ART IN THEIR HEART

(published in the Speaking Tree, Times of India, Oct’2015)

A trip to a country rich in cultural experiences is postponed long by a family with small kids. So when my little ones became old enough to know the difference between Kathakali and Flamenco, and recognize a painting by Van Gogh or Picasso, I knew it was time to go to Italy. As a classical dancer from a land so rich in culture, I wanted to examine just why this powerful religious space was also reckoned as the cultural capital of the world.

Yet I knew that every country is so vast as a cultural experience, one cannot do justice to it in a few weeks. So we zoomed into the Amalfi coast. The exquisite coastal beauty of the Amalfi coast is much talked about in all travel magazines. As we drove into the coastal stretch on our taxi ride from Naples, I confess of being a bit wary. Was this to be like any sunny, beach experience in Europe? How was it any different from an Antalya or Malaga? The week that followed silenced my inner critic and replaced it with great admiration for a cultural community so proud of its heritage. The Amalfi coast had not just natural beauty but also people so warm and engaging, they knew the art of living, of how to take a pause. They lived a conscious life, responsible to their natural environment and joyously celebrating their artistic heritage in their daily lives.

The Amalfi coastline is full of green hills, dotted with small villages or towns that present their own vantage point of the landscape. So if Positano and Praiano are villages  which give you gorgeous, sunset sea views, Maori and Minori are villages right on the beach, close to the sea with lovely promenades and cobbled-street towns.

As a contrast, there are villages high on the hills, like Ravello and Tramonti, world famous for their own specialties. Ravello is called the city of music, where international music concerts happen in historic Roman villas. We had the fortune of attending a ‘String Quartet’, where on their violins, viola and cello the artistes treated us to pieces composed by the 19^th c. classical musician Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Such is their fierce musical pride that the entire concert note only mentioned the details of Bartholdi’s life and compositions. The audience only knew the names of the magician-like musicians, who created waves upon waves of musical delight for our ears.

Ravello has such concerts in historic settings all through summer and even hosts a magical sunrise concert in an open-air stage that is the most breathtaking, ocean-overlooking, mountain- perched experience of music possible. Nature becomes the perfect setting for a spectacular moment created by artistes who have dedicated their whole life to an instrument.

Tramonti in the hills, is the name for a village famous for its wines. ‘Tramonti’ in Italian is the area between the mountains, and this village produces the most remarkable full-bodied wine in Italy. Apart from the numerous grape orchards seen all over Amalfi mountains, is the ubiquitous presence of the lemon tree. In every Amalfi town and village, and even inside hotels there are lemon groves in full blossom. Surrounded by so many lemons, hanging over our heads in a balcony overlooking the sea, I found myself humming ‘the Lemon Tree’ song by the group Crowded House! These big, luminous yellow lemons have pervaded the Amalfi landscape and culture such that there is beautiful representation of them everywhere : in endless ceramics, lemon ice-cream and the famous Amalfi limoncello!

But more than these tactile, visual moments was a hidden gem-like quality about the Amalfi coast : how everyone celebrated the arts and rejoiced in every form of it! While walking to the beach, we came upon an old tower by the sea, and went up to find the artist Paolo Sandulli working in it as his studio. From there he painted and sculpted the sea life and the beautiful coved beach of Marina di Praia. We walked back to the hotel with a painting of the beach, and my son was thrilled that the artiste wrote a special note for him in his catalogue. The artiste in the tower, will always be a special memory for us, a coming together of history and art!

In Italy as well as the Amalfi coast there are many such rich moments: where the taxi drivers describe their coastal villages like a history professor, rich with anecdotes and stories; where every town has a space where they organize musical concerts for all, to the extent that they even have a special city of music! Children are not charged in many historic sites like Pompeii, to encourage them to explore their history through architecture, and even the airport in Rome is named after their cultural icon Leonardo di Vinci and not any recent political figure.

 For what is art, but a sensitivity towards our environment, a higher level of consciousness, where nature appears more alive than ever, and pervades every cell of our being. In such moments iconic musicians like Richard Wagner created symphonies in Ravello and geniuses like Leonardo di Vinci found ideas about the universe appearing on to his sketchbook. Artistes create from their world of ideas in not just beautiful surroundings, but a rich social climate where the community takes pride in their ideas as their own. They know very well that artistes and scientists are forever engaging with the mysteries of the universe. Italy, especially the Amalfi coast, is a space which is inspired in this respect, forever celebrating their identity, as one with all the arts and artistes that reside in it. 

Baul of Joy 

The last post of Sama and Sangeet, was a thought that beautifully flows into this post. A thread of continuity that reminds me of the universal need to find the spiritual self in all forms of art. We had the rasa-soaked oppurtunity to invite home Baul singers from Bengal to play their devotional songs from our earthy, folk roots. It feels to me like folk culture of our country is really connected with the deeper rhythms of the universe, sacred yet personal. 

So this evening came up, and the Baul singers in their simplicity and unaffected manner, sang their way into the heart of every individual gathered there. Dressed in Saffron like yogis, they sang mysterious melodies from deep layers of time. Their philosophical songs took us deep into a musical forest and showed us the glowing fireflies on every tree. Each light lit up the flame in our hearts brighter and deeper, till everything dissolved into nothing. 

The evening was a live understanding of Bauls as spiritual fakirs quite like the Sufi saints. The Bauls believe in a state of 'free mind', not 'no mind', as one has to live in the world with all its worldly duties. And this word Baul derives from the bengali words 'Vatul'(mad) or 'Vyakul'(restless). The Bauls sang with their quest and made it joyous, blissful and a very altered state of being. 

To the Bauls we are all gifts of divine power and the body is a temple. Music and dance are the path to connect to that power. Their philosophy is 'Deha Tattva' , i.e. spirituality of the body. It is indeed beautiful to have spiritual practices in our Indian tradition that completely bring together the physical and spiritual planes in a state of deep union. 

Their instruments are nature-rich : the percussion instrument being the khol, made entirely of mud. It had to be made wet with water for the earth in it to sing. The string instrument Dotara was a beautiful fret-less instrument that sang each note with the human voice. And the unique string instrument Ananda- lahiri, had strings that were pulled out of a small, open dhol and strummed with a large stone pick. Ananda lahiri means waves of bliss, that is a befitting name for Baul Sangeet as it really spreads bliss with its light of awareness. a glimpse of their waves of bliss:

Of sangeet and sama 


In the process of teaching my son, I came up on the definition of 'sangeet' in Indian classical music. It said that sangeet consists of the coming together of gayan(vocal), vadan(instrumental music) and nritya(dance). It amazed me to find dance there in the middle of defining music. In common man terms, heavily influenced by the western notions, 'music' and 'dance' are two connected yet seperate defintions of art forms. Then 'sangeet' sounded like a novel concept, where all three arts came together!

And 'sangeet' as my dance Guru explained was something very dear to God, a means of aaradhna, reaching closer to God. In aaradhna, as a prayer, all these forms of expression came together to reach out to God. How easily this idea has been understood in not just Indian classical traditions, bhakti sangeet and also the Sufi tradition of sama, where divinity is powerfully experienced through these mediums. The practice and the understanding of this path, unlocks the self to an unlimited state of being, where divinity is one strong presence.

One such new space I discovered lately is the shrine of the reknowned Sufi saint Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki. In a walk into Mehrauli village, just behind my locality of Vasant Kunj, lies this powerful space of divinity. The shrine of one of the four of the most important Sufi saints in India. Bakhtiar Kaki was the saint for whom, a sulphur water baoli (step well) was created by the emperor Iltutmish , and the last mughal king Bahadur Shah Zafar left a little patch of grass where he wanted to be buried, near his spiritual guru Bakhtiar Kaki's shrine. Unfortunately, the British exiled him to Burma and he was not meant to enjoy that privilege. Till date, a month before the Urs festival, sufis from all over India congregate first at Bakhtiar Kaki's shrine for a three day festival. It is only after paying their respect there that they head towards Ajmer, for the shrine of khwaja Moinuddin Chishti.

The Sufi mystic Bakhtiar Kaki was known for his love for the Sama mehfils and organised or attended them regularly.
It is interesting to note that his last few days were closely connected to a sema he experienced. At the sema he heard the following verses:
" Those who are slain by the dagger of surrender, 
Receive every moment a new life from the unseen."
Khwaja Bakhtiar Kaki was so overcome and enraptured by these verses that he fainted away. He died four days later while still in that state of ecstasy.



photos credit: Imtiaz khan

The Dance of Trees -2

It is the dance of trees, their poetry that inspired my sister Swaati and me to create a dance moment on ‘trees in Indian classical dance’. We danced dances where the trees set the mood -  Mango tree was the minister of vasant ritu, as the koel came to sing on it, and its fruit and blossoms spread a rich fragrance. In this environment on a full moon night, sakhi urges Radha to go meet Krishna near the banks of the Yamuna river. No mango tree has looked the same to me ever since I learnt this dance. In spring I go up and smell the leaves and blossoms of every mango tree I find, wondering when the koel bird will come and enjoy its rasa!

In another dance, the Jamun tree became the playground for Krishna and his friends to relish jamuns while climbing its branches and shaking every branch with merry abandon. As they climb trees and feast on the jamun, Krishna sees Radha coming, and discreetly motions to her to meet near the river. Full of joy, pranks and secret meetings, this mood of Radha-Krishna is truly celebrated in the Jamun tree setting. 

In another jewel like dance by Guru Surendra Nath Jena called ‘Brahm Maya’ , the universe is compared to an inverted tree. This philosophy of the Upanishads, reminds us that the world is an inverted tree, and as we enjoy the fruits and flowers, the roots of this tree are up above, connected with the real divine world. Odissi to me, is this beautiful tree that connects the realms of the earthly and spiritual, delighting in both, celebrating the body and the spirit, finding a lit-up union of the bhogi and the yogi within. 

The Dance of Trees

Trees mean so many things to different people. To me trees have always danced. Dying to dance, despite their roots, they sway from their upper torso. With the slightest wispy wind they sway. Wilder the wind, they rock with abandon, never tired of their dance with the universe.

The Odissi body is quite like a dancing tree. The lower body is firm and fixed, mountain-like and rooted. The upper body in Odissi, sways like a happy tree in the wind. The body sways from side to side, the chest moving with grace and delicacy. Odissi refrains from large, assertive movements. Its gestures are close to the body, containing its energies within. The movement of the wind in the trees is also fine and delicate. Sometimes fine and delicate, it is almost unnoticeable, creating a wispy sound. The stronger the wind, the tree-dance has more abandon – the power of the vibrant emotions of Odissi. The tree dances as the wind sings, and dances to express its fullest self.

Trees in Delhi are as vibrant as the moods of the many ritus or seasons that exist here. The trees of Delhi remind of an American autumn in spring, with the Pilkhal shedding reddish brown leaves like the American maple leaves. The Semal tree also bursts vibrant red with its big flowers, announcing that its time for Holi. 

Childhood memories of the Harshringaar blossoming meant that it was Durga Puja time soon. In one such tree moment, a Harshringaar gave me a lovely surprise – I woke up to see the car parked under the tree to be completely covered in tiny star-like white and orange flowers. It was nature’s installation-art moment,  and we giggled away as we shared this beautiful transformation of the mundane.

Delhi’s Amaltaas tree is also quite like a trickster. Gorgeous yellow blossoms that make a guest appearance only in May, shine splendidly in bloom. As a child I have memories of walking down a road lined on two sides by only Amaltaas trees – in the searing heat of summer, I walked through an illusion of a cool, yellow heaven, surrounded by yellow bliss! Could colour play such an illusion which felt both cool and warm? A delight where one’s body and heart experienced strange sensations quite at odds with each other? Nature’s display of art mesmerizes, and as human beings, artistes simply aspire to spin the mysteries of the universe at their individual level : to paint and dance with all the colours of their own divinity.

Yogini within

I first encountered the idea of a yogini at the Chausath Yogini temple in Orissa. It is a mysterious space, a shrine with 64 yoginis in sculpture, and no roof overhead this circular temple. It is a space which is powerful and not many are brave enough to come there in the dark. I loved the yoginis, their many forms, sometimes with animal heads and qualities, decorated and bejeweled, a symphony of energies of the universe. A strange connection and attraction existed between us.

A Yogini is said to be a ‘woman in union with the Self’. Someone once asked me if I think there is a yogini within me? It is like asking if I am the particulars that define me or the universal that cannot be defined? It is through spiritual practices that the yogini within soars outward. She cannot be engaged with through conscious effort, she flowers when she intends to. The soaring and blossoming of the spirit, a richness of the self, which signals the Yogini within as she travels light years. 

It is with Odissi that I first experienced time-travel, light years of travel and back in few moments of time. A need to go back every day to a deeper world, the flight of the yogini, her spiritual forest where jewels sparkle on every tree. Every time she travelled, she found another gem of life, sometimes earthly, sometimes alokik. Like all travels, after all such moments there is a  return home to the temple in the heart where the Yogini resides, rich, resplendent and all lit-up. In her garba griha, the inner sanctum, all spaces are fragrant, pious and blossoming with inner flowers.

When I was younger I needed a few hours of riyaaz  everyday and after riyaaz my mind disconnected to engage with domestic duties. It seemed an odd kind of disconnect, a switch on and off. Our Odissi Guru, late Surendra Nath Jena had said that the important thing was to do all our householder tasks, but keep the mind one with God. As a mother of two babies, I wondered if it was actually possible?

Part of the beautiful process of dancing Odissi rhythms has been its systematic work on my soul. Vedic Chanting connected my past, present and future with this journey. And learning music has unlocked many locks further. Opening up to the energies of the universe, I find the Yogini within. As I connected with my own divinity, many energies of the universe connected with me over time. Today, as my spiritual dialogue deepens, yet floats like a wispy cloud, or a child at play, I see so much beauty in utter simplicity and spontaneity in every thread woven into the quilt of nature. 

Sculpturesque

Whenever I visited any ancient temples with beautiful sculptures I felt a strange sense of excitement as well as a strange deja vu, as if I had some connection with these sculptures.

In my last visit to Orissa, it was as if the temple sculptures at the Chausath Yogini temple (in a remote field in a village) called out to me," Why was I coming to meet them after so long? Why don't you come more often? Have you forgotten us, our beautiful connection?" I remembered how these sculptures were what I wanted to experience in my body, and Odissi meant to me the exploration of the sculptures inside my body. Maybe I was a sculptor in one of these temples in the medieval times, carving out beautiful body-scapes of frozen moments in time. 

In this life, as sculptures, dance and frozen moments of time run parallel through my being, I write my ode to the sculpturesque-ness of Odissi:

The sculptures of my being,

danced in my body,

Odissi it was to be,

a dance of the waves of the sea.

A fullness of being,

joyous curves,

the langorous arms,
like creepers of love.

The honey-sweet shringaar,

of mischievious kamarbands,

heavy, pregnant anklets,

serpentine necklaces that never end.

The sculpturesque arrived,

and became my pulse,

became my riyaaz,

as the fabric of me came together.

I found the dance of life,

the shape of my soul,

my sculpturesque lines,

my singing curves.

Sculpturesque and sculpture,

face each other with the beats of time,

are we artistic inspiration,

or just poems that reside in each other's hearts?

A Sense of time 

A dancer is always seeking Shiva, and his sense of time. Dances feel like time-containers and sometimes like time-currencies. Encapsulating the universe and giving an 'alokik', divine moment.

Sometimes in an artiste's work one can feel like an altered sense of time, that transfers to us and we experience strong currents of the river of time.

The sixth sense that dawns after the 5 senses is the sense of time. Manifesting like lord Shiva's damru, it's naad resonates in one's being. For some the entire universe resonates with his damru, and every sound is this sense of time. It is a time altering moment to even play a damru: hear it's sound unite the fragments of our brain in a split second.

The world of Maya gives us an illusory sense of time. Once one can hear time clearly, one is open and aware of many currents of time: in a dance or music piece in which time moves slow, fast or in multiple layers at once. And that perfect creation of art where time stands still, in a deep state of timelessness.




All art is a deep inquiry into the self:

"I want to meet myself,
how long would it take?
At that turn,
in that moment of time,
lay Art,
a masterpiece.
Waves of Art and Life,
churned in the cosmic ocean,
and there came about Me,
the pot of immortal life..."

The saree chronicles

Back to summer with the most beautiful garment of our country. Sadly ignored by young Indian women rushing to Zara or losing themselves in the masculinity of jeans, Saree for me is THE marker of myself. My love of being Indian, wearing colourful fabric from our states, with lovely colour contrasts and patterns, cotton that breathes and sings on the body, that lets air caress the skin and rejoice in the feminity of the body: the saree is poetic about all these and more.

In Odissi I learnt to feel the joy of the Saree when it billows around my curves and expresses the feminity of my body. With the daily poems that my sarees and me create, sometimes we experience love, joy, myriad moods, sculptural corners of being and the care with which someone made this gift for me. To think that a craftsman-artiste in Orissa or Bengal sat and wove these patterns on his handloom, never knowing the joy he creates for me. New to the love-poems these weavers have sent to me is the kachcha-yellow dhoti meant for pandits in Varanasi. I fell in love with it as it sang songs to me with its yellowness and multiple colours on the border. As these borders travel across the length and breadth of me, I know that whether on a pandit, dancer or any woman, the Saree is sheer poetry, spiritual and sacred as the sculptures of an ancient temple.

Rumi Within 


Sometimes for an artiste, the elephant like artistic stirring within, with its stunning force of realization, gives way to a gentler stirring that feels like the Rumi within.  Rumi, the famous poet of the 13th c, found poetry within and a oneness with the universe, on a series of events in life. Each of us has a Rumi within, and a Rumi-ness that flowers with age, and enjoys a deep, moving, creative space within. Quite like the Bhakti poetry of India in the 12th.c, this inner space finds an experience of one's soul and an altered state of time.

When this manifests in the outer world it takes the form of a beautiful poem of Rumi, or a starry night painting of Van Gogh or a moving Odissi dance by a Guru like Guru Surendra Nath Jena. These jewel like works of art we enjoy, are simply the tip of the iceberg. The mountain of jewels lies within the heart of the artiste, whose inner state of being is resplendent and fiercely glowing.

This 'tejas', spark of being is beautiful, as oneness with the entire universe seeps in. Can one be fiercely illuminated yet flowing in the river of life with the entire cosmos? The answer is in the heart of every artiste, and the artiste in the heart of every person.

As I understand the Rumi within, and enjoy my Rumi-ness, I look back at moments in Turkey few years back. When in Capadoccia, I went to experience the dance of the whirling    dervishes, their mystical dance called the 'sama'. It is the sufi way of experiencing mystical union with the universe through sound and movement. The images seem to sing and dance of the Rumi within us all...

Floral Notes

Flowers are secret messengers of nature. Even the most busy bees halt for a moment to feel their beauty: the richness of their colours, the lingering fragrance and the moods they evoke. 

The malaya sameere (gentle breeze) of vasant ritu brings the fragrance of spring flowers.

For the sahridaya individual, the flowers seem to sing songs, that make us enjoy all of nature, the leaves, trees, grass and the wind in a fleeting moment and space. These beautiful quicksilver-like moments are precious, arrive from the middle of nowhere, and drench us in oneness with the universe. It only takes a beautiful flower to hold our wrists and gently make us play with nature.

Then there are lovely floral notes in Odissi that create a kaleidoscopic world of associations. Floral shapes in mudras, the dancer’s silver jewellery shaped like flowers, the shola flower buds in the Odissi dancer’s head dress – all present the floweriness of Odissi.

The Odissi bindi is also shaped like a beautiful, big, blossoming flower. It has a big red circular bindi in the middle with little white dots around it. On the forehead of any child or woman, this unique flower blossom makes her look radiant.

In many Odissi abhinaya, Radha is swayed by flowers : fragrant mango tree blossoms whose fragrance remind her of Krishna waiting in the mango orchard by the banks of Yamuna river.  The flowers of these dance moments seem to add fragrance to many such moments, and one’s Radha-ness is enriched forever.

The dancer offers many flowers of devotion (shraddha-suman) to her aaradhya : the lotus-eyed Vishnu or Shiva, the lord white as jasmine. Radha is also compared by her sakhi to a blooming lotus, beautiful both from outside and within. There seems to be a flower in the heart of every dance, for nature’s every colour, setting and mood.

The Mad elephant and Me - conversations

All art feels a deep connection with the self. It is not simply a skill or an art form, but the experience of one's being. The heights one travels within, the life of a movement, it's vital breath, the pulse of life.

Is this vitality of being Art? A recognition of the raging elephant with the lotus in his trunk.
The soul feels like a mad elephant within the body's cage, lusts to life outside, yet more aware of it's being. Sometimes an artiste loses touch with this being within. The elephant's sounds are drowned in the drone of daily life.



In a second of release, a life-altering moment, the elephant escapes and tramples all the vegetation around. "I look at its sheer size and force and wonder, how come I never saw it before? Yet now I remember, the faint sounds I heard and ignored, the vibrations within, that I turned into movements in dance. This mad elephant rages now and takes over the world, my being, within and without. I see it's skin, tusks, trunks and feet, it's beautiful grey and rough skin, how warm and real it feels. So beautiful, he reminds me of the elephant who was a devotee of Vishnu, possessed yet serene.

The elephant is me, the life of my life, the stirrings within. The discovery of myself. Why am I an artiste? Because I guess I am. I exist. I pulsate with the universe to dissolve like the waxing, waning moon.

The mad elephant has seen its reflection, it's insane with joy, it was waiting for that point of release. Within one moment, it found itself forever and ever."

The Dancing Saree

The saree is a beautiful feeling wrapped up as a garment on our being.

It completes me in a way that art does. Art is not just as a form of expression, but an experience of completeness. As one long stretch of six yards, the saree is one whole being.

Not cut into bits and parts, we wear it whole as a dance costume. Instead of a stitched costume, we tie it beautifully around the dancing body. The blossoming drape of the saree, flows with the curves in odissi and it's joyous rhythm. In the manner  of tying the saree costume between the legs, it reveals the shape of the negative space between the legs, as beautiful as the entire form of the dancing pose.

Before one knows it, the saree seeps into one's life. The heart wants to wear the saree as an inseparable part of one's daily life, feeling the intense love and comfort the body feels for it. It is as if the body fell in love with the saree, and the heart rejoices in its feeling of oneness when together.

Saree and Me

Silly saree days,
they wrap me up,
in giddying fabric,
and giggly borders.

Tracing my contours,
the borders travel,
across the length and breadth of me,
a journey into the center of my earth.

A frangipani center,
white and yellow inside,
ripe in abundance,
melting with its fragrance.

My saree is upto tricks,
it chats with my bindi,
together with the bangles,
I know not what they plan.

As colours melt into sound,
as a tinkle becomes a line,
patterns swirl around,
to drown the depths of me.

Is it the festive season,
or the festive heart,
or just the tuberose's fragrance,
that wraps me up in silly saree days...

Shared spaces

Dance has been a continuous process of sharing for me. Sharing an art form, yet more so sharing energies, spaces, a spiritual tool and moments of divinity. Dance also mirrors life, the oneness and sharing we feel with nature, trees, flowers..understanding that we are one with the sounds and shapes of nature. In odissi rhythms and curvilinear form, I find the unity with the rhythms of the universe, the silence of pauses and the sharing of so many colours and moods. Dance echoes life and reminds us that there are pauses between movement, music between the notes and life and art flow together powerfully through us.

Sakhi  Re...

As a classical dancer, I learnt in many an abhinaya about the sakhi. Playing this role in a dance, I would mediate between Radha and Krishna, understanding the heart of Radha always. On an earthly plane, sakhi-bhaav comes naturally to women, who bond so passionately even as little girls!
On a deeper note, It is only after a certain age of maturity I realised that the Sakhi is none other than one's inner dialogue. She is our inner voice taking us to our spiritual source, merging with the divine.
In one such moment, this sakhi- poem came about from the sakhi within:


'Sakhi'
The rainbow lane,
has many neighbours,
some well noticed,
some not so much.

I thought I knew,
their whereabouts,
names and addresses,
but not so much.

This lane in the heart,
brings many a surprise,
some feelings
like a beautiful woman.

This one,
she takes me by surprise,
I gaze wondering,
Who are you dear?

An intimate surprise,
can that be?
these lanes of the heart
sing many surprises these days.

My new sakhi,
pulls my arm
my eyes ask questions,
a universe of questions.

Don't ask me questions,
because answers drown,
these answers are poems,
hymns for the drowning.

The sun shines bright,
And the moon comes along,
Drowning the days and nights,
how is it that I never saw it before?

The waves of the moon,
bring life for the drowning ,
for sakhis know,
how we are all poems that sing in the night.