To be alive at all is
to have scars - American writer John Steinbeck
An extra day in February was most welcome to collect my thoughts after a month of relentless travel.
Just two days before February closed, I had the unique opportunity to be in the presence of one of India's most charismatic politicians. The extraordinary security checks, the fastidious search of everyone's social media handles, the minute by minute instructions of where to stand, how much physical distance that was to be maintained and what to say felt like a complex handbook of rules. Surrounded by business professionals who were speaking finance, economics, profitability and employment, I was the sole artiste in this private meeting. The term VIKSIT BHARAT was being chanted ever so often during the speeches that followed and I was left wondering about the most developed form of expressions of this very idea that the Indian performing arts contained. The most evolved and the least supported. VIKSIT means DEVELOPED and while there is so much political emphasis today on a DEVELOPED INDIA - education, medicine, space, technology and manufacturing, it is in the arts - the classical arts - that India is truly VIKSIT. Yet, the needle has shifted and the mood is stubbornly tilted towards popular culture and the visual spectacle.
Just two days before February closed, I had the unique opportunity to be in the presence of one of India's most charismatic politicians. The extraordinary security checks, the fastidious search of everyone's social media handles, the minute by minute instructions of where to stand, how much physical distance that was to be maintained and what to say felt like a complex handbook of rules. Surrounded by business professionals who were speaking finance, economics, profitability and employment, I was the sole artiste in this private meeting. The term VIKSIT BHARAT was being chanted ever so often during the speeches that followed and I was left wondering about the most developed form of expressions of this very idea that the Indian performing arts contained. The most evolved and the least supported. VIKSIT means DEVELOPED and while there is so much political emphasis today on a DEVELOPED INDIA - education, medicine, space, technology and manufacturing, it is in the arts - the classical arts - that India is truly VIKSIT. Yet, the needle has shifted and the mood is stubbornly tilted towards popular culture and the visual spectacle.
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Always so energizing to read what’s happening in the world of Bharata natyam through Anita’s lens! Well said about fees for the dancer and I’d love to go to the Bay to teach!
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