Saturdays at IISc

For those of you who have not been to IISc,first thing is you have to be there.IISc or The Indian Institute of Science is the one of the premier research institutes which produces more research papers than any other institution in India.It has a huge campus with sprawling trees and greenery everywhere.
Every saturday at 10 pm (yes you read it right!), the reading glasses come off and the master of sciences and phd's come out of their labs to lose themselves(or find themselves?) in a combination of music and knowledge.
We are a group of 20 or so enthusiastic Yes+ graduates mostly from  IISc(not me!). We start the satsang  in an open area under the night sky with slight hint of moonlight. The cool breeze and the rustling of leaves under the silvery moonlight sets the stage. We generally start at 10 pm and this is what makes it special.We even have a name for it. "Midnight Satsang." It all started quite accidently about 2 years ago but  was revived about two months ago after a big gap.It will require a different post to do justice to the early days so will write about that later.

 

 

 

It has been going on for about 2 months now. And it is a great combination of music,meditation and knowledge. Singing under the moonlight surrounded by greenery everywhere has a flavour of its own.
We start with singing some devotional tunes(the usual fantastic satsang songs) and depending on the mood I like to give a taste of some nice hindi melodies or some soothing english numbers. When the mood is electric, we play exciting games(you have to be here to find out which ones).And I have introduced some innovative games of my own which worked fantastic.
Ram and Kapil are special invitees most of the time. Ram thrills us with his guitar acumen and Kapil with his enigmatic silence.We also have a brilliant tabla player 'Aman' who has as of yet not done the course but was so impressed with our singing the other week that he decided to join us.He amazing and quickly learnt to flow with the  flow of Satsang.

In short the weekly IISc satsang is something we look forward to every weekday. It is like a rest after a week's work and to lose ourselves in the music, the silence, and the knowledge.

If you live in bangalore or happen to be here don't miss out on coming to IISc on Saturday eve's.