Mehfil-e-Mumbai – The Heart of KScope’26
Sophia College’s Kaleidoscope returns for it’s 2026 edition on 3rd and 4th October. This year, the theme of the festival honours the intrinsic legacy that the event shares with the city, aptly titled Mehfil-e-Mumbai.
We spoke to Kimaya Fadnavis and Sannidhi Bommanpad, two writers among the team behind Kaleidoscope to understand the driving force behind the theme. Here’s their insight:
Mumbai: A Palimpsest
Bombay and Mumbai. The old and the new. What is the difference? Does it even really matter? Why do some call it Bombay and some call it Mumbai? This eternal game of tug and war between the past and the present is what makes this city so mesmerizing.
Mumbai is a macrocosm of personal histories, as well as a microcosm of collective histories past. A living, breathing, sentient entity that becomes one with its people, learning and unlearning with them in lockstep.
Is it Bombay or Mumbai? It is whatever you want it to be. It is both archaic and contemporary. Steeped in tradition as well as breathtakingly modern. Haunted with Gothic edifices as well as soaked in glamorous Art Deco.It’s a symphony of contradictions and juxtapositions stemming from its momentous days of yore, the land of promise adorned with a paroxysm of ideas, a land where every compatriot walks on paths beset with palm trees and pruned roses, a land where one finds serenity in recklessness.Something that has been a silent echoing rhythm for the atmosphere and culture of Kaleidoscope.
The fest embodies diversity and nurtures legacy. This year, the theme, Mehfil-e-Mumbai, feels almost instinctive: a gathering of voices and generations. It feels like Mumbai on a platter; an archive of old memories and newer voices, of hazy visions once cocooned within a dream.
Kaleidoscope revels in artistry and holds the veracity of a performer in motion. The glorious building and unfolding of the festival belongs to the innumerable people who make it possible. Like waves of a tidal sea, each generation tries to be seen, roaring in the distance before fading into an echo as the next takes over. This impermanence is what sets the city and this fest apart: the accretion builds over time, each note gathering into the crescendo of this play called Mumbai, with Mehfil-e-Mumbai as its backdrop, its centrefold.
Kaleidoscope, this year, envisions to recreate the essence of both; old and new Mumbai, a reflection of not only how Mumbaikars inhabit the city, but also, how the city inhabits them. The performances, music, poetry and melody bind together unique voices which revere the city and carry a piece of it in their hearts. Maybe reinvention was never about starting over, but carrying forward what we already have.
Kaleidoscope 2026 begins on October 3, bringing a new cycle of reinvention into place.
