was much more than that,” said Adrika, one of the volunteers at the fest. Unlike the popular perception, Indian classical music isn’t fundamentally restrictive and rigid. It can be, much like other art forms, re-imagined and reinterpreted. It’s a concept that aids you in giving meaning to sounds, and assigning labels to feelings. But it all depends on you, and how you see it both as a performer, and a listener. At the fest, some walked out with new friends added to their contact list, some with wobbly diagrams in their notepads, and most with a lingering curiosity.As for me, as a listener and a practising musician, I collected the bits and pieces of everything I heard and observed, and turned my afterthoughts into this piece.My takeaway: I now see raag everywhere.Tanya Jha is a communications professional based in Delhi. She also volunteers with Upstairs With Us.