Is secularisation the solution to all that tension in our society? Maybe, if people are not able to practise their religions without having negative sentiments towards people of other faiths. But if secularisation means something like the European way where people simply stop going to church, I wonder what will happening to our cultural life, like all the wonderful music and dance shows at the temples that do not cost a cent? I was just thinking about this because the Mandalabhishegam festival at the Sivan Temple has now begun and there will be lots of programmes for one and a half months, with many big artistes coming from India! Without such cultural festivals, you may have to watch the same singers at some expensive concert hall where you have to pay $50 to $100 for a good seat. Without such temple events, the only cultural festivals you get may just be some cinematic performances by playback singers sponsored by airline companies and then folk dances by primary school pupils, some noisy events where politicians like to make their appearances, far away like in the Northwest corner of the island!

Music can be religious. Or it can just be spiritual, depending on where your conviction stands. Music can also just be music you connect with for whatever reason. Two weeks back I was watching a play at the Singapore Fringe Festival, entitled Eclipse, which dealt with the lives of three generations of men in a family affected by the 1947 Partition. The story is about a young Singaporean man making a journey to his father's birthplace in Hyderabad to trace his roots, only to be greeted with strange curiosity. It is a monologue written by local playwright Haresh Sharma, who incidentally is of Sindhi origin himself (hence making one wonder how much of the story echoes real family history). Anyway in this play, the father was forced to leave his homeland during Partition, like other Hindu families who have fallen on the wrong side of the drawn boundary. There was already no news from the grandfather, who had long left the family to the care of the wife while leading his own new life in Japan. The father came to Singapore with hopes of a life without all the strife for the new generation. And so we have the narrator or the 'main' character, the son, played by one UK-based Umar Ahmed, a rather cute and likeable actor who switches admirably between a Scottish and an Indian accent - he misses on the Singapore accent, but never mind. What got me puzzled halfway through was the music sung by the actor as part of the show. He opened the act by singing Sweet Home Alabama, a country-blues-rock, jumping around with a lot of youthful energy to establish that we are looking at the third generation of the family. When it came to some scenes in Hyderabad or about the earlier generations, you hear some old Hindi songs. But at some point in time, he was sitting in a chair and suddenly breaking into Mast Qalander, the Qawwali song made popular by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I was like, what is that supposed to mean, whose role is he playing? Then it was revealed towards the end that the son is gay and he actually has a Muslim boyfriend! There is even a romantic declaration of love over the phone that will make homophobes fall off their chairs and the best thing is, the father in the story supposedly approves of the relationship! This is like the movie Bombay (which is so explosive we never even get to see in Singapore) and Brokeback Mountain (oh Heath Ledger, bless his soul) rolled into one, and made into a happy ending! Amazingly, the script is so well crafted that the play did not feel half as corny as it sounds here, and one walks out of the theatre instead with the poignant thought that a love transcending all social categories and without abuse or inequality is so precious because it is like an impossible dream. And of course, what people fail to realise with all the political boundaries and religious divides around, is that all human beings basically share the same longing for light over darkness, a light that is equivalent to divinity in one form of representation or other.

I somewhat like the use of music in the play to demonstrate how music can transcend all boundaries. I can't help thinking after that about songs by Kabir, the 15th-century poet whose philosophy represents a synthesis of Hindu and Muslim concepts. I'll just copy here the liner notes of a CD recording by Jagjit Singh: "From Hinduism [Kabir] accepts the concept of reincarnation and the law of Karma, and from Islam he adapts the affirmation of the single God and the rejection of caste system and idolatry. ... According to Kabir, the entire human life is an interplay of two spiritual principles. One is the personal soul (Jivatma) and the other is God (Paramatma). He opines that salvation is the process of bringing into union these two divine principles." OK, if you do not appreciate ghazals, you won't enjoy this music, but just want to mention here.

Talking about the Partition, it is inevitable that one invokes the figure of Gandhi. Last Sunday television was just showing the movie Gandhi My Father, a movie that would attract worshippers and detractors of Gandhi alike. It is the story of Gandhi's son, who apparently had a strained relationship with him and was eventually estranged from him; to him, the father figure of India was lacking in love and forgiveness as a father at the family level. It is simply great stuff for gossip, which detractors of Gandhi will happily lap up, as if to prove the point that Gandhi's ideals could never have worked, look, he can't even run his own family well. But if you ask me, I would say that a great man needs not be perfect in every single sense, and his personal failings cannot be an argument against his social or political ideas. I never understand such modes of thinking based on cults of personality, where people will treat movie stars like gods, setting up shrines for Amitabh Bachchan or giving offerings to Rajinikanth, thinking of their idols as embodiments of perfection and expecting that they can never do wrong. Anyway, my favourite part of the movie is actually when Gandhi asks for his own son to be sued by his associate for wrongdoings, it sounds like a crazy obsession with righteousness, but hey, I think it is so wonderful because we have seen way too much nepotism in Asian society and politics. I didn't sit through the whole movie, but my other favourite scene is when Gandhi, working for a newspaper, gets reprimanded by his white boss for printing a headline describing a white man's demise as 'has died and is burned' - it sounds natural in Hindu customs but burial was more the norm in Western societies then and to Christian ears that sounded like one is going to hell!

Now let me go all the way back to talking about the ongoing cultural programme at Sivan Temple. Sunday was the Mahakumbabishegam, and then the series of programme kicked off with two concerts by one of my favourite carnatic singers, Nithyasree Mahadevan. I made it to the one on Tuesday, it was a nice concert lasting good two and a half hours, the main piece was Thyagaraja's famous Nidhi Chala Sukhama in Kalyani ragam and Mishra Chapu. After that there was an interesting song I had never heard before, it is a 'Navarasa Bhavam' song that covers the nine emotions, going from Adbuta (wonderment), Sringara (love) and so on to Veera (valour) and Shanti (peace). Just imagine the possibilities if the song is used for a dance! She also threw in some Hindustani flavour with a Meera Bhajan, Payo Ji Maine. It's not such an unusual thing of course to have a litte Hindustani song at a Carnatic concert. Perhaps musicians can try to mix up a bit more. The North versus South divide needs not be emphasised any further!