A dance to remember ….

devotion |dɪˈvəʊʃ(ə)n|

i. love, loyalty, or enthusiasm for a person or activity

ii.religious worship or observance

They say that a true artist spends his life in pursuit of his chosen artform . A musician seeks harmony in his melodies. A painter’s canvas is the reflection of his mind. A sculptor carves an image from a rough rock. Some say it is madness , some obsession which makes them forget the world around them in this pursuit. The plebeians merely gaze at the outcome of this devotion without realising its depths. I being such a pleb had never thought of this until an impulse made me seize a rare opportunity to escape my daily grind through a ticket to a classical Indian performance. Rare because i had ignored my weekend ritual of a spree of revelry with some friends at our favourite “watering hole”.

It was a Kathak performance in an open air auditorium on a chilly Pune evening. On one end of the stage was an elaborately carved and decorated figurine of Nataraja — the Lord of Dance ,posing in his eternal dance which maintains the Cosmic balance. On the other end the musicians fiddled and made some final adjustments to their instruments. A mellow note of a raga sounded though the soft beats of the tabla and the strums of the sitar. The crowds hushed each other as the lights mellowed and spotlights went on .

The first act was the ‘Raas Leela’ , the fabled communion of Lord Krishna and his fair maidens ,the Gopis. The fables tell of this Leela as a game of hide and seek , dance and the soft seduction of the Gopis by the Lord.

The artist playing Krishna was a young fellow , maybe a couple of years elder to me. But the similarities end there. As he entered with his troupe I could not help but notice how he stood out from everyone else, alone amongst the crowd. There was an tranquil aura around him. His movements were nimble , expressions composed and his laughter serene and joyful. The young maidens played their part perfectly. Dancing , giggling and tapping their ghungroos while young Krishna flitted among their ranks teasing and flirting with them. Each of his movement embodied Krishna’s demeanour. Ah, how he enacted the Lord playing the flute , to the spellbinding music of the flautist. The dance continued in the second part with a celebration of the Bhajan tradition of Maharashtra. With the taps of cymbals , the devotees enacted the farmer pilgrims invoking Lord Vitthal to bless them and take them in His stead. It was pure poetry in motion.

When we think of God and prayer what comes to our mind is a place of worship like a temple ,mosque or a church and some rites and rituals. But I think an artist is the true devotee of God. In his quest to quench his thirst for his art , he is in fact worshipping the Lord in his own way. And what a way that is to celebrate the Lord and his gift of life. Every religion beseeches us into becoming “Purushottam”- the Supreme human and this is exactly what an artist achieves with his every step towards mastery of his art. It is in those moments of recital that we can witness true ‘Sadhana’ or ‘Bhakti’ . Indeed what else could God want from us mortals . What will a stone idol, the physical , non-living , non-sentient image of this God give to a poor soul , in exchange of meagre material offerings or fervent requests. Is is possible that we are created by Him to worship and adore him in form of such ‘Sadhana’ .The pursuit of a single ideal and striving to attain perfection on that ideal. I am sure God could not help but be pleased by such Bhakti , and surely this will radiate through the soul to bring peace and happiness . Just as I witnessed Nataraja smile through his true devotees during the performance .

It reminded me of of the fact that I am blessed to be in a land where more than five millennia of wisdom , sifted, sorted and distilled till an essence human intellect . A land which tended the most fecund and prescient minds which made discoveries in science , spirituality and art for thousands of years while the rest of the world floundered through the dark ages.

How did we lose this ? Why are we still forgetting this? Why do we associate this ancient wisdom with the cursed superstitions and the arcane rituals followed blindly ? Why do we feel that Indian culture is inferior to the Western culture thrust upon us by our erstwhile colonial overlords ? How can we remove this disconnect between our glorious past and confused present and how to realise the depth and relevance of our culture?Why am I not taught to be proud of this ? Taught through actions and thoughts and not by mere lip service and the farce played under the guise of organised religion.

I cannot help but feel proud yet unworthy of this rich and varied heritage. Because in pursuit of superficial material goals we have shunned the cornucopia of knowledge at our disposal. We insult our forefathers who laid the foundations of our culture on the gems they plumbed from the oceans of human intellect. I am sure they did not preach merely renunciation or the act of letting go of everything , but the art of letting go . To let go of avarice , greed , jealousy, violence, hate and other overpowering emotions which cloud our judgement of good and evil and hinder our progress towards being a ‘Purushottam’. They preached Sadhana not Sanyas. They guided us to a juncture where there are no moral burdens of sins or fear of redemption. They told us of Ekam Sat — a Singular destination but multiple paths to approach Him. They taught us how to maintain the resonance between Man and Nature, for one cannot be without the other.

With these thoughts I left the auditorium and mingled back in the chaos of the city’s traffic…