It was during their annual spoken word festival in January that the organisers at Kommune witnessed an overwhelming response to the shayari of veteran Urdu poet and lyricist Rahat Indori. "Imagine young listeners learning to say 'wah wah' as Rahat Indori did, what I would call, his swag on stage. It then struck us: could this era of emojis be missing the warmth of Urdu and Hindustani?" recalls Tess Joseph, a director of the artistes' collective. And that's how the idea of Mehfil, an evening of spoken word performances and recitals in the mellifluous languages, was born.

The event this Saturday will see contemporary lyric, dialogue and screenplay-writer Kausar Munir; singer-songwriter Ankur Tewari; performance poet, lyricist and screenwriter Hussain Haidry, and gender rights activist Sabika Abbas Naqvi among other artistes take the mic. Indori will sign off the evening with a recital.