Talks, suppers and private screenings · London, the Gulf and Hong Kong
A gathering convened for its own sake — for talk, for verse, for the company of the people in the room. The Persian epics set it against razm, the battle: a king's life was divided between the field and the gathering, and the gathering was where the argument, the poetry and the friendships happened. At the Mughal courts the bazm was the evening assembly, and the poets who held one kept a seat for anyone with something worth saying.
Bazm keeps that idea and little of the ceremony. It is a small house that brings together people from finance, law, the arts and diplomacy around three kinds of evening, each kept deliberately small, so that the conversation is the point of being there.
Bazm is run by Saqib M Ltd, the company behind Le Vernissage Londres.
One speaker, one subject, and then the room. A short address, a few questions, and a discussion I chair, which goes wherever the room takes it. Speakers are drawn from finance, law, economics and the arts: senior professionals sharing their insights.
A single long table and a seating plan drawn with care. The dastarkhwan is the cloth spread for a shared meal; the supper evenings take the name because everyone eats from the same spread and nobody is seated at the edge of it.
Short films shown in private, often with the filmmaker present. Work that rarely reaches a cinema, screened to a small audience and followed by a conversation with the people who made it.