Just as cultivators today turn their gaze skywards in India, anxiously seeking signs of rain, so did their ancestors - several hundreds of years ago. With every passing dry day, their anxiety, too, turned to desperation and finally to prayers. The sages then offered to invoke Parjanya, the rain god, in their hymn in the Rig Veda:
Sing forth and laud for Parjanya, son of Heaven, who sends the gift of rain... May he provide our pasturage. Parjanya is the God who lays in cattle, in mares, in plants of earth, and in womankind, the germ of life… Offer and pour into his mouth oblation rich in savoury juice. May he forever give us food…Parjanya Devata (The Rain God), a dance production blending Odissi and Western classical dance form, presented recently in Kolkata by Victoria Memorial Hall in association with South Gurukul Society, could not have been a more grandiloquent affair, in terms of all three elements needed for performative arts: space, time and characters. Its locale was the elevated backdrop of Western Quadrangle of a one-century-old colonial edifice, built in Indo-Saracenic style with picturesque Venetian, Egyptian, Deccani and Islamic architectural influences. The colonial behemoth offered a huge front façade of 350 feet, rising to an awesome height of 200 feet, all in gleaming white Makrana marble, surrounded by the most spacious and luscious English gardens.
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Loved the mesmerizing performance.
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Ma'am,
truely an inspiration.