A Judgement

Today’s blog comes from a friend’s verdict on me yesterday after a minor/maybe a major altercation with him over a trivial personal issue but unfortunately placed at  a time of the turbulent milieu of my high passion and severe frustration of running a classical dance journal Nartanam. A journal which is highly respected in dance and academic circles, but costs a handsome packet of money in publishing it every quarter of an year; which many want it almost free of cost or complementary. Paying for a subscription of thousand Indian rupees per annum is a terrible expense (discounted price is Rs 750 only, which one spends in one evening watching a movie…); that is not the issue under discussion…. It is that no dancer or dance student has the time to read. Reading on dance by a dancer (though sastra is an integral part of learning and viewing dance) is only when a newspaper carries a review of her/his performance or when Nartanam publishes an article with a picture of the dancer. Many have expressed that if dance is presented in the format of a film news magazine, maybe they would be interested in reading.

Back and Front page of the latest issue of Nartanam- A special on the great Kutiyattam exponent
Late Guru Mani Madhava Chakyar

 Coming back to the verdict of my dear friend; it was, “You have no sense of decorum. You have been really damaged by your past with many complexes….Therefore all your Yoga has not helped you.”

Indeed it has set me thinking.... if I am unable to maintain dignity and decorum in my day to day life and in my efforts to pursue my love; then it is no love at all… especially the love of classical arts…. 

One does not make public, one's troubled past which many of us have in one way or the other locked away…. barring a few who by virtue of a silver spoon of high birth or fortune may never have had a trouble in their entire lives. To be fair to the people in my life …. I shall maintain the anonymity of the alcoholic who is supposed to have damaged my past and induced in me, many complexes…. But I will not shy away from mentioning that I was indeed a severely battered family member of an alcoholic. An alcoholic who is now recovering and who has had the grace and dignity of setting a beautiful example of what grit and strength is, what forgiveness is all about. He has not only built back his own battered life but has assumed all his worldly responsibilities towards everyone he is related to… and even towards people he is not related to.

....and above all, ironically, this recovering alcoholic gives me the assurance when the going gets tough financially at the journal, that he is there to pick up the bills of Nartanam and actually does so every time I run short of funds.

I have often wondered why I do the work I do, write and publish a serious academic journal on Indian dance.  Having spent my youth juggling with the tough deal of cards that life dealt me; ending up completely wrecked and exhausted; where living every new day was an ordeal and was infested with great uncertainty… Did I get suddenly ambitious of becoming a culture vulture and thus schemed and designed my life to become a writer, teacher and publisher of a dance journal, a career which does not pay in India. No, I did not…. I just went about doing what circumstances had led me to, followed my passion and what I believed in.

Now I come to another part of my friend’s verdict …. Sahaja Yoga, a form of meditation. Practicing it gave me immense peace and serenity during my troubled times. It gave me the grace and dignity to deal with things, gave me the qualities of forgiveness, satisfaction, innocence, true seeking of knowledge, a diplomacy and sweetness of voice and approach and above all a sense of self realization. But yoga was soon forgotten as better times arrived and my  focus shifted from my miseries to the “Moha maya” of life and pursuits of worldly love and goals….

Nartanam is one such goal… what if we bring out a world class journal on classical arts? What if it is in a small way, an effort to preserve and propagate our culture? What if it requires the toil and labor demanding sweat and blood? What if it does not pay the writers and the people running it even for their bread? Generating the finances to run it without compromising on the quality of the content is in itself a huge task…. 

And the irony is that a recovering alcoholic… who was no better than the scum of the earth, not long ago, is its patron… He does not believe in supporting a non self sustaining venture…. but has the compassion and the hope  that the journal ought to be given a decent chance to survive…. especially after being taken over in a financially sick condition from the former publisher….

Many luminaries and successful people who are on the board of advisers of Nartanam are rendering their moral support by lending graciously their eminent and renowned names to the journal… there are writers (though very few) who send in excellent writings with no expectation of financial remuneration….God has been benevolent…. Somehow money comes to pay the printers and the writers. Then what is it that bothers me, troubles me, and leads me to behave in frustration while dealing with personal and professional issues, to warrant the comment…

“You have no sense of decorum. You have been really damaged by your past with many complexes….Therefore all your Yoga has not helped you.”

I do not know! But I want to figure out... as anything worth doing ought to be done with grace and dignity… or else it is better not done…there is no place for frustration and palming off my behavior to some relevant/irrelevant factor…. Sahaja Yoga was not to be used as a  mantra for negotiating problems … it was meant  to be a way of life… Her Holiness Shri Mataji  (Dr. Nirmala Srivastava) left behind a simple form of meditation which  has now been thoroughly subjected to scientific exploration  by eminent institutions for holistic health and it has been researched for its impact on aesthetics of a beautiful life and of arts. 

I have written an elaborate book on the spirituality, divinity, aesthetics and spectatorship of classical performing arts and have discovered a theory from a medieval treatise on dance which expounds a mechanism which has been coincidentally, adequately clarified and researched in Sahaja Yoga and the medical fraternity…. And I wanted to publish this book.  Please believe me, I do not have any religious prejudices and my approach to the above mentioned work was purely academic and scientific…

But after my friend’s judgement…. which, after the initial emotional outburst, I am examining clinically…Maybe,  I am neither a worthy author for expounding such profound beauty of classical arts and its theories; maybe I am not worthy of an exalted form of meditation like Sahaja Yoga, and further, maybe, I am not even a worthy editor of a much worthy journal which deals with divinity… with arts... with dance.

I can pray to the almighty to help me in my efforts to spiritually uplift myself which might reflect in every aspect of my personality in ordinary and extra ordinary circumstances of stress, in times of these worldly affairs and passions… .

If only, every person who values his country/ culture/ arts made an attempt to buy and read Nartanam which costs peanuts… I do not have to run from pillar to post seeking donations, advertisements and patronage and grants from government bodies and corporates alike…. 

Readership is the only patronage which can run Nartanam…. We, the people, shall contribute to keep our culture alive…. And then, any amount of toil, failures and frustrations would be worth it.

Strange is my post today which mixes up my personal passions, failings and a larger interest of a non profit venture. My miserable past, I cannot erase…. and will have to deal with the complexes arising from it... and hopefully somewhere I would attain the decorum to carry on with conviction in my beliefs without succumbing to stress and failures.

How does one figure out Kiran Seth?

Before I come to the protagonist of today’s blog I need to mention that I have always, ever since my childhood, wondered what “selflessness” was about? What was meant by the slogan, “Let go let God”? What was “detachment”? What was “forgiveness”? What was “nishkaam karma”? The pious quotes from Bhagwad Gita were a steady drone in the ears during growing up years.

Yes, people around me did possess one or the other exalted qualities mentioned above but to me they failed invariably in some sterling quality or the other. My young mind during growing up years registered that those were the exalted goals which were meant to be preached but do not exist in reality. Only saints are blessed with those qualities and ordinary people cannot be saints. 

Into this milieu of my impressionable mind entered education, success, power, career, cut throat competition and the women’s empowerment, etc.  The last term especially caused a lot of agony personally because I did not understand what it was about… in our homes the women always wielded a lot of influence and commanded respect… they were empowered even if they did not go out for building careers outside home…. The man of the house entrusted the woman with his entire earnings and thus she was financially empowered too! Women in our families were home makers and they did a damn good job of it…. They were like the women characters in our epics that fascinated me for their strength and resilience.

Yes, there is a lot of exploitation and atrocity against women out in the world which one ought to fight back against and thus assert oneself… and I air my voice for them… but I could never see Sita, Draupadi or any other character from the epics as a wronged or a weak woman....

Then entered into my intellect the dimension of reality vs ideology when as an adult I set out to live my life…. as a home maker....I had the fortune of being in constant touch with classical dance and music and other arts which helped me grow… the seeds of which were sown with zeal by my ORDINARY father in his children’s upbringing….

After having mapped my intellectual and emotional inclinations and where they emerge from…..

Let me come back to the protagonist of today’s blog, Kiran Seth, the founder of SPIC MACAY (The Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Amongst Youth) which in the past 3 decades has made a tremendous difference to the country’s youth (how tangible or intangible; is a matter of study in itself) by taking classical music and culture to school children across the country and abroad and making an indelible impact on their young souls. No mean job.

Everyone agrees that our arts are the richest and most enriching as a necessary input to character building which invests one with all possible wisdom; but somehow they always take a back seat in day to day lives.

Set out to study SPIC MACAY as a part of my Senior Research fellowship I came in contact with Kiran Seth and many of the sterling volunteers of SPIC MACAY. A loosely knit structure SPIC MACAY is an example of a baffling movement which no structured government body can ever dream to emulate in propagating classical arts and culture. I will not deal with the finer details of the movement, its operations and its impact here. 

In this post I just want to figure out the persona that Kiran Seth is. Every volunteer whom I had met and interviewed spoke of him in a superlative adulatory tone. Some of them are his hardest critics with respect to his managerial and financial acumen and vociferously point out the flaws in the execution of his ideology, lack of strategy, planning, etc. However their bitter criticism always ends with an emphatic BUT…. He is the driving force of the movement!

Being allergic to hero worship, it was hard for me to take their assessment at face value. However always wary of any researcher’s bias, I went about observing him and talking to him for quite some time now and here is what I have arrived at… A simple summary of him with no IFs and BUTs…

This man is as simple as one can get nearest to the term SIMPLE… He is a very ORDINARY person who MERELY lives the properties of selflessness, detachment and nishkaam karm, does his work without any expectation what so ever. He is driven by single minded devotion to the cause he believes in and owns a super positive outlook with no trappings to distract him. He simply believes in the strengths of the people and places indomitable faith in them and brushes off their weaknesses as inconsequential. A generous dose of humility is a mere extension of his personality.

The only area he does not compromise in is the artistic excellence and brilliance of the artists and their art which is taken by the SPIC MACAY to the youth to enable them to experience a life transforming beauty and doing so with grace and dignity.

He is a leader who has assembled a network of people who are smarter than him in many ways and is an excellent team member and follower in the team which he has put together and inspires.

I think one really cannot figure out Kiran Seth in terms of the words in a lexicon as all analysis leads to the word – SAINT.

I definitely am not a believer in Hero worship! In fact I am allergic to eulogizing a mere man….BUT….