Shabnam Virmani, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, has been exploring the philosophy of Kabir, Shah Latif, and other mystic poets through a deep engagement with their oral folk traditions for close to two decades, ever since the riots of Gujarat in 2002 propelled her on this quest. Her inspiration in this poetry has taken the shape of 4 documentary films on Kabir, a digital archive called Ajab Shahar, writing books, organizing urban festivals and rural yatras, singing and performing herself and infecting students with the challenge of mystic poetry. Her film Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein won the Special Jury Prize at the National Film Awards, 2011.  She has worked on two books 𝘐 𝘚𝘢𝘸 𝘔𝘺𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧: 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘩 𝘈𝘣𝘥𝘶𝘭 𝘓𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘧 𝘉𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘪 (Penguin, 2019) and 𝘉𝘶𝘳𝘯 𝘋𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦: 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘓𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘒𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘳 (upcoming, Aleph). The work of the Kabir Project, housed at Srishti, Bangalore, was given the Sadbhavana Award for contributing to inter-faith understanding by Shri Morari Bapu and Vishwagram Trust in Gujarat in 2016.