Mr. Sanjoy Roy
Crisp, clean air, forests flanking either side, we drove up a winding road to the gates of Jaigarh Fort. It was striking to think that centuries ago this very fort served as the first line of defence for the Dhundhara family, the official name of the erstwhile royal family of Jaipur. Jaigarh is not a palace—it is a fort built with the sole purpose of keeping enemies at bay. Yet, for the duration of a weekend, it transforms into the venue for the Jaigarh Heritage Festival. Built heritage in India is rarely accorded the respect or care it deserves, which makes the festival within its rugged walls all the more meaningful and special.We had the chance to speak with Sanjoy Roy, the visionary art entrepreneur behind Teamwork Arts, who, in collaboration with Sawai Maharaja Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur, brought the Jaigarh Heritage Festival to life.
The Manganiyars
Have your early experiences growing up on Gooptu Lane shaped your perspective on built heritage? If so, how have those experiences informed your collaboration with Sawai Maharaja Padmanabh Singh on the Jaigarh Heritage Festival?
I have always loved old buildings and palaces and regret that I persuaded our parents to rebuild their art deco home in Calcutta. Gooptu Baari was always part of the memory landscape tinged with nostalgia as have been so many places in Edinburgh and London which have always inspired me. That sensibility informed the Jaigarh Heritage Festival in a very natural way. In working with Sawai Maharaja Padmanabh Singh, our shared intent was to let the fort speak - to animate its courtyards and ramparts through music, craft, conversations, and movement, allowing heritage to be experienced rather than observed. Jaigarh became a living, breathing site of cultural exchange, where past and present could meet with ease and authenticity.
What is your vision for the Jaigarh Heritage Festival?
To bring the stone walls to life. Places like this hold so many stories waiting to be told, yet we don’t relate to built heritage to a large extent, to places like this (Jaigrah Fort) without something that brings it alive. The idea behind using the arts is to create value for for built heritage and to attract people with food, conversations, music and then make them to understand, ‘wow, what an amazing place this is’.
That’s exactly what happened with so many people who came to the concerts yesterday in the evening. The reaction was, “Oh my God, we’ve never seen it like this.” And that’s the point.
So next time, perhaps, when they come or when they're faced with built heritage, hopefully it'll give them a somewhat different sense of what it is, especially in terms of respect, preservation and conservation like keeping it clean, you know, just the basics. A step at a time.
Manganiyar Seduction
What's a takeaway that you want spectators to go back with, from Jaigarh Heritage Festival?
Sense of history, the stories waiting to be told. Every corridor has a story, many memories of love, of betrayal, of trust, of war, of anger, of everything. But these are stories. So share your stories, be part of that story, be part of this enormous built heritage that other people created. We have a responsibility to look after it.
What direction do you see TeamWorks 30 plus years on?
When we set up Teamwork about 37 or 38 years ago, this was really the core idea: could we create value for the arts as a company? It was around then when Puneeta, my wife, and I decided to get married, my father-in-law asked me, “So what do you do?” I said, “I do theatre.” He replied, “No no, what’s your day job?” Around the same time, my father would ask Puneeta, “My eldest son is a nuclear physicist, an economist. How should I introduce my younger son to my colleagues and friends?”
That’s where the idea came from. Could we create a place that shows the arts, like any other profession; baking or retail, that the arts too can be a profession and for people to join. As we are seeing more and more today, within the arts management space, within particular kind of arts and artists, people are looking at them as a profession.
Yes, the issue is that if you are going to join the arts, it's really a lifestyle choice. If you want a yacht and a jet then this is not the place to be. But if you want something that's exciting, that'll keep you alive and so on and so forth, fire your soul and your brain and your mind and your energy, then this is what it is.
That’s how we talk about it. And you know, Harvard teaches a course on us, being one of the fastest growing arts brands in the world. They say we had a 5 and a 10 year and a 15 year vision. Not necessarily, much of it happened by accident in the way that accidents happen. Organically and as accidents. Doors opened, doors closed. Sometimes we walked through them, sometimes we didn’t. That’s how it has been.
Shyopat Julia
How has it changed since you started?
It's completely different. I mean, today the arts is deemed to be a profession. You know, we have so many of these bodies, you know, I sit as the co-chair of FICCI in the culture and arts and creative economy.
EMA, I used to be its president, which represents the larger entertainment and arts and corporate and wedding industry, etc. These are now very professionalised, there's huge amounts of money riding on it. You know, you're looking at 1.3 billion dollars as an estimation of just one aspect of it, which is the wedding economy in the country.
Now, if you look at concerts and festivals, that's growing, at a completely different level. Yes, it's taken time. You know, it took us nine years of lobbying to get the prime minister to make a statement saying this economy, the creative economy and the music concert economy is here to stay and every state government should look at how best to position it.
Delhi, for example, has completely opened up its arts policy. Even 10 years ago, we went to court against Delhi police because they said we shouldn't be doing anything in Delhi. And we won that particular case.
Making sure that people realise that it's their responsibility to make cities, if you're saying a city is international, then you must bring arts and creativity and innovation in it. If you want to drive an innovation economy, you need creativity. It can't be without that. So the arts has to be at the very base of anything that India wants to do, to be a creative or a service sector economy, which it's, you know, making an effort to do so.
What's one life lesson you would like everyone to learn from?
Follow your passion, follow your instinct.
I followed my instinct a lot of the time, for good or for bad. I’ve walked away from projects that seemed to be absolutely amazing. But at that point of time, it was just an instinct, walked away from it. And later in hindsight, thank God we did because of the way that project played out, etc.
But it's really about passion. If you have something that fires you, go out and do it. Yes, the world is not an easy place, the world is difficult to navigate, but as long as you're true to yourself, whatever that means and understand that each one of us has a responsibility to the only place that we know, that we all call home, which is our planet. We have to be responsible for that.
We have to be responsible for looking after it, preserving it. Otherwise, the planet will not continue. The human race would have wiped itself out of existence because of the way that we think that everything is limitless.
Would you like to spend your day reading a book? Or a day at the festival?
I can do both. I can listen to stories here at the festival and buy a book at the festival and read it when I go back home. So both. It's not and/or question. It's both on the same day.
Words Samiksha Sharma
12.01.2026