In an age of endless scrolling, shrinking moments of attention, and an overwhelming abundance of content, Indradhanush stands out for its simplicity. More than a storytelling performance, it is an exploration of memory, belonging, and the enduring human desire to find pieces of ourselves in the stories of others.
As Indradhanush concludes the first leg of its India tour following multiple sold-out performances across Mumbai, Delhi NCR, and Bengaluru, Roshan Abbas, Co-founder of Kommune and Creator of Spokenfest, finds himself in a unique position. For over three decades, he has built platforms, festivals, communities, and experiences that have helped others tell their stories. With Indradhanush, however, the storyteller has stepped into the spotlight himself.
What unfolds on stage is not merely a recollection of one man’s journey from Lucknow but a broader reflection on nostalgia, identity, and the enduring power of personal stories. In this conversation with EVENTFAQS Media, Roshan Abbas reflects on the universality of personal narratives, storytelling as an act of preservation, the enduring appeal of live experiences, and why, in an increasingly connected world, a room full of strangers can still feel like a community.
Q. For most of your career, you’ve been the person creating platforms, festivals, and experiences for others. With Indradhanush, you’re the one standing at the centre of the story. Has that shift changed the way you think about live entertainment? What has surprised you most about being the storyteller and the story at the same time?
What surprised me most is how universal the personal becomes. There’s a Martin Scorsese line I love: “The most personal is the most creative.” We often think audiences connect with scale. What Indradhanush taught me is that people connect with specificity. The story of one boy from Lucknow, his family, his mistakes, his dreams, somehow becomes a mirror for hundreds of people sitting in the audience.
When we built festivals and platforms, I was helping others tell their stories. With Indradhanush, I had to trust that my own story was enough. That felt terrifying at first. But audiences don’t respond to perfection. They respond to recognition. They hear something deeply personal and think, “Yeh toh meri kahaani hai.”
Q. Indradhanush begins in Lucknow, but what audiences seem to connect with most is the memory it evokes. At a time when cities are changing rapidly and live entertainment is becoming increasingly global and trend-driven, do you think storytelling has become an act of preservation as much as performance?
See, cities are living things. They’re supposed to change. What storytelling preserves is something deeper—the emotional truth of a place. I would say the fitrat, the swabhav of a place, is what gets preserved through stories, poems, and art.
A city is not its roads or buildings. It’s the people who inhabited it, the habits they carried, the conversations they had, the smells, the sounds, and the rituals that made it unique.
When audiences connect with Indradhanush, I don’t think they’re connecting to my Lucknow. They’re remembering their own. Their own city, their own neighbourhood, their own version of a world that no longer exists.
I remember taking one of my team members, Maitree, to Lucknow with me. As we were walking through its lanes, I asked her, “How does this feel?” She smiled and said, “Ratlam jaisa lagta hai.” Ratlam is her hometown. Somehow, walking through Lucknow had transported her back there.
That’s what Indradhanush does. It takes people home.
Q. You’ve witnessed the evolution of Indian entertainment across radio, television, digital media, and live experiences. At a time when attention spans are shrinking and content is increasingly consumed in fragments, Indradhanush has shown that a 90-minute story told live can still hold a room captive. What do you think explains the enduring appeal of that experience? And what does it tell us about the future of live storytelling?
I don’t actually believe attention spans are shrinking. People will binge a ten-hour series over a weekend. They’ll listen to a three-hour podcast. They’ll spend hours scrolling through content that genuinely interests them. The challenge isn’t duration. It’s relevance.
The reason a live story still works is because it offers something that almost every other medium struggles to provide: presence.
For ninety minutes, everyone agrees to be in the same room, sharing the same experience. No one is skipping ahead. No one is multitasking. No one is consuming it at double speed. There is immense value in that.
The future of live storytelling is actually very bright because we’re living in an age of content abundance and human scarcity. We have unlimited access to information and entertainment, but fewer opportunities to experience something together.
That’s why live storytelling isn’t a trend. It’s a deeply human need.
Q. You’ve spent much of your career building communities around storytelling—through radio, live experiences, and platforms like Kommune. Yet Indradhanush is ultimately a story about one life. In a world where people are more connected than ever but often feel increasingly isolated, what role do you think personal storytelling plays in creating a sense of collective belonging?
The strange thing about personal storytelling is that it starts with one individual experience and ends up creating community.
Someone talks about failure, and suddenly half the room is nodding. When someone talks about grief, people feel seen. Someone talks about self-doubt, and a hundred strangers realise they’ve all been carrying the same feeling.
You don’t need to have lived my life to recognise something in it. That’s what happens in Indradhanush. People come for my story and leave thinking about their own.
In an age of digital connectivity, we’re often surprisingly disconnected. Personal storytelling reminds us that while our circumstances may be different, our emotions are remarkably similar. And sometimes that’s all it takes for a room full of strangers to feel like a community.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Indradhanush is that while it begins with one man’s memories, it rarely ends there. The stories may belong to Roshan Abbas, but the emotions they evoke belong to everyone who has ever longed for home, reflected on a missed opportunity, or searched for a sense of belonging. As audiences continue to discover, the show’s greatest strength lies in its ability to transform the deeply personal into something profoundly collective.
As Indradhanush embarks on the next leg of its journey, the show returns to The Habitat, Khar, Mumbai, on July 18th, before travelling to Lucknow on July 26th, Bengaluru on August 2nd, and the Aditya Birla Centre for Performing Arts on August 9th at 7 PM. While Mumbai marks the continuation of the journey, Lucknow promises something even more special: a homecoming to the city where the story began.
