Here’s what you can expect at Shoonya – The Festival of Nothingness

The winding highway to Rishikesh’s Neelkanth Temple Road leads to Camp Brook, a luxury camping stay with cottages and tents, where a gamut of spiritual adventures awaits a crowd of 158 people. This is the venue for this year’s Shoonya – The Festival of Nothingness. Tracy Chapman’s tune ‘Fast Car’ stops midway when the destination arrives, just in time for the drumming session.

“The idea of Shoonya came out of a discussion on life between a group of friends and me. Everyone was feeling some discontentment. We wanted to create a space where people could escape into nothing and meet other people without any purpose — thus the name shoonya (which means zero). There’s no apparent narrative of wellness or healing associated with the festival. The first edition of Shoonya was held in Jibhi in 2018,” says Anuj Aggarwal, one of the founding members of Shoonya Festival. Other members include Manu, Saksham Ghiya, Rachna Ghiya, Aayush Sharma and Sagar Agrawal.

Guests at the activity groud of Camp Brook
| Photo Credit:
Manish Suryavanshi/Shoonya

This year marks the ninth edition of the three-day festival that features many activities or sessions, from art therapy to breath work meditation and sound bath healing to mindful journaling. Previously, Shoonya had been held in Jibhi, Bir, Pushkar, Kunkhet, Jaipur, Goa and Chamba. It is organised by Jaipur-based company called Shoonya Experiences, which is founded by Anuj, Manu and Saksham. “It’s a for-profit company, but till now we have not made any profit. We do not have sponsors, but we do have in-kind partners,” Anuj explains.

Starts with something

The drumming session, conducted as a drum circle, invites you to beat the drum. Seated on chairs arranged in three concentric circles, everyone picks a djembe each and begins drumming. Facilitator Shreya Thakur orchestrates the jam, assigning rhythmic patterns to participants by splitting the circles in quarters and halves. Everyone blends in. The drumming intensifies. It is tea time. Some leave their instruments and head to the stall near the property’s kitchen which dishes out vegetarian meals. For the evening, there are pakodas, tea and coffee. Others keep the tempo going and continue beating the drums. They are joined by dancers and a couple of flow artistes who spin the dapostar (an eight-sided spinning cloth with a large range of moves). In conversations spilled over tea, the complaints of numb hands are uttered in the same breath as the sighs of relief.

Drum circle
| Photo Credit:
Manish Suryavanshi/Shoonya

“We just want people to take a pause from their busy lives and connect with their inner selves, other people, without any judgements and in a safe place. We want them to explore many activities and take with them a thought that they could ponder on,” Anuj shares. Somewhere between existential and experiential, this non-judgemental, safe space comes at a price that starts at ₹5,999 per person. There is a full-bearded, long-haired Indian man with the sartorial sensibilities of a westernised hippie, a Netherland-born, Jaipur-based, clean-shaved blonde man in Indian clothes, and a grey-haired aged man who most people are addressing as ‘uncle’ — all in one frame.

Anuj Aggarwal at Shoonya Festival
| Photo Credit:
Manish Suryavanshi/Shoonya

The music flows to Camp Brook’s rear ground that faces river Heval. A fusion of sarod, hand pan and electric guitar, a trio named Sarod Mysticstakes inspiration from Indian classical ragas and regales the crowd through the evening.

A bit of everything

With rain, clouds and sun playing hide and seek the second day begins on a pensive note at the 7.30am breath-work session. The big circle breaks into tinier circles where participants share their main takeaways from the session. Some break down, others smile. The session is followed by ice bath. Rhythm Malhotra, a Gurugram-based business and embodiment coach, who mediates both the sessions says, “For the ice bath, we keep the water’s temperature between five and seven degrees. The natural response to ice bath is fight or flight, so when one is connected to his/her body through breath work, it prepares one’s mind and body. ”

Bhushan regales the audience with a fire juggling show
| Photo Credit:
Manish Suryavanshi/Shoonya

She also talks about the mandatory precautions one must exercise before taking an ice bath, which is not recommended for people with heart conditions, pregnancy or epilepsy. “We get a waiver signed by the festival organisers before conducting ice bath sessions,” she adds. Another reason to excuse yourself from the icy dip near river Heval is hygiene, especially if you do not like the idea of dipping into the same foldable bathtub that has been used by over 10 people. However, Tushti Thakur from Delhi enjoyed the session and calls it “exhilarating”. “I could feel the negative emotions and tension wash away,” she says.

The rain pushes the martial arts session to a hall where a nunchaku (a widely used martial arts weapon in Southern Chinese Kung fu, Okinawan Kobudo and karate) practitioner, called Grey, takes the participants through the practice. Those who prefer subtle movements take to Bhushan’s poi-juggling session, where he enunciates the nuances of body movement through juggling. Those at the dance session stand acquainted with movements that define flow, chaos, staccato, lyrical and stillness. For the ones who like practicing mindfulness, there are sessions on journaling, creative writing and communication.

Anything but nothing

“We choose facilitators who fit into the concept of Shoonya and who wish to experience the festival while conducting their sessions too. We do sound bath, Chinese whisper, breathwork and blindfold often, but our list of sessions change with every edition,” says Anuj, who curates the sessions with Manu. “The sessions are designed in a specific flow with activities that complement each other,” he adds. He stresses on other points that are crucial to the festival’s curation — location and people. “We like to host the festival at a place that is close to Nature,” he says. He tells us that this edition took nearly seven months to curate and has witnessed maximum participation. “This is the first time we had over 100 participants. Nearly 30% are regular guests who have been associated with us since 2010.”

Ankit, a festival-goer, poses with his daughter Anayaa
| Photo Credit:
Manish Suryavanshi/Shoonya

One such person is Mukta Basandani, a Jaipur-based mindset coach, who says that she has been associated with the festival for seven years. “But this was my first time as a facilitator. In my session, I guided participants to write with intention, starting with gratitude and scripting their dreams as if they had already come true. My husband and I brought our kids (aged 11 and six years) along and they thoroughly enjoyed every activity, from nunchaku to art sessions. In today’s stressful times, I feel such experiences are essential,” she says.

Another guest travelled all the way from Dubai. Kanchan Gurbux, a business development manager with Ernest & Young, says, “This is my second time at Shoonya. I got to know about it through my cousins. This festival allows me to cut off from my daily routine and allows me to be with myself while meeting new people and learning new experiences. I particularly loved the blindfold activity where I shared my personal feelings with an absolute stranger and that person gave me a new perspective on my feelings.”

The blindfold session at Shoonya
| Photo Credit:
Manish Suryavanshi/Shoonya

At Shoonya, with sights and sounds galore, amidst people known unknown, lies a blank canvas of time and space that only you can paint with your thoughts, experiences, emotions, consciousness and perhaps by your very being. In times of trouble, you can always fall on Sartre and Martin Heidegger’s musings on nothingness, delve into quantum field theory that suggests vacuum is filled with virtual particles, or reflect on Indian philosophical traditions, like Sunyata, linked to Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. Enter the void!

The writer was in Rishikesh on the invitation of Shoonya – The Festival of Nothingness .