If the crunch of footsteps on barren sand is the beat, then the daily interrogations and stories of joy and sorrows were the melody. The river and its people welcomed Vandita in a loving embrace, and she now pays back gratitude through a song. This is the story of the song.
Vandita and her walking partner, Saurav, walked along the River Luni (Samdari to Pichiyak) as part of our Moving Upstream: Luni Fellowship programme.
Cover photo: Thumbnail of the music video
It started with a joke. It ended with a song. And somewhere in the middle, lies bare the thoughts, people and emotions from one of the biggest adventures of my life.
Two years ago, I, along with Saurav, walked about 150 km in two weeks along the River Luni in Rajasthan. It was overwhelming. There were so many stories to tell, but I was struggling to capture the entirety of my experiences. I just couldn’t articulate it all through my writing.
On a meandering call with Siddharth and Mohit – both of whom anchored the Moving Upstream Luni Fellowship – I mentioned my love for music.
That’s when they asked, mostly in jest but maybe, with a tinge of seriousness: “Why don’t you write a song about the walk.” When the laughter subsided, I told myself: “Why not?”
The idea seemed to release the gates of inspiration. Words and ideas flowed so easily. I’d struggled for weeks to figure out how I would tell the story of the walk, and yet, now, within 15 minutes, I had the lyrics in front of me.
I wanted to capture the essence of the walk: the warmth of strangers and the daily interrogations that followed.
If the crunch of footsteps was the beat of the walk, their incessant questioning was the melody.
“Where are you coming from?”, “Where are you headed?”, quickly followed by, “What caste do you belong to?”
And in their sorrows and joys, the river found a voice for its pain: its shrinking water, cracked riverbed, pits and pools from rampant sand mining and pollution that flowed out of industrial units. At the end of these stories, we were exposed to a warm, kind heart that fed us soul-nourishing food that fuelled our yatra.
The lyrics had to be in the language of the people we met along the way: Marwari, which also happens to be my mother tongue. I had rediscovered the language during the pandemic, when I spent months at home and took it upon myself to fully learn the nuances of the language.
As I wrote to the cadence of my memories, the tune formed in my head. It had to be a tune borne of the earth on which we had done our yatra. For the experience I had at Luni, I wanted to capture the distinct twangs, notes and melodies of Rajasthani Marwari folk music. Anything else just seemed wrong.
The song had started to feel personal. Not just a tribute to the people we’d met, but a part of my identity that I had seemingly rediscovered. I remember the warm days of my childhood where my many cousins and I, all packed and squeezed into the backseat of my bade papa’s Ambassador, would sing along to the Marwari playlist.
It was also in this childhood that I heard my mother humming and singing all sorts of songs: Marwari, Bollywood, and mostly devotional. I grew up listening to this hum, and it is this that I sought to emulate in my own singing.
I reached out to my friend Harshit Srivastava, a master composer. I explained my vision and the composition to him. Soon, he had the track ready for me.
A few months later, I entered a studio in Mumbai. The session lasted two hours. Two hours for a two-minute song! I tried different versions, recorded fillers, was running out of breath, and was getting nervous as the clock ticked away! My energy was fluctuating and the mic captured it clearly. Before our final take, I listened to an old, favourite Marwari song to bring my energy levels up. It took time, but my vision was now a song!
The video took a long time to make. Again, the ideas seemed to be dammed up somewhere within. For months, I did not know what I wanted the video to look like. This time, I took inspiration from others who went on their walk. I saw their photos and videos. The people they met along the way: the grins and warmth. It all came together, as if the photos and videos arranged themselves.
The river and its people took us in and sheltered us. They opened up their houses and hearts to us, to reveal intense beauty and flaws too. This song is a tiny reflection of the walk. I’ll forever be grateful.
Streaming now!
The song is now streaming across all major audio platforms – Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, etc. Just search for ‘Luni Yatra by Vandita Sariya’.
The music video for the song releases at 6pm on Saturday, 2nd May.
Vandita Sariya is a Moving Upstream fellow who spent time walking along River Luni, as part of Veditum’s Moving Upstream Fellowship program along River Luni, that we co-hosted with the School of Public Policy, IIT Delhi, and was supported by Out of Eden Walk & A4Store. To read more about our Moving Upstream project, click here.
If you’d like to commission stories or songs from Vandita, please write to here at vandita.sariya97@gmail.com
If you’d like to commission stories from this walk, please write to Vandita (vandita.sariya97@gmail.com) or email us at asid@veditum.org
Mohit Rao & Siddharth Agarwal mentored and guided the fellows, and have also edited and produced this piece. The Luni Fellowship has been held together in collaboration with Prof. Pooja Prasad.
This piece can be re-published (CC BY-NC-SA) with a line mentioning ‘This was originally published on Veditum’ and a link back to this page. In case of re-publishing, please alert asid@veditum.org
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