SPIC...

It was a Thursday evening, and as in all Thursday evenings, a bunch of people, were sitting in a circle at the Special Stage. Someone had propped up the idea of discussing how the outer world i.e. the rest of the college views us. One of the guys got up and told us “Most of my friends view us as a kandu club”. We dismissed this idea with a derisive laugh, and instead started talking on how we ourselves view the movement. Some saw it as a society for music appreciation some saw it as a platform for personality development, some had a wholly spiritual perspective, and a few had very little idea on it. Here’s what I make of it.

If you travel from Jaipur to Kohima, or from Trivandrum to Jammu for that matter, a vast and diverse land stretches before you. Each phase of your journey has its own unique landscapes, industries and lifestyles. This diversity results in each region developing a culture each having a flavor unique of its own. Some of these have attained high levels of refinement and achieved immense popularity all over the country and beyond. Each one of us must have attended a performance, or at least heard of Hindustani and Carnatic music styles, dance forms like Bharathanatyam, Kathak, Kuchipudi et al. But how many of us have heard of a theatre form of Kerala called Kootiyattam? Not many, I’m sure. This has existed for nearly 2000 years and is the oldest existing theatre form in the world. It has reached such levels of refinement that it has defined unique expressions for even the elements of grammar, which cannot be found anywhere else. UNESCO has recognized it as one of the ‘Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’, given only to about 20 arts worldwide. We staying here in India all our lives have never even heard of it. Ditto for Ras Lila of Manipur, the martial arts of Punjab, and many more. What SPICMACAY does is to provide a platform for showcasing of such art forms to the youth, so that we are able to fully appreciate the richness of India.

It was 4:00 AM and the sun was just breaking across the horizon. A large number of people had gathered inside an enclosure. They had sat through concerts throughout the night; most of them were sleeping and the rest on the verge of it. A very old man was carried on to the stage, and this sight did little to get them out of their slumber. No sooner had the first notes issued from his mouth, people were jolted awake and for the next 3 hours he held the crowd spellbound. It was when, seeing the zest for life he had even at that age of 102, his dedication that enabled him to sing in the frigid mornings of Kohima I began to occur to me SPICMACAY is not about music alone. Sample another incident which happened around 10 years ago. Ustad Bismillah Khan, the Shehnai maestro, was to give a concert in Dehra Dun for SPICMACAY. The train which he supposed to board from Varanasi got cancelled. After a lot of delay, the organizers got him to Delhi in a flight .The only transport they could arrange to Dehra Dun was an old rickety bus. After a night long journey on jumpy roads, he reached the venue just in time for his concert .The organizers were apologetic and offered to postpone it. He saw the audience waiting for him and said “Dekhiye, I had told you that I will give you a concert on time if you get me to the venue. You have fulfilled your word, so I will fulfill mine”. Saying the 80 year old Bismillah Khan, forgetting his fatigue, got his shehnai and gave an enthralling concert for around 3 hours. It was a lesson in being true to ones word, no matter what the circumstances are, that he gave they learnt on that day .SPICMACAY gives us the chance to get in close contact with such great masters, from whom we learn a lot. Not that they have any intention of teaching us anything, mere observation of their daily routine inspires.

This summer, I was in Trivandrum for the national convention of SPICMACAY. All the stalwarts of Indian classical and folk arts had descended upon Kerala to be a part of this. As a part of this, Ustad Asad Ali Khan performed in the culminating program of the convention. As expected it was an astounding concert and everyone went gaga over it. But what really struck me was that the he did not seem to perform for the audience at all. He seemed to be playing the Rudra Veena for a different purpose altogether. Every note he played, a blissful expression encompassed his face; it appeared to me that to me that he was on quest if his own and music was just a path to reach it. Maybe it was a way to attain perfection, or maybe it was a way to surrender completely to an entity greater than him; maybe……

Similar to India itself, SPICMACAY inspires different notions in different people. The above experiences shaped my perceptions of the movement. Whats urs?

in trivandrum...

"ye compositon hamare purvajano aur gurujano ne hamko diya hai.isne prastut kanreko mein koshish karta hoon. accha aaye to allah ki shukr ,sahi nahi aaye to aur koshish karta hoon bhai"
-83 year old Dhrupad maestero Ustad Fahimuddin Dagar

Post about nothing..

The only thing I have ever written here is on Kohima. I felt I had many things to say.So I thought I will write a post.

So I sit in front of comp mulling on what to write.What can I write about??.My mind immediately goes to the Mumbai attacks.I want to express my anger on the terrorists for daring to question our sovereignty,on politicians for bungling up the intelligence, on the intelligence for not being intelligent,on ourselves in taking pride in our ability to move on, without actually doing anything about it.But that would involve bitching about things, which i really don't like doing.Ditto about any national or international issues.So ditch.

Hmm what next?..What in the wide world can i talk about?.The things that run through my mind?Umm..seems quite a good idea?Now what do i usually think about??People usually write on what goes on through their mind..I mean they actually believe that what goes on through their mind may interest other ppl .Maybe..they may have profound insightful views on many issues others would really love to read.Now what deep thoughts run through this mind of mine?..Imaginary cricket matches with extravagant runs made on either side,non-real tennis matches with nail-biting rivalry and high quality which is humanely impossible,a city,preferably Namma Bengaluru.which would be the most modern place in the world covering millions of square feet ,having the centers of all the organizations in the world,and a whole lot of....Naa!This will seem too far-fetched ,but that's what usually runs through my mind generally.Again not worth writing about.

So,issues ditch,thoughts ditch what next?..Er...Girls?! Ah seems like a nice topic.So i start to think..now what do i know about girls?.Um..Umm...Ummmmmm..turns out i know nothing about them.Ditto about relationships ,romance and all the mushy mushy stuff..

A thought strikes me..I can write about my life..My daily activities should make good material right..Now what do i usually do daily?Let me see..I wake up in the morning,get ready,go to coll,come back ,sit in front of my comp,play if in the mood,have dinner,talk in dumma and kks room, study if i make up my mind to and then go to sleep.Ha pretty nice life i must say,si I think,I will write about my life.But I look up at the list my itinerary ,nothing special to write,I mean i love my life but why would anyone be interested in something like this?

So Im back to square one.I think about what to write in my next post..Another travelogue?..naa too repetitive,any poems? The only poems i cooked up either too childish or offensive to a particular person..any deep insight into some aspect of life...errr what???????..so what do i write?

Hmmm..Hmmmm..Hmmmmmm...Wait 1 sec .. I have written so much..How about if I publish this??..cool..I will do it then..Will anyone read this? Will it be interesting? Will it be realistic?Who cares?I will write what I want to.Its my blog isnt it? :P

guidances;)

I was really jobless at home comin from nagaland so i wrote a huge report spanning across 3 posts. so people who come across this are to read this upside down(as in from last to first)...

And back again...

We went to Dimapur station to find 2 waiting rooms booked for us (as i told u we were treated like royalty).Without much ado i flopped down on one of the beds reserved for us. 2 days without sleep is too much for any man to bear.wonder how many people in college do night outs before exams. i woke up in time to board the train to Guwahati and right after i got into the train, i slept.
after much prodding from our Logik i woke up to see myself at Guwahati station. still feeling groggy i got down when at 4 in the morning the jolted me out of my slumber telling that our train was canceled. due to floods in Orissa. Chaitanya ditched us at this crucial moment and went off with his friend staying there and i was left alone with our Boss(tat was what his shirt he was wearing that day said). As he was in a hurry to get back we prepared ourselves for a cross country tour spanning the breadth of our country right from Guwahati in the east to Mumbai in the west.
Logik made me sit guard his luggage as he ran off to get tickets for us.after disappearing for hours together he came back gleefully informing me that we are leaving that day and lo, he handed to me a ticket for the general compartment!
Logik found us seats and it all seemed ok when a bunch of sadhus climbed into our compartment.they jostled for seats and suddenly i find myself sitting in half a seat with a blind old sadhu giving fundaes about the qualities of a sadhu to no one in particular. the whole place was a mess with vegetable vendors dumping their bags on the ground, people sitting right on your feet, people grunting and shouting at each other in some unknown language, vendors selling all kinds of crap foods(which we had to eat, as we had no other coice).The toilets, the sinks were not even spared as people crowded these with their bags and sometimes themselves. sadhus shouting "Har Har Mahadev",and smoking bhang in the dead of the night , a man eating right off
dhoti, an old women raving at me for god knows what reason, a married man raving about how he got another married woman pregnant...God knows how i stayed there for a whole day.
the next day in Patna i was sitting in the hell hole wondering how long im going to stay there when i heard my name being called. lo and behold there was shalaka (who taught me Assamese folk remember?) and her friends. they told us that they had extra seats and in a few moments we were running away feeling liberated as if we had just escaped from prison .
The rest of the journey glided past and for the first time in my life i found the sleeper coach extremely clean.the journey to mumbai seemed so short as we played some arbit card games, held a raging debate on carbon cresdits(i just remembered having vaguely heard about it somewhere so wasnt too eager to display my lack of knowledge) and before we could say Spic Macay there was Mumbai.
the next day when i was seeing Logik off at the station, we both looked at each other and said"dude,what a trip!"



in memory of:
1)livika,,merianna ,sumsum:3 naga kids who were showed how wonderful and friendly naga people are
2)the general compartment:)
3)the clouds of Kohima
4)the Bramhaputra:what a powerful thing..seen to be believed
5) Upendra songs
and finally to a girl whose dad belted her for talking to me:)

on nagaland 2..(the convention)

day1:We woke up to realize that we were in heaven(don't be so happy.. we were not actually dead) .We were amidst lush green mountains with clouds lazily resting on their peaks , with a cool breeze gushing all around us.Ah,to think we would be here for 1 whole week!..after enjoying a bath of chilled water, we went to the inauguration. The people of Nagaland and the north-eastern part of our great land,looking absolutely stunning in their costumes,stood outside to greet us.Special mention should be given to some especially pretty Naga and Assamese dresses(and to the people wearing them:). the inauguration was pretty sordid affair punctuated with the chief guest, Hon(?) Mani Shankar Ayiar not sparing even Spic conventions for scoring some political points until the people from the north-east took over, enthralling us with colorful and highly co-ordinated performances.Kudos to them!
After having a lunch of rice and dal,which was to become our staple,sorry, our only food for the rest of the time there, we went to hear the Carnatic violin of the Mysore Brothers.The concert was pretty good with the brothers giving fine, even if little racily structured, music. I bunked the next one in order to see more of Nagaland and went out to meet some Naga scout kids. I sat talking to the guys about insurgents and Nagaland and blah blah blah, couldn't talk much to the girls tho,.Dunno why,Nagaland girls seem to like to blush at the drop of a hat whenever you go near them . At night,after much contemplation,not that there was much choice everything else was either canceled or filled up i went to learn Assamese folk.



day2: on learning that i had been picked for tribal dance, i think each person was chosen according to his characteristics , i ditched Assamese folk in the desire of learning some tribal jigs. as a continuation of my intensive jinx even this got canceled. I shouldn't complain as we jumped from 1 intensive to another, learning kathak and and dhrupad in a matter of two hours(We became all rounders u know;) ).
Raghu Rai's lec-dem in the afternoon was quite interesting,though that doesn't explain why i dozed off halfway through and right through the next concert. i was woken by the josh-filled rendering of Assamese folk by our Guru. Manipuri dance by the disciples of Suryamukhi Devi followed. an old lady with an injured leg, not even able to walk properly, apologized to us for not being able to dance. It was highly touching to see her passion for dance and her humility . Her disciples showed us the Ras Lila which was followed by the dhol-dance(my name for it) where the dancers demonstrated unconjured of ways to hit drums complete with acrobatics and gymnastics.
the day ended with the movie Jalsagar by Satyajit ray, which we (we as in me and my junior chaitanya..our head had more important work to attend to..) watched in the company of newly made friends from nsit, Delhi.


day3: The day started with yoga and shramdan. Driven by the desire to be of some use , i decided to clean up the auditorium. Then after giving much thought about which intensive to join, i joined Assamese folk. Thanks to Shalaka from Mumbai i was able to make some sense of what was going on(she was again to be my savior later...).
We were having about to have lunch when we came to know that we were in charge of green room for the day.We were lucky as we had Pt.chaurasia that day. finishing our lunch at top-notch speed we rushed to the green room glad to be of some help after all.
the puppetry lecture by Dadi Pudumjee was followed by Hariprasad Chaurasia's concert.not wanting to miss it i sat rite on the stage. the Madhuvanti raag was rendered beautifully by the maestro. after the concert was done, i went down,still in the trance of the music,when there came Logik bearing upon me with fury,admonishing me for having neglected my duty and sent me off to get tea.
I went to dinner, after which a Charlie Chaplin movie beckoned me(my other friends didn't want to see any movie after such a wonderful experience by Rajan and Sajan mishra ,which i missed while performing my duties).Angry at them, i watched the movie in the company of my fellow shramdanis(ahem!), soma ,ankit ,sanketh and a few others, from the morning shramdan.


day4: The fourth day dawned with me coming to know that some of my Naga friends had left to resume their studies.with a little sadness inside i proceeded to the Assamese folk music intensive .the atmosphere in the class was highly jovial and lifted up my spirits. Some women , who had,i think ,completely missed the whole point of the intensives, assumed for themselves the roles of of our guruji,and set about dominating, and organizing the arduous task of 'preparing us for our performance'. Barring this minor irritation, the class was fun-filled and also a wonderful experience.

After having lunch we proceeded the auditorium for a talk from the renowned painter Anjolie Ela Menon.Her paintings were excellent until the point where i dozed off again(1-2 had become my napping time you see) by the time i woke up the stage was set for the Mohan Veena concert of pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt(who else?).on hearing Panditjee telling us to experience music rather than just hear the swaras, raagas and stuff,i thought "why not?". Dunno it was my imagination or something, the piece was actually telling a story involving an island, a damsel,a river and a search for roots(!)(if anybody wants to hear the story ,they can mail me;)).Dazed by this imagination or experience or whatever you may call it,i went for a long walk boring a poor girl with my story, who to shut me up more than anything else gave me packet of kurkure.(which was in the list of banned substances by the way and had to be smuggled from the hostels). On returning an extremely cute voice of a Naga folk singer filled our ears. The rise and the fall notes issuing from her was extremely sweet to the ears.Following this was a Ashwini Bhide Deshpande concert which i again missed but according to Abhishek was excellent(i think you can notice that in his report).
that night we went to the screening of Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai"(of which Sholay was a carbon copy). after 1 hour of wonderful cinema , the screening was stopped due to technical difficulties.After a hot cup of tea in the nearby canteen, which was also in the list of banned substances, me along with some friends(my fellow shramdanis and their friends again) had a session of ' cultural exchange' with all of us telling each other their states film songs. i readily obliged teaching them the evergreen melodies of Upendra leaving me with a feeling of guilt of demeaning Kannada culture in front of a national audience;). We were having gr8 fun when the head(not ours,of Spic Macay) shooed us away and sent us off to sleep.


day5: at breakfast i noticed many girls with their hair washed and some were totally dressed up.Wondering what the matter was i moved on to the final session of the intensives. It was when i saw our beloved 'organizers' totally dressed up , did i realize that the students of the intensives were to give a performance that day, and everyone were properly decked up for the event. after some time , a bunch of school kids from kohima joined us.we got two kids for each of us to teach. who would have i would ever in my life, teach Assamese songs to Nagaland kids?.
we saw people from different intensives,who had no idea of anything they were doing a week ago, perform dances,draw phad paintings,build puppets. it was nice to know can learn so fast in a such a short period of time, if one has proper guidance.
the next four hours was to be set aside for resting ,in anticipation of the "golden bird" which was to come soaring to us at that night. though ,goaded by our head to get on to the bed , none of us could sleep a wink,golden bird or not.


the Overnite: a cool breeze was gushing over the campus of nagaland university as we walked into the auditorium at 9 in the night. the overnite began with the Sattriya performance ofShri Ganakhanta Bora. My lack of knowledge of the art form combined with the comfortable blankets of Lakshay and Nupur put me right off to sleep for most parts of the concert. i woke up to see Ustad Farimuddin Dagar sitting draped in a sweater , shawl, and a cap telling us about his stomach ache and how he may not be able to sing properly. I really don't know what came over him as within 10 minutes he was sitting there sweater-muffler-monkey cap removed,stomach ache forgotten ,going at full swing at 2 in the night. Such was the fire and the desire for music he had that from that moment i was too ashamed to sleep.
Bombay Jayashree was up next for a Carnatic vocal concert followed by Kudiyattam performance by Smt Kapila Venu. we sat there spellbound seeing her transform into Kamsa,Putana,Krishna,Yashoda,Vasudeva ,Devaki one after the other with complete ease weaving a story of Krishna killing Putana with only her eyes speaking to us. The climax where in one graceful moment she as Putana swooned to her death was truly mesmerizing. By that time we were absolutely convinced nothing could beat this when the next one began.
A hundred year old man ,with no fingers and legs was sitting in front of us at 5 in the morning. He started singing and behold his face lost his aged look and he was a child again. his hold on the ragas,his pitch variations, and above all his total dedication to his music held us astounded. a thought came up"what drives a hundred year old man who is almost physically crippled to come to a remote corner of India and sing for two hours in the wee hours of morning?".His love towards music,his determination?.i don't know im still searching for an answer. all i felt was that how small ,insignificant im in front of this great master.

day6: on the last day of the convention we were taken to a cemetery where we saw graves of people as young as 17 give their lives for their country during the second world war. As this had no consequence in our lives, we were happily clicking pics in order to immortalize our journey. After touring the Naga museum which was open especially for us (we were actually treated like some VIPs there)we went to back to the university. after farewells and ids and promises to meet in Kerala next time it was time for us leave the wonderful place called Nagaland.

FROM HERE TO THERE

P.S(Pre-script)-the 'official' report by logik will be out soon(actually its out by now).these are just a humble man's musings. so read on....
12th jan: i wasn still sure that i wanted to go. many of my friends had canceled. but thanks to goading by mahima and my own desire to see nagaland more than anything else i reluctantly set out.
the journey: our train prayana started off with a bang ,with logik having forsaken his logic ,thought that the yashwantpur -howrah express actually starts from majestic. he missed the train at ypr and after frantic cross -country tour of bengaluru(which was to prepare him for a cross -country tour of a much larger magnitude later on..read on to find out:)) he got in at k.r puram. glad to have our head(!) with us we went onward.
the rest of our journey was comparitively uneventful(if thats a word):what with logik buried in a book(2 actually) ,travelling 24 hrs of Gultland(the train didnt really want to leave it , i think),we finally reached howrah .
our co-ordinator had kindly agreed to give me shelter at his cousins place .after a delicious meal and rest we made to the station. Dunno if its the logik effect but v almost missed the train. But this time my luck compensated the logik effect and the train was 15 min late:). without much ado,the train reached dimapur the next day. a bus was waiting to pack us off to kohima.watchin the cloud-clad mountains in the night, a wonderful sight by the way, we reached there at 2 in the morning.bedding was provided and we slept like logs(we were on a bed that actually didnt move for the first time in 4 days!).