Yellam Maya

2009-03-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

Imagine if you have grown up somewhere in the UK instead of say India or Singapore. The movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or let's say Jeans may not have meant as much to you as the BBC comeday Goodness Gracious Me. You may have learnt about Asha Bhosle only from the hit song by the band Cornershop. Maybe you do not care about Bollywood movies at all and would rather name people like M. Night Shyamalan or Ismail Merchant as your heroes. You may not have seen the movie Salaam Bombay by Mira Nair, much less heard about Pather Panchali by Satyaljit Ray. Maybe then, it is understandable if you proclaim the movie Slumdog Millionaire, played mainly by British Indian actors who speak impeccable English, as a wonderful film portraying poverty in India?

Jai Ho... and so it is indeed for A.R. Rahman at the Oscars, where he won Best Song and Best Original Score with the movie which has become a phenomenon in itself. It certainly must feel like a great moment for many as he incorporated some words in Tamil for his acceptance speech, in front of a predominantly white audience - "Ella Pugazhum Iraivannukey". (Poltically correct as he was, he had also included some words in Hindi - Mere Pas Ma Hai, and as we all know, it is always a good idea to mention the mother at an award show, that's something universal.) I personally feel very happy for him, for he has come a long way indeed, from doing music for Tamil movies and Hindi movies, even a Chinese movie once, and now this, becoming the first Indian musician to win an Oscar. But the way his personal triumph is celebrated in India leaves me somewhat bemused and amused. In fact I was rather embarassed when A.R. Rahman left the stage saying 'God bless' and those sexy Indian dancers were standing there posing in their pink costumes, shaking their hips for the audience.

Let's be clear about this - you can bet many would concur when anyway says this - the heyday of A.R. Rahman was when he exploded into the scene in the 1990s as a musical genius, doing music for movies like Roja, Bombay, Indian, Jeans, Dil Se (or Uyire in the Tamil version), Taal (featuring Anil Kapoor in another unlikeable role long before Slumdog), Sangamam and Alaipayuthey. Since then he has become established as a household name and remained a consistent and reliable music director, still deserving as an inspiration to a younger generation with musical aspirations, but... Well, let's just say this, a song like Jai Ho is so slight in its melody that it is simply something fittingly used for end credits, in fact it is a reject from the movie Yuvraaj. It is named a 'best song' now only because suddenly there is an idiot-proof movie about India that even an American audience can understand, and for them it's like, hey, I've never listened to any Indian song before but this one has a nice groove, let's be generous to these dark Asian people for once and give them an award! That's all to it. Imagine if your family has been running an Indian restaurant for generations, and one day you do catering for some western tourists and you give them some vegetarian burgers, Manchurian noodles and Kulfi; just because these white men come praising you for what you have served them, should you suddenly become proud of being Indian? Anybody who feels that way would just make my stomach turn. Well, ok, like A.R. Rahman said, he chose love instead of hate, and there he was on stage at the Oscars. Fine, a song like Jai Ho may turn out to be a good entry point for non-Indian audience who would not care for Indian popular or classical music otherwise. But to me it's like, thank God there is so much more in Indian music than this.

The winning formula of Slumdog Millionaire is really quite simple. It is much like an English guided tour in the incredible land of India - give the tourists some familiar or stereotypical images that capture their imagination, like the Taj Mahal, the slums in Mumbai, the dhoby and so on, but try to tell the story in English so that they will feel a bit more at home; when it comes to the characters as small children, no problem, you can have Hindi, they are so cute and lovable anyway, they can even shake their heads like how Indians normally do, the white folks won't understand the expression but they will find it cute too. And don't forget the dirtiest toilets in Mumbai, you can never go wrong with a scene like that, the audience is just dying to see how terrible and filthy life can be in India. (Anyway director Danny Boyle is so adept with it since he has already filmed the dirtiest toilet in Scotland in his early career.) Of course the film also benefits from a story based on the novel Q & A by Indian author Vikas Swarup, about a young chaiwalla who makes it big-time by becoming the greatest winner ever of a TV quiz show - this premise of the movie is just genius as a way to introduce a western audience to the history and culture of India. No quiz show in real life would ask such a simple question like what the figure of Lord Rama holds in his right hand. But it would be something new and fascinating to non-Indians, not to mention of course that it is a narrative device leading to a scene of inter-ethnic riots in Mumbai. No point for guessing that they would also include a question on cricket. This narrative structure of the story tied to quiz questions on India is a great way of enticing the audience to discover India as a cultural tourist, it gives one instant gratification because just by watching the movie, you experience the sensation of decoding this exotic land bit by bit, without actually having to read any history book on India, which will just give you a headache (is it any wonder most tourists prefer to read the Kama Sutra?). Now, in case it still doesn't sound convincing enough as a winning movie? You top it off with a sensational title which incorporates words like slum, dog and millionaire, and there you have it!

If it's sounding like I'm slamming the movie here, well, a thousand apologies. I've actually enjoyed it much more than one particular British movie about South Asians, namely Brick Lane. And I'm not even discussing whether the original novel has misrepresented the Bengali community there in real life, all that has been done. I would just say that if the movie is anything to go by, the novel by Monica Ali is probably more hype than anything. It is basically about a woman who has married in her teens to a man twice her age and moved to the East End in London to live as an obedient housewife until she learnt a bit more independence by doing a sewing job from home, and soon she finds her woman's liberation by having affair with a delivery man. That is so lame and predictable and it just fails to win my sympathy because I think there are more interesting immigrant stories even in Singapore, like how Bangladeshi workers are exploited and repatriated for no fault of theirs, or how south Indian workers are paid by a warped practice in which they have to return half the official salary to the employer every month. The artistic design of Brick Lane seems simply to be banking on the social aftermath of September 11 as a fashionable topic and to make the characters complex and contradictory. Hence you have this housewife falling for the young man but disapproving of his terrorist tendencies and refusing to go further with him, and you also have a husband who quotes British philosophers and disapproves of Islamic fundamentalism but eventually decides to return to Bangladesh thinking that things will not be the same again for his community in Britain after September 11. Is the intention simply to confuse and frustrate the reader or audience so that one may call it a sophisticated piece of work?

Slumdog Millionaire, on the hand, is thankfully a story that does not take itself so seriously. As we are watching it, we can all laugh about how Amitabh Bacchan is worshipped by his crazy fans in India, for instance. (By the way, I've seen the man in person too, it's no big deal.) Of couse, just by watching the movie, you would be none the wiser as to what the problem is in this massive country. You would just think people there are crazy and enjoy killing one another. Actually, I thought it would make an interesting scene if only some question like this is asked as part of the game show in the movie: say, what was the name of the British cartographer who drew the border between India and Pakistan within a matter of weeks? But I guess the British audience would not appreciate the joke too much. Then again, I must say there was one question in the movie that was rather interesting - it was about the Adam's Bridge between India and Sri Lanka, a shrewd and subtle political reference. Unfortunately it is so subtly tucked into the film that one could easily have missed it. It somehow echoes the state of awareness in the world for the Tamil region in Sri Lanka - largely muted. Incidentally, the British singer M.I.A. of Ceylonese Tamil origin, whose music is also featured in Slumdog Millionaire, who has been nominated for Oscar as well as Grammy, has also appeared on PBS talking about the issue of genocide in Sri Lanka, a comment which later saw a response of criticism from the Sri Lanka foreign minister. (Her father by the way was a founding member of a student organisation in support of Tamil Eelam.) But the Oscars did not turn out to be a similar platform for her views. Anyway, it seems not long ago that Tamil Eelam supporters were full of hope that they could go the way of Kosovo, but by now hope just seems ever dimmer and the comparison just seems ludicrous, for western interest is simply not there.

Politics aside, I have also enjoyed listening to the music of M.I.A. and I would always insist that culture in the periphery of a diaspora can be equally valid, though in this case I must say A.R. Rahman is more like the kind of music I can listen to on a regular basis. Her music is basically hip-hop-based with some Asian and African flavours here and there, and the kind that will appeal more to a British rather than American audience. Oh, if we are still on the topic of Sri Lanka and Tamil Tigers, there is a novel that may be worth reading, entitled Love Marriage, written by V.V. Ganeshananthan. And if you really think you have a soft spot for poor kids in India, there is a 2004 documentary film Born Into Brothels about children of prostitutes in Calcutta, it is now out on DVD. But of course as we all know, as well illustrated by the Slumdog phenomenon now, fiction will always have more appeal than reality.

2008-07-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

Gajamukha, Vinayaka, Ganapathi, ... the elephant-headed deity Ganesha with so many names is said to be the remover of obstacles and hence always the first Hindu deity to be prayed to. He is incidentally said to be the one who wrote down from dictation the Mahabharata, with the tip of a tusk broken from himself. Sadly, with all the positive qualitites like intelligence which we like to associate with the elephant like this, there is a story seldom told of this majestic animal which is rightly an eternal symbol of India. In fact, it is probably because the animal seems so revered that one does not realise it has become an animal most badly abused in India, precisely for the sake of religious worship. You would probably not spare a thought for this as you see impressive images of the grand Thrissur Pooram festival, where elephants stand in a row amidst the fanfare with big crowds thronging about, to the tumultous sound of not one but many many chenda. It would never occur to you that these elephants have to travel for hours under the hot sun, walking on hot tar road without the luxury of footwear like what we human beings have; that in fact they are going without food and water for hours as if we are deciding for them to perform a penance.

A documentary entitled The 18th Elephant, which I happened to see some days back in a little screening here (its director and screenwriter were actually present), tells the sad stories of elephants suffering precisely such abuse in India. Narrated in the first person from the point of view of the elephants, the documentary in Malayalam reveals how badly elephants have been treated in the name of religion, in the hand of mahouts who have no love for them at all. They walk uncomfortably with their legs chained, sometimes with spiked shackles, and when they so much as make noise or try to shake off the chains that are binding them, they get shot with bullets to tranquilise them. You can easily imagine how inhumane and brutal that is if you put yourself in the shoe of such an elephant, made to perform tasks as a prisoner with your legs chained 24 hours a day. But apparently those people who are keeping elephants for religious and non-religious purposes never think even for a minute about animal rights. So much for a culture that supposedly preaches ahimsa. As the film puts it through imaginary words of the elephants, all those rituals performed with all the chains and burdens on the poor animals are totally incomprehensible. All that the elephants can feel is vedana - pain. One may ask whether these rituals can be monitored with proper guidelines so as to ensure better welfare of the elephants. Or better stiil, one may question if such practices should just be stopped altogether. Apparently a temple like Guruvayur actually keeps as many as 55 elephants. Are such things necessary? I also heard, incidentally, that a study by a foreigner has already shown that elephants in Indian temples tend to be ill-treated. There are about 800 captive elephants in Kerala.

The most gruesome part of the documentary shows that elephants have also been maimed or killed in countrysides by greedy farm owners of today who encroach on the natural habitats of wildlife and then decide the elephants need to be punished if they try to take food from these new farm lands. What they do is so cruel it's unthinkable. They disguise little bombs in the form of food which would explode in the mouths of the elephants, leaving them better dead than alive. And of course, that would facilitate the greedy people in tearing the tusk from the semi-conscious elephant and then selling it as ivory to make a fortune for themselves. The biggest joke is that some of this ivory will be carved into figures of Ganesha. Is that our idea of reverence for gods and nature, our idea of being one with nature? Now you can argue that Hindu practices of offering and wearing flowers or breaking coconuts show a tradition of love for nature, but this? This and any religious practice that involves the abuse and torture of elephants should only be called primitive. It is not reverence for the elephants, it is like killing an animal or a child to perform a sacrifice and steal energy or strength for our own well-being, it is a form of exploitation and it belongs only to the darkest manifestations of Hindu culture that needs not be. I almost feel now like I can no longer listen to a Ganesha Stuthi or watch an elephant dance the same innocent way again. Maybe you can say the drunken elephant who was in the story of Krishna fighting his evil uncle Kamsa just had to be killed and his tusk used to impale Kamsa. But that is old mythology, go find some philosophical meaning in it. Religious practices can change for the better. Thousands of years ago animal sacrifice might have been common; in fact Indians were apparently known to eat beef too until King Asoka who believed in Buddhism decided to put a stop to it, and now we all know of not eating beef as part of Hindu culture.

I was recently reading this excellent book entitled Being Indian by Pavan K. Varma, who makes very sharp social observations and criticisms on Indian society. One thing he said was that "traditional Hindu society had no real concept of moral problems. Any action considered wrong in a certain context is condoned and even lauded in a different context." He also quoted a book (The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society, by Richard Lannoy) which said: "India has no developed indigenous ethical system - it has concentrated more on the mystical apprehension of an ultimately reality which transcends good and evil than on differentiating between good and evil acts." The special concept one finds in Hinduism instead is dharma. And Pavan Varma adds: "Dharma is an undefined and ehemeral ideal... A man can do no wrong if he acts to protect his vadharma, conduct that is right for one's jati or station. He cannot be held accountable for actions that are a part of his ashramadharma, conduct that is right for one's stage of life. He canot be penalised for transgressions made in the interests of kuladharma, conduct that is right for one's family. And finally, almost anything he does would be justified in a situation of distress or emergency, when he would be guided by his appadharma, conduct that is right in moments of crisis." Now I hope this isn't the right interpretation or it implies that being Indian means shirking all moral judgements and leaving everything to fate or karma, and that also means we definitely have a lost cause here then.

Filmmakers of The 18th Elephant clearly run the risk of facing hostility from the community as their message can easily be twisted and wrongly interpreted as anti-Hindu. If you do an internet search on this film you can see how a report about the film in The Hindu newspaper can be phrased so conservatively in order not to offend the religious public. That sadly may just perpetuate the romantic idea of love for elephants without people realising that elephants are best left on their own to roam free. And please, religion itself is not the object of criticism here. I for one still like the image of Ganesha, especially the symbols of Pasa and Ankusa. But the lesson there is that we should apply the rein and the hook on ourselves, to exercise self-control and avoid unnecessary desires so as to go on the right path.

2008-04-15T10:02:00.001-07:00

For the first time ever, like a dream come true, I have finally seen a performance by Kalakshetra here in Singapore last month. But at the end of it, I was like: is that it? I mean I was very impressed by the dancers' impeccably precise execution of all dance sequences, tirmanam and all, the way their arms are raised to equal angles with equal spacing between their bodies during a nattadavu, the perfect circles they form now and then, absolutely no sloppiness like what you may be used to in watching amateur performances. It was also a joy watching six to eight male dancers on stage in one go, with their veshti beautifully wrapped around in two or three tiers; I mean if you cull all the male dancers from whichever group you can find here you can count them off in one hand, maybe two if you include non-professionals. And the effective lighting design gives the Kalakshetra dancers an extra aura, the amber light giving a lovely warmth to the girls with their heavy garlands, the blue background matching the blue veshti of the guys so divinely as fitting for a dance drama devoted to Krishna. But still, something seems missing despite the picture-perfect beauty of Dasaru Kanda Krishna, a work set to music of Purandaradasa, depicting several scenes of Krishna's life...

I must say the show affords beautiful tableaus on stage, like how a few gopis would be plucking on one side and a few others talking and laughing on the other side, and then you have one gopi bursting into the scene breaking up a couple other gopis and making one U-turn to reach another group, all the action orchestrated with well-calculated timing. When they do the usual elephant and crocodile story which otherwise can be enacted by a solo dancer, they end with an elaborate tableau of a dancer as elephant, a dancer doing the crocodile with open jaws, then the divine manifestation by another dancers, and extra dancers would be flanking on two sides, raising their arms with palms up towards the centrepiece. It's like they have the manpower and they will use it to match western ballet in grandeur (sans those fake houses or fake forests which western productions would invest heavily on, we Indian dancers don't believe in such things). But ultimately, you realise that the songs are just a loose collection of compositions with the theme of Krishna rather than an opera with the dramatic structure like in western classical music, and what it means is that after a joyous stick dance somewhere in the middle, you don't have anything like an action-packed final showdown for climactic scene, it's just one nice song after another. I read that this dance drama was performed for the ISKCON and I imagine such gentle subtlety might be perfect in that context, but I think people like me just have not reached that tranquil or transcendental state of mind to meditate on the messages behind the dance instead of watching how human bodies can move. In fact I'm reminded somewhat now of those colourful illustrations in the Bhagavad Gita painted by western devotees - it's most exquisite, even awe-inspiring, but somehow so distant from me. I don't know how to say it but, it's all too clean, maybe?

Kalakshetra's current director Leela Samson (a most splendid dancer herself, I heard from an alumnus who was under her), who incidentally choreographed this production, has said, and I quote, that "the Kalakshetra style is a way of rendering an adavu, the insistence on touching the toes in a particular way, taking the bend to its fullness, stretching the arm to its completeness, the emphasis points, the manner in which you take a turn...". Well the result is very evident on stage of course. But it should be pointed out that when Rukmini Devi founded Kalakshetra at the Theosophical Society 7 decades ago, when she devised a sequence of adavus to be practised with clarity and smoothness, she was actually taking the cue from ballet exercises. In fact the story worth repeating is that Rukmini was prompted by the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova to discover her own Indian tradition in dance. So this dance form which we like to trace all the way back to Bharata Muni, as if it has never changed in 2,000 years, is in fact catalysed by foreign ideas in the form as we know it today. Makes one think how it would be like if we attempt now to make Bharatanatyam movements a bit less clean instead, say by imagining how the devadasis used to do it?

I'm not trying to provoke here, just thinking of alternative possibilities. It's like if the organisers did not bring this production here this time, they could also have brought Kalakshetra's recent adaptation of Man in the Iron Mask, the old French thriller novel by Alexandre Dumas, that could really have been a scream. But guess they just want to play it safe, especially when there is so much prestige surrounding this occasion of Kalakshetra performing in Singapore, so many distinguished guests in the community coming, so many companies, banks, airlines, foundations and all supporting this show (you will never see so much corporate support for local productions, guess the rationale is that it's pointless to support groups that are still struggling, you don't get any mileage doing that), you feel as if there has never been Indian classical dance in Singapore all these years and they are showing it now to a privileged and fortunate lot. You see so many well-heeled patrons coming in their best suits or best dresses (makes me wonder how dancers in Kalakshetra have, in contrast, eschewed ties, shoes and socks in their cottage-style campus), arriving ceremoniously early to rub shoulders with others or fashionably late to just catch the show, hardly anyone having time even to stop by that little music stall set up by someone coming all the way from India for this festival (if you thought the CD prices would be daylight robbery, what pity, I must inform you all too late now that it would have been your steal actually). So, in short, the programme just had to be something that makes for a pleasant outing rather than make a stir.

All said, I think the Kalakshetra style is apparently something that has to be held up high like a monument with fine, exquisite carvings meant to last through the sands of time, as a means of preserving a heritage that might be too intangible otherwise. But if all that Bharatanatyam dancers like us works towards is that kind of precision without some casual human touch or some new themes, it may just become a form of decorative art, something like wallpaper. Our audience should learn to appreciate more contemporary works too, and by that I don't just mean performances that incorporate some multimedia or some modern theme while basically doing an entire margam repertoire from alarippu to thillana. Even within the past few weeks I have seen some recitals moving out of the classical dance format, like one using electronic music and interacting with special lighting effects, or one where the dancer speaks simultaneously and also interacts with the audience. We can move out of the confinement of a fixed mentality and keep a tradition alive by giving it some space to breathe as well, no?

2008-02-01T09:30:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-01-16T07:45:00.000-08:00

The wheel of time keeps on turning, it waits for no one. How time flies, it feels as if Thaipusam was just a couple of months ago, but now Pongal is already here. Singapore being a multicultural city, there is one festival after another non-stop. While Deepavali decorations are still shining bright in good old rustic Little India, Christmas light are also up in swanky cosmopolitan Orchard Road. And before Christmas carols have really faded away, stalls selling Chinese New Year decorations are already rolling out to the streets with a blast. And now once again it is time to wish Happy Pongal to cows and girls alike. This year I just saw that there is some huge and colourful pongal pot decorating the bazaar in Little India. And while I was passing by the shops I suddenly had this urge to buy one of those earthern pots. Not that I will know how to make pongal myself. Until now I don't even know what exactly is the secret behind pongal, the sugar or the milk or what extra ingredients. It's like when something is there you just eat, you don't even think whether it's prasad or what, food is food.

Apparently in India Pongal means so much more than just having your sweet rice and sugarcane. There is big celebration. There are dances performed traditionally at Pongal, like Kummi and Kolattam. I was just reading a chapter on folk dance in a dance book, and it gives an interesting definition of folk dance as a form of collective expression, often reflecting daily lives of the society at work or at play, and often in correspondence to different times and events of the year, to the cycles of nature. In this case of course it is the time of harvest. I guess in Singapore people have no concept of seasons not only because it is a tropical place but also because we have no farmers here, in fact we are all urban folks so removed from nature, we are not able to feel the wonders of nature, how different plants respond to the cycles of the year and so on. But if you just stop and think for a moment, isn't it amazing? Everything in the world, from the planets revolving around the sun to all plants and animals, has a sort of rhythmic cycle to it. I suppose women would be more aware of natural cycles than men? Men just need to know when to go work and when to come home, madness on Monday, bottlenecks on Friday, and relaxation during weekend. Women have an internal biological clock, their moods wax and wane like the moon, and they are the ones who give life from one generation to the next.

We tend to think Bharathanatyam whenever we think dance. Actually folk dance is also part of the same cultural heritage that should never be forgotten. It can be a pure joy to watch too. For sure there is no complicated rhythms of calculated jathis and tirmanams, just something simple like step, skip, step, skip. But hey, if the dancers are really into it, it can feel like your heartbeat itself skipping. The quick swing of the shoulder and turn of the torso seems so free, as light and natural as ripened crops bending under a breeze. And a quick glance over the shoulder does not look for the audience's gaze, it's more like one heeding the joyful call of a bird in the distance. It all looks so carefree - but be careful, as they are doing that gypsy move, jerking their hands and elbow side to side, or doing that fast twirl with a careless smile, they may well be stealing a piece of your heart away!

Sometimes you can afford to let your hair down a bit. Think about it, most non-Indians wouldn't be able to tell the difference between classical Indian dance and folk dance. You can bet they will enjoy watching a folk dance rather than Bharathanatyam. I mean I once had a Chinese taxi driver telling me he is impressed how sophisticated the rhythms and movements of Bharathanatyam can be. But other than that, if you look at the local media, it's like even people working in the national newspaper here wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Bollywood and Bharathanatyam, and they probably can't care less. (Just recently, they used a picture of a Bharathanatyam dancer to publicise Bollywood party in a pub.) It's like after all these years of national education and efforts to promote racial harmony, there will still be people who say Indian dance is just running around trees. Anyway, Bollywood is Bollywood. During the last Deepavali, I saw a bit of this movie on TV where some amorous thug is checking out the character of Asin up and down, and the camera imitates his roving eyes by hovering around her chest. After that I told myself that's it, I will not waste time watching another Tamil movie until something really good comes. I mean you may argue that in these movies the bad guys will not come to a good end (after a lot of chasing and fighting of course), but what's the point? The movie in the main is already encouraging the cheapest form of fantasy. So never mind such entertainment. Folk dance on the other hand is always valid as a traditional art form. Say somebody living in a village will never get to learn classical dance, but does some folk dance, that's also something. Most important thing is doing the best you can. Incidentally, I just heard that a Muruga song that some of my fellow dancers are now learning is in fact written by an anonymous taxi driver. Isn't that something?

Time is a funny thing. It will not be the same thing to two different persons. It all depends on how you make use of it. You can spend a whole day daydreaming, or you can spend it to do a lot of meaningful things. It's like in dance, you may be counting the same length of time in 8 beats, but if you're doing first speed, you just cover say 4 steps, and if you're doing second speed, you cover 8 steps, and third speed will be 16. In the long run that makes a vast difference! You know this story about Lord Krishna disguising himself as a sage and challenging a king to a game of chess. What he asked for if he won was to have one grain of rice in the first square, two grains in the second and so on. The king hearing that thought that was such a small request, but he when lost the game and started adding the grains, he realised the grains reached like one million by the 20th square and one trillion by the 40th square! The king then learnt his lesson. Talking about mathematics, I just learnt something else interesting about tala cycles. In Carnatic music, when you do first speed, you sing sa re ga ma pa da ni sa in one cycle, and if it's second speed you sing both arohanam and avrohanam in one cycle, third speed means twice arohanam and avrohanam, fourth speed means four times. But in Hindustani music it's actually so different, whereas ekgun and dugun seem similar, being single and double time, what you call third speed would effectively be chougun which is quadruple time here, and what you call fourth speed would be athgun or eight times. Tigun or triple time in Hindustani music means like completing three times in one cycle, so what that means is you will have to divide 16 beats into three! My first reaction was, how can that possibly be done? It sounds as impossible as trisecting an angle with compass and straight rule, the old Greek problem that is impossible to solve. Well the solution is in fact simply to count dha dhin dhin dha in triplets. Definitely takes practice!

I digress too much. Guess what I just want to say is, what matters most about annual festivals is probably not how much you enjoy the festive food. What I like is how these festivals mark time, for time is something you can easily lose track of; how they remind us to be mindful of life, to keep starting from a clean slate and be fruitful.

2007-07-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

Gandhi apparently once said: "He who owns more than he needs is a thief." Now you can either be cynical about it and say that probably Gandhi's own wife and children would not be able to stand him with his stoic lifestyle, or you can start reflecting on how much of the things you spend money on in your life is just unnecessary luxury or pure vanity. In fact, if we now pause and think about the impending problem of global warming today, we ought to paraphrase Gandhi and say: "He who consumes more than he needs is a criminal against mother nature." Does every family need to have a car? Do you really need air-conditioning the whole time wherever you are? Do Indian restaurants need to show they are modern by serving food on disposable plastic plates with plastic forks and spoons? (OK I'm not sure eating on banana leaves is a good idea for the forests, but contributing to plastic wastes that have to be burnt, that is definitely not cool for the atmosphere.)

I was almost wondering why the recent Live Earth concerts were held everywhere in the world including China (at least on a symbolic scale) and Japan but not in a big country like India. Well maybe the Bollywood artistes would not be deemed good role models considering the way they travel to far-flung places unnecessarily, filming in Switzerland when it has nothing to do with the storyline, even boasting about filming at seven wonders of the world, when it amounts to just a few seconds here and there! OK that's not really my point here, of course western rock stars can also be accused of the same thing with their world tour concerts, certainly more than Bollywood stars holding film awards around the world. (Well there were also cases of dumb Bollywood actors poaching endangered animals, but that's a separate story.) What I mean to criticise is the modern mentality that just because you have a little money, you want to travel all the way to lands far away like Europe for a 10-day holiday, rushing here and there to take pictures even when you don't have time to find out the history of the country you are in, when you might as well relax in a nearby country in a more meaningful trip. Tourism in 'exotic' lands is something that the media needs not promote any more. It is so endemic of the modern lifestyle, that you don't have time to do anything useful after your stressful working days and you just compensate by spending your money on a quick fix through your weekly retail therapy or your annual vanity trip that make your tour agents rich while burning fuel into the atmosphere. A lot of us get into a habit of simply spending money for the sake of spending money or for the sake of keeping up an external image, instead of spending time to improve our inner well-being.

There is an interesting song by Thyagaraja, Nidhi Chala Sukhama. It sings: "Oh my mind, tell me truly, which conduces greatly to happiness - wealth or the sight of the Lord? Which gives more happiness - flattery of mere men bound up in their own conceit or the singing of the Lord...?" Apparently the musical saint sang it when the ruler of Thanjavur invited him to his court, but he declined. It is a Hindu wisdom to be against praise of men for profit; even a guru is supposed to be impart knowledge to disciples for its own sake and not for guru dakshina. Maybe such attitudes are outdated now, we all would rather talk about the 'music business' or 'arts industry' because everything is commercialised. Nowadays musicians and dancers will find it hard to reject all performances at commercial events or performances to humour politicians, especially when you can't find any support for the arts in the community. Economy rules this day and age, that's all.

How many of us would have guessed that Purandaradasa, our Sangita Pitamaha, the one who composed thousands of songs, the one who fixed the scale of Mayamalavala Gowla for preliminary music training, who prescribed elementary lessons like sarali varisai, jantai varisai, was actually a worldly and greedy businessman in the early part of his life? He was born as a son of a banker or gem stone dealer and so it was quite natural that he expanded on his family's business and amassed wealth by hook or by crook. However he then discovered music and went on a search for the Divine through music, turning from a sinner to a saint; he gave up all his wealth and went about begging with his wife and children just enough to feed themselves. That's such an amazing story, for these days it is much easier to imagine artistes who start out being idealistic and then turn into mercenary businessmen as they grow older. Maybe wives and children are too demanding these days, and everything costs money, television, PC, handphones, sports shoes, etc. Anyway thank God Purandaradasa went the opposite direction, otherwise we would not have all those lovely songs still sung after 500 years - songs like Narayana Ninna Namada (in which Purandaradasa prays that his tongue gets the essence in chanting the Lord's name) or Jagadodharana (about Krishna stealing butter and Yasoda asking him to open his mouth, which reveals the whole universe). My current favourite is Venkatachala Nilayam, set to Sindhu Bhairavi. I don't actually know the significance of the song with regards to the Lord of the Seven Hills and so on, but it is certainly the kind of song that evokes the deepest emotions, such that make us human.

2007-05-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

Doing Bharathanatyam can be boring sometimes. I mean when you are just practising dance steps mechanically, counting the beat but not feeling the music in your heart. When you are just keeping up with the steps and gestures, trying to remember everything by heart, and somehow it feels as if somebody else is dancing this but not you, you are more like a puppet at best. Shouldn't dancing be something natural and spontaneous, a form of art that is an expression of your personal feelings and impulses through the body, rather than a set of secret codes by means of hand gestures, which people who are not already in the know will probably not find time to decipher? Pardon me for saying this, but just for the sake of reflection, shouldn't a dancer simply be enjoying a dance like what you see in a movie? Take a look at that delightful dance scene of Aishwarya Rai in Guru, as she raises her arms towards the sky with joy, moving her hands freely about the wrists gracefully even with the rain splattering down, as she beats a rhythm against the pillars of a temple, or as she imitates the ducks waddling from side to side and the buffaloes moving with their horns. It's not much of a dance actually, so why does it fill one with joy watching a sequence like that? It's not just because it's Aishwarya Rai (anyway she has already gone the way of the Bachchan family now, end of story); the thing is that her movements convey a convincing sense of joy with the hellp of the music and the cinematography, so it feels as if the mountains and valleys are also coming alive with the swaying of her hips, and the audience understands immediately what it all means.

On the other hand, if it is say an annual Bharathanatyam dance show, what does it mean? Your friends coming to support just don't understand what the mudras are all about, your family is just hoping that you will look your glittery best and do them proud and have well-taken photos to prove later, while you are just struggling to execute the adavus and the mudras properly, praying that you won't forget any dance step and freeze on stage, and then hitting yourself in the head after making your blunder - it is a common occurrence, call it spontaneous memory failure or call it involuntary nervous system error. If nothing went seriously wrong, you can pat yourself on the back and then you have to quickly change, or quickly pack your makeup kit and costume jewellery and clear the dressing room and then go home trying not to think about the money you have spent tailoring the costume which you will now have to fold away to never see the light of day again for a long time. Everything is over in a flash, and you even begin to wonder how much of this chaotic affair and how much of the trouble you go through for it is purely about dance actually. Sometimes I also wonder how many girls are into dance more to please their parents than to please themselves, how many do it for activities points to get to a good college, how many just take up Bharathanatyam as a matter of course like they go to the temple and so on. It's probably a combination of different reasons. But I'm really wondering because if most girls pursue dance purely out of passion, why is it that an 'arangetram' here often means more like a farewell solo show before one gets married? Is it all a show to please other people then?

All right, I don't want to go into gender politics here so much. But I just had this half-crazy thought that perhaps the best people to preserve and promote the art of Bharathanatyam in the 21st century, taking over from the devadasis in the past, should be the male and gay dancers. For girls tend to dance for the sake of their parents before marriage and then stop dancing for the sake of their husbands after marriage. Male dancers, however, only dance for themeselves. OK, the reason that I'm mentioning the word gay here is more out of personal frustration actually. Sometimes I just feel Bharathanatyam is too decorative as a dance form. Generally speaking, you see too much of the lasya and too little of the tandava. So it can feel a bit against the nature of a male dancer; unless, of course if you're gay. I mean, if you watch the movies, male dancers are supposed to just shake their shoulders and thrust their elbows forward while stepping up with bent knees, that kind of thing. In fact, perhaps ideally I should also dance with a lungi, maybe even stop halfway and tie it up like they do in the song Vazha Meenu!

Now again I don't want to be misunderstood here. In no way am I suggesting that there is anything wrong with being gay. To me there is no big difference between a gay man and any human being in the basic fact that he, like anybody else, wants to love and be loved. You may think that gay men tend to be vain, but then straight men can also be vain in their own ways, maybe in their case they are flaunting their cars instead of their outfits, and maybe that's because they have money but no dress sense. And if a dancer happens to be gay, even if you think he is vain and narcissistic, as long as the personal touch he infuses into the dance is positive, what's wrong? And of course a gay man can also be the kindest soul around; a gay man may live a more fulfilled life than what most of us are capable of in our short lives on earth. I must also add that, frankly, a lot of gender stereotyping in dance is unnecessary.

Anyway, I've just started learning a new dance in class, a Muruga Kautuvam. Guess it's still a long way for me from my dream of a dance of Nataraja, but to think positively, you can also say it's another step in that direction. And I should remind myself to always feel as proud as a peacock while dancing.

2007-03-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

One of the most fascinating things in the world must be the bonding between twins. Twin brothers or sisters are said to be able to share each other's feelings intimately, almost like telepathy. If that is the case it must be magical. But something that fascinates me equally would be musical siblings, namely those who perform as a duo, like Bombay Sisters, Hyderabad Brothers, Priya Sisters (still remember seeing them in concert, they seem to have such a pleasant personality that radiates with the sunny smile as well as the voice). I'm not sure there is such a tradition in classical music of other cultures in the world. It's simply wonderful how these duos manage to sing as one, or at least complement each other. The thing between siblings is that the voices would be very similar, so while the listener may or may not be able to distinguish between the two, they just blend so well together. Anyway they must certainly spend an incredible amount of time practising together to achieve a perfect coordination.

Even for instrumentalists, it can be quite a phenomenon. Just went to a concert by Ganesh and Kumaresh here some days back. The brothers have grown up practising vocals and violin together, so they would play in the same style and even though it's not like voices of siblings, the effect of two same instruments playing together like they do is still something unique, completely different from say two musicians having a musical dialogue in Jugal Bandi, which often feels more like a contest. Two is a nice number because solo is just solo whereas multiple violins would be an orchestra, but when two violins play together like they do, there is a special resonance, not just when they play a tune straight in unison, but especially when they alternate higher notes with lower notes, or touch the lower strings now and then as they play running notes. The nice thing about Ganesh and Kumaresh is that they are relatively accessible, as in they don't do so much stuff like an hour of alapana, improvising on a raga into high abstraction. I imagine they must be popular among the younger generations, because they also add special effects here and there, not too often, just now and then which makes it more memorable, for example somewhere in the concert they would do a jump or a quick brush of the bow, in some piece they would end with a straight but staggered bow, or one of them would be doing a pizzicato. One brother would even sing in between. I enjoy their playing of Amrita Varshini - which as it is, being the raga said to invoke rain, has a quality of urgency. They played it with alternations and stop-starts and went speeding towards the end, so you really feel the notes falling down like cascades of water. Towards the end of the concert, they switched into a different mode as they played short items of favourite tunes. I like their rendition of Bo Shambo, which was played with long, firm bowing giving a booming sound which befits the majestic atmosphere of the song, with just flashes of the rapid bowing here and there.

It's often said that music is a universal language. About that I always have my doubts. I mean even in Western pop music which is supposed to be a big melting pot, blue-eyed soul just doesn't feel like the real McCoy generally, it's like they used to say you have to come from the deep south to sing the blues, it's like white boys can't rap and black boys can't rock and all that. Similarly, you can't expect Chinese pop music to become popular among Indians now, it's like asking people who are used to tea with sugar and milk to suddenly switch to drinking pure green tea, they will say there is no taste. Or ask a Chinese tai-chi person to dance to African rhythms; he will just find it funny or think one probably has to practise some voodoo in order to get into the mood. I'm not saying cross-cultural learning is impossible. There can be Europeans who learn Indian music and dance well too and vice versa. But these are exceptions. You cannot force people to do it, or it just becomes a politically correct but superficial thing. There is beauty in cultural diversity of the world. At the same time, it is a warm and wonderful feeling when you are among family and friends who speak the same language as you and understand the same music as you. It is indeed wonderful how two or more persons can communicate with each other through music, speaking the same musical language as you may say. In such moments, music seems to bind souls together, and such a feeling must be as close to divinity as you can get.

2007-01-29T07:21:00.000-08:00

It is part of an annual ritual for music teachers and students to celebrate Thyagaraja Aradhana by gathering to sing and play songs by Thyagaraja, ending off with the Pancharatna kritis, which are considered the crowning achievements of the composer. This year also happens to be the 160th anniversary and we had a celebration at the temple earlier this month with different groups taking turns to perform. Now some Chinese university student who is interested in learning more about Indian culture witnessed the event and asked me later: was that a music competition? I laughed, feeling very amused. Why do people think that whenever different arts groups come together, it means competition? I replied that it's nothing like that actually, we had different Indian groups there but everybody was just coming to pay tribute to this great South Indian composer who has been honoured as a saint.

Well you can't blame people for not being in the know, especially if they are from another culture. Anyway most people around us would be more into movie songs than classical music; it is a sign of our time that even temple musicians can be heard playing movie songs at weddings - appadi podu podu podu and stuff like that. So I bet a majority of people would never have heard the song Jagadanandakaraka if not for the movie Anniyan - where incidentally Sudha Ragunathan is seen in a cameo singing this first song of the Pancharatna kritis. Purists would probably frown at the scene, where you see the movie actress planting herself in the temple crowd pretending to be singing behind the maestro. It also happens to be the very movie where you hear some nonsense pop ditty about coffee and capuccino. I shall not comment on those songs in the movie then. But I must confess I do enjoy the story of the movie itself, for after all it features probably the most patriotic serial killer in Tamil movie history since Kamal Hassan's Indian. Sometimes you really feel the society needs a superhero like that to punish people for being corrupt, selfish and inconsiderate. The movie is also very clever as it virtually portrays India as a case of schizophrenia, part bureaucrat, part trendy wannabe, and part pious, God-fearing devotee - taken together as a person, he would simple not be able to come to terms with himself.

Anyway, let's go back to Saint Thyagaraja. He has been described as a bhakta of Lord Rama. He wrote songs almost exculsively about Rama (with my limited knowledge, I am familiar with just one nice exception of a song - Shiva Shiva in Raga Pantuvarali). He has apparently written many songs about visions of Rama. Jagadanandakaraka is well-known for containing 108 names of Rama. Now a thought just struck me the other day when I was reflecting on the significance of Thyagaraja Aradhana as a spiritual experience for a music student and as a social event. Thyagaraja was a bhakta who had visions of Rama in various aspects, referred to in his compositions. Great singers and musicians recount such visions as they interpret works by composers like Thyagaraja, and they invoke Thyagaraja. The music artistes among us look forward to a darsana of these musical celebrities, while music students like us must look up to our teachers first. Meantime most people are virtually deaf to classical music. When you think about it, the bulk of people in the world are just so insignificant and so far away from divinity. But that's just one way of perceiving it of course. Actually, anybody can attempt to reach out to divinity in his or her own way, whether through the arts or through good deeds like helping the less fortunate. I have an impression that some people think of bhakti in terms of just performing rituals of worship and singing and chanting of names of deities. But that has to be just a narrow understanding. Incidentally, I remembering read some analysis in the internet highlighting that Thyagaraja's love for Rama also meant an admiration of Rama's positive attributes and virtues such as courage, qualities which we as individuals can also emulate. Wasn't Gandhi himself, who uttered He Ram to the last day of his life, inspired by Rama's courage and adherence of satya and dharma? Perhaps a God-fearing devotee and an art practitioner, a peace-lover and a fighter, can indeed be one person, and it's not going schizo!

2007-01-11T10:32:00.000-08:00

Water is the last film in the famous (or notorious) trilogy by Deepa Mehta, a trilogy which has spanned a decade now, beginning with Fire, a story about two sisters-in-law who give up on their husbands and end up in a lesbian relatioship, followed by Earth, a story about ethnic riots during the 1947 partition. When I caught the long-awaited movie in the cinema last week in a very limited run, I had forgotten details of the previous two movies. But I do carry a memory of them being powerful stories and I expected no less from this latest (actually from 2005). The director has summed it all up herself long ago in an interview: "The trilogy is about elements on one level that nurture and destroy us. They are very tangible elements. Fire is about the politics of sexuality, Earth is about the politics of nationalism and Water is about the politics of religion." In terms of the visuals, she said that the scripts evoked certain colours, in Fire it was orange, white and green, whereas in Earth it was terra cotta, red and yellow. Well, for Water, you can easily guess that the predominant colour is white, a symbol of purity, as the Ganges river at Varanasi - which is the story setting - would evoke, but above all purity in a specific sense that is demanded very much of women and little of men.

The first few scenes of the movie already set the tone for the depressing movie, set in the 1930s. It starts with a girl who becomes a widow at the mere age of 7 or so and is sent to a house for widows in Varanasi, to live an ascetic life wearing white, abstaining from tasty food and avoiding contact with other folks in the city, spending the days praying and doing penance at the river. The earlier part of the movie concentrates on how how the little girl is bullied by the mean ones among the elderly widows, and how she strikes up a friendship with a kind old widow who would reminisce on the delicacies she used to enjoy as a child, as she does not even get to eat something as simple as a ladoo now . But the story's main character turns out to be a young and fair widow who falls in love with a charming young man. It is a forbidden love, obviously, but that said, the romance ends in a tragedy so cruel, you feel like questioning the film's creator whether it's absolutely necessary. You may also find the intended cultural cliches in the movie not to your taste, though you know what the director is getting at. For example, the lover played by Jon Abraham quotes Kalidasa's Meghdoot, the famous fantasy of sending love messages through clouds. (When asked how one could believe in such fantasies, he replies: how do people believe a statue can answer prayers?) He even plays a flute while waiting for his beloved to meet her at night! (Lord Krishna comes to mind.) For me, I have to say it just feels like a movie cliche when the young woman lights up a lamp to go out in the night and you hear a song going "piya ho...". (Music of the film is by A.R. Rahman, incidentally.) But sometimes a cliche can be used effectively, and that's what I feel about that powerful scene where one of the widows carries the child widow in her arms and rushes to the train station where Gandhi is giving a speech; in the background you hear a specially arranged version of Vaishnava Janto - Gandhi's favourite bhajan, of course. Amidst the crowd, she is desperately running after Gandhi like he is some deity, hoping for the child to be saved by him...

One criticism made by Indian critics on the movie is that it is historically inaccurate. I find that simply trivial, just as I find it amusing to hear western critics proclaim the movie as a 'majestic epic'. To me, I would call it a poetic work, but I won't have time to argue whether it should be named one of 5 best movies of the decade or one of 50 best. It's just a movie for goodness sake, you should look at what its messge is ultimately, which is spelt out at the end of the movie: there are 34 million widows in India according to a 2001 census, and many of them still life in the same way today ascribing to 'religious' rules set out 2,000 years ago - all this despite liberal ideas propagated by Gandhi about 60 or 70 years ago. I think Deepa Mehta has made her point cleverly with constant references to Gandhi throughout the movie. To add sarcasm, she has also created the comic character of an educated 'brown Englishman' who enjoys singing European classical music and quoting Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, but sees no need for change in the status of women in India.

There ought to be more movies with social consciousness like this. The only thing unfortunate about Deepa Mehta is that she has become known for provoking religious sensibilities, for example by giving the characters in her lesbian story Fire the names Sita and Radha. Maybe that is why critics call her a 'self-hating Indian' and her film set in Varanasi was destroyed by a mob and thrown into the Ganges when she attempted to film Water in 2000 initially, so she had to film it later in Sri Lanka instead. There are actually other themes in the movie which need to be seen independently of the religion controversy, for example child abuse, which is something also touched on in movies like Monsoon Wedding. I would like to mention here that child prostitution is a very real issue. A study has shown that girls under 14 years of age constitute 30 per cent of 900,000 prostitutes in India. In absolute figures, India has the highest number of children exploited by prostitution in the world, followed by USA and Brazil. Now that's something an ideal world should be cleansed of.

2007-01-02T06:25:00.000-08:00

It's new year, fireworks were exploding in a distance from my house. Inspired by the party mood, I decided to put on some CDs of party music. But I simply don't have much to suit the occasion, all I could dig out was a couple of hits collections of Shubha Mudgal and Hans Raj Hans. Anyway it's fun listening to some upbeat music I don't listen to on a regular basis. I guess I also happened to be a bit in a mood for Bhangra as I was watching Rang De Basanti on VCD that night. I have been taking a long time to watch the movie, not able to decide whether I love or hate it. My instinctive reaction was to resent the unlikely story of a British girl coming to India to direct a film on India's freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. It sounded like a lame excuse to put a blonde girl in an Indian movie for its own sake, I already hated such a formula when I saw Kisna. But on the other hand, it's also quite clever the way Rang De Basanti uses the British character to reflect on the Indian mentality, the tendency to kill one another for the smallest sectarian differences, and the fatalistic attitude of resigning to the present situation, preferring to 'adjust' instead of making changes. It's like heroic deeds belong to history and mythology and not to life as we know it.

It's very easy to contrast the western belief in progress and action with the Asian attitude of resigning to fate, the attitude that you can't stop good things or bad things from happening anyway since it's all karma. You may call it an over-simplified stereotype, but it's useful to magnify cultural differences sometimes just to learn something from it. Of course I'm not saying the western model is all perfect and ideal. Western ideas of progress are often not sustainable and have caused harm many a times. British thinker John Gray pointed out in his book Heresies that the western secular world view, what may be termed liberal humanism, is "simply the Christian view of the world with God left out", whereby humans are unique while other animals sharing the earth have no value in themselves, so "the earth is simply a mass of resources for human use". The same people would believe that with power over nature through science, they can create a better world than what existed before. The Marxist idea of the end of history, 'in which communism triumphs and destructive conflict then vanishes from the world, is transparently a secular mutation of Christain apocalyptic beliefs', Gray noted, the same true of 'Francis Fukuyama's equally absurd belief in universal salvation through 'global democratic capitalism'... what we have is myth masquerading as science". Today, the new faith is in technology rather than political action for better distribution of wealth. Governments are looking at intensive agriculture and genetically modified crops to feed the hungry, and imagining that economic growth will automatically remove poverty. But what the governments are implying is that we can all forget about political changes, when that is something that cannot be replaced by technology.

At the same time, John Gray observed that people may be getting cynical about politics due to its worst evils, for "if an absurdity like the Iraq war cannot be prevented, what hope is there of governments eradicating hunger?" The number of people who died in the September 11 attack has incidentally just been exceeded by Americans dying in Iraq. And that again is insignificant if you consider that 3,000 is the number of Iraqis who have been dying on a monthly basis in this war. With Saddam Hussein's execution, more conflicts can now be expected in Iraq, not less. Once again people in an Asian country will be killing one other to the advantage of the shrewd western powers. The same story as it has been in the colonial history of India and Southeast Asia.

I really meant to say a 'Happy New Year' to anybody who may be reading this, so maybe I should end with some humour. Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, was once asked in an interview whether he thought there is evidence of intelligence in outer space. He replied: is there evidence of intelligence on earth?

2006-10-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

Anita Desai has widely been praised as the finest Indian writer of her generation in the English language. (She was in fact born to a Bengali father and a German mother, but grew up in Delhi hardly aware of her mother being a foreigner, as she wore sari and cooked Indian food. When her mother died, Anita and her sister gave her a cremation and immersed her ashes in the river; it did not occur to them till later that they could have considered a burial.) Anita's daughter Kiran Desai is also an accomplished writer and has incidentally just won the Booker Prize with the novel The Inheritance of Loss. That should be next up in my reading list then, but anyway I want to talk here about a novel by Anita Desai I have just finished reading, namely Clear Light of Day, from 1980. (It happens to be one of three novels by her nominated for Booker Prize, all without any luck though.) It tells the story of three or four siblings who grew up in the years of India's independence and partition. The narrative structure is somewhat interesting, as it virtually runs in reverse time order from adulthood to childhood. It opens with an old family house in Delhi in the present day, when the elder sister Bim, a teacher with grey hair, has a visit from the younger sister Tara who since long ago has married and moved abroad with her husband working in foreign service. Part two deals with their teenage years when they had their first romances and their brother Raja was rebelling against the family with his interest in Urdu literature and eventually left for Pakistan. The third part goes back further in time to their naive childhood with all the happy times but also petty fights. The novel returns to the present only in part four, not with a big melodramatic reunion but a reconciliaton among the siblings symbolically.

The novel is not just about the decline of a family's fortunes or the love-hate relationships among siblings. It is also a story about compromises between dreams and reality in life, a theme made more poignant by the reverse time order. As children, Raja used to say that he would want to be a hero when he grew up and Bim said she wanted to be a heroine; they laughed at Tara who said she wanted to be a mother and knit for her babies. Their aunt Mira had to console Tara by saying: "There, there, you'll see you grow up to be exactly what you want to be, and I very much doubt if Bim and Raja will be what they say they will be." It turned out to be so true, as Tara eventually found escape from the family's dwindling fortunes by marrying well. Bim on the other hand rejected a great potential romance in her younger years and got stuck in the family house living a largely solitary life. The young Raja liked to fancy himself as a poet ever since he struck up a friendship with a neighbouring Muslim family and started reading Urdu poetry apart from English. His used to impress guests of the Muslim family by reciting the great Urdu poet Iqbal's verses: "Thou didst create night but I made the lamp/Thou didst create clay but I made the cup/Thou didst create the deserts, mountains and forests/I produced the orchards, gardens and groves/It is I who made the glass out of stone/And it is I who turn a poison into an antidote." His dreams would inspire him to enrol in a college for Islamic studies, to violent objections from his father, who said Hindus would be after his blood and Muslims too since they would not trust him. Those were the days of impending partition and indeed Raja soon witnessed the house of his neighbour Hyder Ali go up in flames.

Raja was ultimately to abandon his family and move to Hyderabad in search of his like-minded friends, an act that his sister Bim held against him throughout their adult years. As Bim would remark to Tara, he never became much of a poet despite his attempts. His poems just seemed very derivative to Bim whenever she took them out of her drawers to read. "He had made no effort to break the iron ring of cliches, he had seemed content to link them, ring to ring ... ... One could see in them only a wish to emulate and to step where his heroes had stepped before him." Nevertheless, Bim continues to cherish the memory of Raja sharing his joys of poetry with her. The last pages in the novel make a beautiful conclusion to the themes of friendship and bonding, pursuits of the arts and life in general, with a description of Bim at a concert where an old singer is accompanied by the tabla and so on. His voice is a little cracked, "inclined to break, although not merely with age but with the bitterness of his experiences, the sadness and passion and frustration". "He sang like a man who had come, at the end of his journey, within sighting distance of death..." Suddenly she recognised something the man was singing: "Your world is the world of fish and fowl. My world is the cry at dawn." She was filled with excitement. Iqbal's, she whispered, Raja's favourite.

2006-10-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

Sigh, they just don't make movies like they used to any more. I'm talking about old movies like all the mythological stories in technicolour, where the characters with their magic power can appear or disappear here and there like teleportation, emanate fireworks from their hands or throw weapons in a projectile to fight in mid-air, all this against a landscape of mountains that is so obviously a studio backdrop. Movies with heroes of such special aura like Sivaji, or clowns like Nagesh who just tickles your funny bones like nobody even before he opens his mouth and talks. At that time it must seem like all the entertainment one ever needed. Could people then have imagined that movies one day would be so full of non-stop fighting and bloodshed or raunchy dance numbers like what we have today?

It's after the recent passing of actress Padmini that I decided to watch her legendary movie Thillana Mohanambal, featuring her as a dancer pitted in a contest against Sivaji as a nadaswaram player, a rivalry turned love affair. The story has a typical character of a greedy and class-conscious mother coming in the way of true love, and Nagesh plays the comic role of an opportunist who would steal a cut from the artistes' performance, when he is not busy being a pimp arranging match-make of the danseuse for a rich landlord or some nobility. Padmini as the lovelorn danseuse must have mesmerised an entire generation of male audience with her big watery eyes batting those long eyelashes. Her pink lips find perfect enhancement in a rosy pink saree, but if you think that looks seductive, wait till you see her dancing in a glittering orange dress, with thin stripes accentuating the contours of the voluptuous bosom and legs. It was not exactly classical dance of course, more like flashy poses and exaggerated bouncing and swaying to show the exuberance of the body. It's entertainment, so who's to complain?

The movie is certainly not without kitsch, silliness or quirkiness. You will find a musician fighting in the temple by knocking his opponent's head with his taalam (cymbals), a landlord with a mini Chinese palace for a harem, not forgetting an American couple which applauds our nadasawaram player and then asks if he is able to play western music on the Indian instruments. Our nadaswaram player, who has just walked out of the show venue and returned his performance payment, refusing to play for a bourgeoise audience who has swing dance before his item, takes up the challenge readily. He breaks into something that sounds like a waltz, apparently set in Sankarabharanam to imitate western music. I recognised it as a tune I have also heard on an album by Dr Chittibabu. In fact, as I now learn, it is a piece known as the Madurai Mani notes. (The composer Madurai Mani Iyer himself, by the way, seems quite a character - he is known for refraining from singing "Nidhi Chala Sukhama", ie "is money the cause for happiness", since he thought it was hypocritical when he was accepting money for his performances.) You can guess that scene suggests the growing influence from the West was felt even in those days. Entertainment value aside, hopefully the movie can serve as a reminder of how music and dance are indispensable to our culture and also that artistes should be given due respect?

2006-10-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

My thoughts dwelt on Agni this week, as I walked out of the house every day and saw a sky of grey. The haze is due to the primitive method of land clearing by fire in Indonesia. Now Agni is identified in Hinduism with the sacrificial fire and seen as the mediator carrying the offerings of men to gods. The very first hymn in the Rig Deva is addressed to him; in fact with 200 hymns addressed to him, he is the most important deity there next to Indra. There is a story in the Mahabharata about Agni devouring the Khandava forest with his flames and coming into conflict with Indra who is pouring rain; Agni then gets help from Arjuna and Krishna to fight Indra and soon regains his vigour by consuming the forest. Historians have speculated that Vedic hymns telling of Agni burning his way eastwards were probably a reflection of migrations by Indo-Aryan language speakers down the Ganga basin, burning and cutting down forests through the generations. It is not by pure coincidence that in Greek mythology there is also the figure of Prometheus, who stole fire from the heavens to give to mankind, incurring the anger of Zeus. The discovery of fire for cooking, lighting, etc marked the dawn of civilisation around the world. Incidentally fire is also a sacred symbol in Zoroastrianism, referred to in hymns as the son of supreme god Ahura Mazda; one may add here that the Zoroastrian sacred text of Avesta is written in Old Persian which has close affinity with Sanskrit, but let's not discuss the history or myth of 'Aryan' people now.

Talking about history, there have also been parallels drawn between the ten avatars of Vishnu and the evolution of nature and mankind. You can see Matsya as representing fish and other lifeforms in water, Kurma as representing amphibians, Varaha and Narasimha as life on land or mammals and so on, you can think of Parashurama with an axe as signalling early human development through invention of tools whereas Balarama with a plough symbolises development in agriculture, and of course for the most important avatars, Rama embodies social order or the ability to govern nations, while Krishna represents the delights in science and art. If you include Buddha, it's up to you to interpret, maybe he can be a symbol of philosophical reflections, or harmony with man and nature, but then again there are people who think he came just to confound.

There is a nice song Sri Satyanarayanam I was just listening to, by Muthuswami Dikshitar, it's in the haunting raga of Subha Pantuvarali. In the charanam it goes like "... Kaliyuka prasannam ... Matsya kurma varahati ...". I don't quite understand the words but it's like an earnest prayer to Vishnu the preserver, with emotions sounding like desperation to my ears. Sometimes I can't help feeling we are indeed living in the era of Kali Yuga, and the end of the world is coming soon, at least for human beings who have done everything other than helping to preserve nature. We have gone through all the evolution and all the agricultural and industrial revolutions, all the advancement of the intellect, only to help destroy mother earth and ultimately ourselves. Global temperature is rising and people are still denying anything has gone wrong or simply refusing to do anything about it. Call it human logic, which has value only in serving the beast of economic development.

2006-10-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

Never mind Bharatanatyam, contemporary seems the way to go in dance now. Why not? The obvious reason: The audience will like it. The philosophical reason: I create, therefore I am. Why repeat the same adavus you have been learning all your life in class? The specific reason: Nobody will count whether you're doing 8 or 16 dhi-dhi-tai, or whether your tirmanam is 1-2-1 or 3-2-1-0, but if you simply walk across the stage, people will understand what you're doing. The petty reason: In contemporary dance, you won't have your teacher reminding you to give a big smile even when you know damn well you are not enjoying the dance.

Seriously, if you do dance only thinking of it as a form of puja or whatever, fine. However, if you think of dance as a form of expression, surely there can be other possibilities of communicating with the audience in this 21st century, beyond the navarasa and the 50 or 60 mudras. That doesn't mean you have to deny your cultural traditions completely and start from nothing. The old Chandralekha is one good example, she would incorporate yoga movements into dance, or she would assimilate traditional movements differently to express something like a lotus flower in a more abstract manner. One of her former dancers, Padmini Chettur, performed in Singapore some time back, where she did quite a bit of slow movements like yoga, but also something kind of like a tat-thi-mu-tu, with a similar sense of rhythmic precision like Bharatanatyam, though the physical forms were entirely different. I must say, however, that Bharatanatyam is probably not as easy to lend itself to a new language of modern dance as, say, Kathak. UK-based Akram Khan (of Bangladeshi parentage) has made quite a name for himself doing such fusion stuff using Kathak. It's like he would do turns of the wrist (like dram-the) and sweeping of the arms (like the-tha-the) from possible positions in all possible directions, even with the body in low positions close to the floor. One or two years ago, he was invited to stage a world premiere of a show at the Singapore Arts Festival, his dance company was paid lots of money and he was staying in a 6-star hotel, and the show had quite a bit of that. A documentary of this performance called Ma was shown on television just the other day. He was also doing something like standing like a Kathak dancer but saying rhythmic syllables with mridangam as accompaniment, going ta-ke-dhi-mi ta-ke-je-nu and so on, mixing conventions of north and south. Of course to the western or non-Indian audience it would not make any difference. But it does raise some questions as to how traditional elements are being used in this context. Is it rebelling against traditions without a cause? Or with the cello being predominant in the music of the performance, do those confused snatches of traditional music serve to reflect a feeling of alienation for an emigrant? Or is there simply no need to justify any experiment in this postmodern age?

For me, the main problem if you want to do 'contemporary Indian dance' is the choice of music. If you use something like western piano or string music, does it mean you have to abandon the rhythmic style of Indian dance? Or if you take a techno remix of a kriti, will it end up nothing more than Bharatanatyam with disco lights? Maybe the problem is there is not enough good 'contemporary Indian music' available, so you may have to make do with whatever fusion music available.

2006-09-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

Is there any other music so starkly simple, yet so quintessentially Indian, like that in an alarippu -- where there is no melody sung, just the spoken rhythm syllables, accentuated by the nattuvangam and the mridangam? The crisp sound of the consonants executed like a drum machine, exact to the T (pardon the pun): Dhi tam taiyum taka tam, tat tai taiyum taka tai, or some rhythm like that. It is the sound of pure rhythm, manifesting in dance as some of the simplest yet most precise movements: the atami, head movements to the right and left, a subtle contraction of the shoulder, rotating the straight arm and turning the palm out. Is there any other dance in the world like that, exalting the elegance of pure mathematics through such minimal but precise movements? For sure in terms of sophistication in musical rhythms, there are other cultures in the world to speak of, most notably polyrhythmic African music played on various instruments simultaneously, which allows one to dance freely to any beat as one likes. But that's a different kind of dance, emphasising more on the torso and lower limbs, something more instinctive than decorative. There is of course also Balinese dance, with dazzling fast movements involving the head, the arms and the hands. But nothing is so deceptively simple like how an alarippu unfolds in Bharata Natyam, going increasingly demanding from first speed to second and third speeds, from standing and half-sit to positions on the knees and toes. It is so much more than just a warm-up for a dance recital. From the rhythm syllables alone it may all sound simple. I was trying recently to learn an alarippu in a cycle of 17 beats, or kanda jathi druva talam to be more accurate; I got so confused along the way I did not know when I should be doing the right side or the left side. After that I wondered if somebody had invented such a rhythmic cycle just to make life difficult for an Indian dancer.

Well I wouldn't really want to complain that Bharata Natyam is too mathematical. But I would take this opportunity to say the way we learn theory in Carnatic music is sometimes too obsessed with mathematics. For example, do we really need to learn the names of all 72 melakartas, just because a man by the name of Venkatamakhi told us there are 72 schemes of ragas theoretically possible? Apparently he himself dealt with only 19 of these 72 melas. The 72 melas are mathematical possibilities but that doesn't mean all are of aesthetic interest to us! Similarly, we would learn according to theory that there are 175 talas. This is derived from the sapta talas, multiplied by the 5 varieties of jathi, and then multiplied by 5 nadais. But how many of these talas would we really use? And it is not as if 175 are all the rhythmic possibilities existing in our universe since the world was created. Prior to this 'classification according to the suladi sapta talas popularised by Purandaradasa, there were other schemes of classification like the 108 classical talas. Another classification had 5 Margi talas and 120 Desi talas. Margi music for religious rituals and Desi music for the masses were ancient traditions that eventually blended into one classical system. Ultimately the rhythmic patterns used in music and dance are just a matter of convention and popularity, much like the form of metre used in poetry. Certain forms become less popular and are all but forgotten, for example the Navasandhi talas from as early as the 6th century, used in dance rituals in temples for nine directions, namely Brahma at the centre and above, Indra in the East, Agni in the Southeast, Yama in the South, followed by Niruthi, Varuna, Vayu, Kubera and Isana.

2006-09-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

A woman in a man's world may be considered progressive, but a man in a woman's world is pathetic. That's like the key line in the movie Dance Like A Man starring Shobana, Arif Zakaria and Anoushka Shankar. It's a story about the struggles of a dance couple, in particular the social prejudices one faces as a male dancer. Initially I was less than impressed by the movie because it feels too much like a stage play, as if the director simply took a stage production to film in real houses and real streets and that's it; some of the actors were too theatrical while performing their lines, as if following directions in a play, when to laugh, when to raise the hand and so on. (Well actually the film is adapted from a play, written by Mahesh Dattani.) I was also wondering what's Ravi Shankar's daughter doing here trying to be an actress here instead of practising her sitar to carry the torch of her father. But the story slowly picks up momentum as it recounts the story of her screen father, Arif's character as a dancer when young. His father, a so-called progressive politician, finds it a disgrace that his son chooses to spend his life as a dancer instead of finding a career deemed respectable by conventional society. He disapproves of his son's dance guru whom he finds effeminate, and finds it scandalous that his daughter-in-law, Shobana's character, is learning dance from an old devadasi, no more than a prostitute in his eyes and in his neighbours' eyes.

What made me uncomfortable initially was also the fact that the movie is entirely in English, a little artificial and an apparent attempt to target an international audience. But on a more positive note, I suppose an international audience would be able to learn quite a bit about Indian society from this film. Things like Anoushka's character's future father-in-law saying outright that he has checked on her family background and is happy to know about her grandfather's social standing; or a musician asking Shobana's character for her favour when she is in a selection committee for overseas performances. The ending of the story may seem like unnecessary drama that is hardly enlightening or inspiring, even distracting from the issues about being a dancer, but the movie has already made its point about difficulties that Indian dancers go through, particularly the irony that we have Hindu gods said to be dancers, yet the little respect and support given to dancers in our society just do not correspond to that, in fact for a long time the art has been kept alive only by dancers equated with prostitutes. Those of us who are in the arts 'industry' today may have more stories to tell and may think the movie has not covered enough of all the misunderstandings and exploitations that an Indian dancer has to face, but you can't expect a single movie to cover everything. And if you are watching the movie expecting to see some dance, well there is enough in quantity to satisfy you. Unfortunately for Anoushka, even in this fiction, she has to stand in the shadows of an illustrious parent. While she is quite presentable in her dance sequences, the more exciting dance scenes all belong to Shobana, like the scene where she is dressed in a red blouse and dancing against the red walls of a mansion. My favourite is another dance performed to sitar music, with more creative or fusion dance movements than pure Bharata Natyam. Maybe she gets too dramatic in the role as a seductress, opening her eyes big in wonderment while doing hand gestures of flowers and bees in dazzling speed, but at least she is anything but boring. (Actually it reminds me of her performance in Singapore last year, where she was dancing to a remixed version of Thaaye Yasoda; everything went so fast it was over in a flash before you could really made head or tail out of it.)

Music for this film is composed by violin duo Ganesh and Kumaresh. It is in fact their instrumental music in the non-dance scenes that gives the movie a sensuous touch. Incidentally this violin duo has an interesting philosophy; they feel that artistes are limiting the scope of their instruments when they play only vocal music on them, and they have composed many purely instrumental raga-based compositions that they term as 'ragapravaham'.

2006-09-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

British composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934) has been known until today for one single orchestral work: The Planets, a suite of seven movements dedicated to different planets of the solar system. He composed it during World War I, years before Pluto was discovered in 1930. In 2000, a composer by the name of Colin Matthews added an extra movement of "Pluto" to the suite. Poor fellow, he must have been very disappointed last week when the International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet, bringing the number of planets in the solar system down to eight. Anyway, Holst's composition was in fact not so much motivated by astronomy as by astrology. Inspired by Indian spiritualism, Holst, incidentally of Latvian-Russian descent, learnt Sanskrit in his lifetime and also composed a number of works based on stories from Ramayana and Mahabharata as well as hymns from Rig Veda. He was also a vegetarian. One reference he used while composing The Planets was a book by the astrologer Alan Leo, known for introducing Indian astrology into western astrology.

And talking about Indian astrology, let us now turn to another musical work that came to the world long before Holst composed The Planets - I'm talking about the Navagraha Kritis by Muthuswamy Dikshitar. It uses all the suladi sapta talas that carnatic students have to learn by heart in their theory lessons - dhruva, matya, rupaka and so on. I don't know what to say about the ragas since they all sound unfamiliar to me. And I'm anything but an expert in astrology, I can't do an in-depth comparison between the astrological meanings in Holst's suite and the Navagraha kritis, but I shall make a few interesting observations on similarities. First of all, Mars represents a god of war in Roman astrology as well as Vedic astrology. The song Angarakamasrayami sings of the one with red limbs, red dress and red eyes, bearing the sword and trident. Holst opened his suite with the dramatic and militant "Mars, The Bringer of War". Secondly, the popular piece "Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity" with its fanfare evokes magnificence of a cosmic space like a sci-fi movie. Guru in Indian astrology is the most auspicious planet and the exultant song Bruhaspathe sings of the bestower of vigour and an ocean of compassion. Mercury is the Winged Messenger in The Planets and what corresponds in the Navagraha kritis is the song Budhamasrayami describing the one with book in hand, bestower of the sweet art of poetry. It happens to be a favourite piece of mine here, seems to evoke a mystical or contemplative sense of wisdom.

Incidentally scholars have come to believe with regards to the Navagraha kritis that the last two songs in rupaka talam on Rahu and Ketu are spurious additions to Dikshitar's original Vara kritis. To me they are not so interesting anyway since they do not represent astronomical planets, but the north and south nodes of the moon - go figure out their significance only if you are charting your horoscope.

2006-08-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

Shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan passed away at the age of 90 on Monday, 21st August, due to cardiac arrest. Known for his performance at the Red Fort on India's first Republic Day, it had been his last wish to perform at India Gate for global peace, but that remained a wish unfulfilled, as a concert there earlier in the month was cancelled for security reasons. Anyway, it's really incredible that he had been able to perform up to such an advanced age. It's not so long ago that he recorded music for the film Swades. We are also talking here about the person who single-handedly took the ancient wind instrument out of the confines of temples and wedding halls, into the concert halls. He was initiated into the instrument by his uncle Ali Bux, who played the shehnai at the Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi. He never saw any conflict between his music and his religion. Even as a staunch Shia, he was also devoted to the goddess Saraswati. He would practise music at night at a temple. Once when a Hindu musician remarked at a conference that Islam has downgraded music, Bismillah Khan replied humorously: Sir, as you know, most of the best classical musicians of North India are Muslims. Can you imagine what would have happened if Islam had upgraded music?

Shehnai is a difficult instrument that demands good breath control in addition to finger techniques. It's amazing how Bismillah Khan could produce such a mellow sound and play such fast notes. It's certainly not an instrument that many young people of our generation will find time to learn. When he performed in Hollywood in 1960s, an American youth came to him at the end of the recital, touched his feet and said he wanted to come to India for six months and learn Shehnai from him; the great maestro told him to forget it, because in six months he would not even learn to hold the instrument properly, it's a lifetime vocation. Bismillah Khan was the third classical musician to win India's highest honour Bharat Ratna, after M.S. Subbulakshmi and Ravi Shankar. But he lived a simple life, never owning a car, travelling around Varanasi in a cycle rickshaw. In fact he lived in a little room of a three-storeyed house in a crowded lane of the city, with a bed, a telephone and a lantern as his only possessions, apart from the instrument so dear to him. It has been reported that when he was ailing a few years back, he could not even afford treatment and was asking financial help from the government. However, music organisers said he was simply supporting a large household of family and fellow musicians and they complaint he would bring an unwieldy group for every concert expecting them to bear all expenses. There was yet another report of Bismillah Khan alleging that leading Indian record companies had stopped paying royalty for his music. Perhaps increased music piracy has caused record companies to cancel royalties. Bismillah Khan said it should be the duty of the government to promote artistes and organise classical concerts. The standard of classical music is going down and one hardly sees any new artiste playing shehnai, he said.

Apparently the secret of Bismillah Khan being able to play shehnai at a ripe old age is that he built up a stamina by swimming in the Ganges. He was very attached to the river. Once during a concert in Europe, he was offered a car, a bungalow with servants and even citizenship. He reportedly replied asking: Does the Ganga flow here?

2006-08-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

When I bought a DVD of the movie Thalapathy, little did I know what a piece of history I was getting into. At first, the song that attracted me to the movie, Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu, was just an excellent piece of foot-tapping, hand-clapping music to me. I was yet to discover this was a song that nearly got voted as the most popular song in the world! But more on that later. Anyway I was told that this movie (from 1991) produced a string of big hits under the music directorship of Ilaiyaraja. When I watched it for myself, I thought the story is not as interesting as later Mani Ratnam movies but at least Rajinikanth is not as bombastic and ridiculous as in other movies either. I mean the very first moment our macho man appears, he is already bashing up somebody like crazy, but that is all, no silly superstar grand entrance. Some people would consider Rakkamma as the best movie opening number ever, but the other songs are also nice and effective. Sundari Kannal Oru Seithi makes a perfect song for a lazy afternoon daydreaming about your ideal romance - although Rajinikanth in samurai costume... eh, no, thank you. Chinna Thayaval is a heart-rending song for the scene where our hero watches his long-lost mother from a distance as she is praying in a temple.

Now let's come back to Rakkamma, the song that fans of Ilaiyaraja would cite to prove that he is god. First of all there can be no doubt about Ilayaraja's mastery in writing orchestral scores. A story goes that when the songs for Thalapathy were recorded in Mumbai, some northern musicians in Mumbai were also invited to play and they made a statement that in 30 years they had never seen notation sheets with such rich music or played violin in such a challenging way. As I listen to the rapid strokes on the violin in Rakkamma, I'm thinking violin music in Europe has probably never been so rowdy, except for those Hungarian dances. But the stroke of genius on Ilayaraja's part is in stripping the main music down to just the melody on vocals and the steady beats of finger snapping, against these racing violins, plus some guitar strumming at the right places. The thing is, if he had just kept the song within 5 minutes, he would already have his gigantic hit. But no, just when you think you have heard a complete song, a chorus of female humming comes in, for the scene where Shobana leads a procession with deepam in their hands. It is a devotional song from Thevaram, Kunitha Puruvamum. After that the Rakkamma theme returns, and eventually the male voice of the melody and the same beat go simultaneously with the soft humming of female voices. Like a dance blending Tandava and Lasya, that makes a perfect finish for the song, which clocks in at 6 mins 45 secs, and there you have it, a timeless classic should you have any doubt at all in the earlier minutes.

As for the poll I was going to mention, that was something conducted in 2002 by BBC for the world's most popular song. At one point in time Rakkamma was in the lead, ahead of British pop songs by The Beatles, Queen and Led Zeppelin, ahead of all other Indian songs. Imagine! But the poll got less interesting as it turned into a political exercise in showing nationalist sentiments. In the end the number 1 song was a 19th-century Irish song calling for Ireland's independence, number 2 was Vande Mataram, number 3 was a popular song called Dil Dil Pakistan, Rakkamma ending up in number 4 followed by a song in number 5 from the Tamil Tiger film Mugungal about the struggle in Sri Lanka. It was like just short of voting for national anthems. Thanks to the poll, the world may be reminded of the potato famine in Ireland, revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh and so on - all right, a good thing in that case, but to me what it suggests above all is simply that the Indian subcontinent is full of faithful BBC listeners, and I hope it will not look as if the ex-colonies are still looking up to London as a centre of cultural power to give a stamp of approval. For we should lose such colonial mentality, just like we should get rid of an addiction to soft drinks like Coca-Cola and Pepsi and drink something healthier instead.

2006-08-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

In any culture of the world, where people get into a trance as part of shamanic practice or religious rituals, it invariably involves some drum music. Whether it is just a heightened psychological state or it may be possession or influence by external spirits, that's up to your personal belief. But it does make sense that just as rubbing stones or wood together repetitively can create sparks, a repetitive drum beat can help induce an alternate state of consciousness. All I'm wondering now is whether a synthesised beat like in a remix album of kavadi songs will be more effective for a trance since it's most regular, or less because it is too machine-like. I have bought such an album recently, completely out of season, just to listen like it's disco or techno music, and from the first song called Kundrathil (sung by one A.R. Ramani Ammal, apparently composed by Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan for a 1970s movie) to the nth track I lose count of, I must say it seems rendered with the very same throbbing beat over and over. The beat overpowers everything else.

In India, the carrying of kavadi does not equal all that display of piercing one sees during Thaipusam in Singapore or Malaysia, which is in fact said to be Chinese-influenced. And talking about music, there is a genre of Tamil songs called kavadi chindu, meant to be sung by devotees, which are actually rather easy-going even with the nadaswaram and tavil or whatever drums as accompaniment. One nice song is Cenni Kulanagar in rupaka talam, written by Annamalai Reddiar from the 19th century, who was the pioneer in kavadi chindu. It describes the pleasant atmosphere at a temple as devotees are carrying kavadi. Apart from kavadi chindu, there are always Murugan songs in classical form. There is one album Murugan Pamalai recorded by Nithyasree Mahadevan, who has a characteristic sonorant voice. I especially like the way she goes "Mu-ru-GAA..." in Muruga Muzhumadhi, written by Papanasam Sivan in Saveri ragam. It is not so much sweetness as a magnetic quality in her voice that makes it absolutely captivating. The song also finishes with a flourish of mridangam and ghatam, just nice, not over the top.

2006-08-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like some cool flute music to soothe one's soul on a quiet night, round about midnight, at the end of a long crazy day. I have a couple of CDs by Hariprasad Chaurasia just for this purpose, and I'm wondering now why I don't have more. Is there any other instrument in the world that is so simple and yet so enchanting? There are fairy tales in Europe about magic flutes (and pipes) that can control the minds of people and animals, and is it any wonder the charming and flirtatious Krishna is portrayed as playing the flute? In the autumn nights, upon hearing the sweet music from Krishna's flute, the gopis hastened to him, some leaving the house while milking the cow, some while taking their meals, some while serving their husbands, they just abandoned their work and went to him, even with their garments and ornaments in disarray. The philosophical interpretation would be that Krishna represents Atman - pure consciousness or the real Self, while the music of the flute represents bliss that one finds as one forgets all worldly duties in the pursuit of spiritual devotion.

Have heard Hariprasad Chaurasia in concert before and it seems he likes to round off his performance by playing the Carnatic raga Hamsadhwani, with the popular tune of Vatapi Ganapathim (something which of course would be played at the beginning for a Carnatic show). Something light in the raga Pahadi (a raga evoking mountains and valleys of Punjab) is another favourite as part of the conclusion. What I'm enjoying at the moment is a track in raga Mian Ki Malhar. Will have to keep exploring to expand my horizon and seek further bliss...

2006-07-29T10:30:00.000-07:00

I was once very taken aback when I heard someone commenting that violin should not be counted as an Indian instrument because it is something from the West. I wonder how many people actually think the same way, and do they realise that in Carnatic music, the violin - adapted by Muthuswamy Dikshitar's brother Baluswamy two centuries ago - is tuned differently and played vertically rather than horizontally like the western violin. It is supported between the musician's ankle and shoulder blade instead of held with a shoulder rest at the musician's neck, so as to free the hand for sliding movements, to add 'gamaka' to the notes. One who rejects the Indian violin as part of our musical heritage is either a foolhardy cultural fundamentalist or someone trying hard to please a western tourist's curiosity for an 'untouched' world of 'exotic' Indian culture. Do you know that one of the musical instruments used in Chinese music is actually a kind of santoor? It has been in use in China for a few hundred years, got there somehow from Persia and was renamed as yangqing, and nobody now would ever think of it as a foreign instrument. And do you know that much of the drums and percussion in western orchestra and so-called western jazz and rock music today actually originated from Turkish military bands? The bass drum, cymbals, triangle, kettle drums. Even today Zildjian (a name from Turkey) remains a famous brand for cymbals.

The way to protect a heritage is not to imagine how things were like 1,000 years ago and deny whatever happened after that. Dr L. Subramaniam not only knows Carnatic music but also has a master's degree in western classical music. Ravi Shankar would not have become so famous if he never collaborated with western musicians. This is not to say that you have to give everything a disco beat or a western orchestration just so you can call it a contemporary work. But to say that we should only do things as what our gurus taught us is to fall into a trap that the western perception has set up for us: you must either be 'purely' traditional, or the minute you touch fast food you are getting westernised, there is no middle way, whereas a Westerner can eat Indian food today and have Chinese takeaway tomorrow and still remain a Westerner. By all means, let those musicians who want to experiment just do it, as long as they don't forget how to do a traditional concert. Time will tell if those experiments prove memorable. Ravi Shankar has written a couple of sitar concertos based on the western orchestra, using not just a different raga for a different movement but also several ragas within the same movement. That is something interesting that deserves a page in history, although the symphonic format is not something that will be popular among Indian listeners in the foreseeable future. In a western symphony or concerto, the habit is to sandwich a slow movement of adagio or whatever between fast movements of allegro and so on. In Indian music, however, one simply goes from very slow to very fast, from alap to jhala in Hindustani music, or ragam-tanam-pallavi in Carnatic music. It is a habit just like a fixed sequence in one's meal from rasam, sambar, moru to paisam. You can eat with fork and spoon if you like, but basic things like one's taste, that doesn't change.

2006-07-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

In Hindustani music, one is very particular about the time of the day in which a raga is performed, whereas in Carnatic music, there is generally no such restrictions. However, I just learnt that certain Carnatic ragas are also said to be suited for particular times of the day, for example Bauli is for the morning, Bilahari after the sun rises and so on. There are also ragas like Kambhoji and Arabhi that were classified traditionally as Sarvakalika ragas, meaning they can be sung at all times. I was surprised initially when I knew that about Bauli, because my first impression was that it's something nice to listen to deep in the night. But they say it's best performed just before the sun rises, I guess that is also quite close . I don't know many songs in Bauli actually, the main thing is Sreeman Narayana by Annamacharya. He was a composer from the 15th century, who lived half a century earlier than the man known as father of Carnatic music, Purandaradasa. That makes the song about 500 years old.

What really amazes me now is to read that the raga Bauli apparently existed already about 2000 years ago. It was mentioned in the 2nd-century Tamil epic Silappadikaram as the pan Nodiram, 'pan' being the Tamil word for raga then. In one passage of Silappadikaram, the bees are said to be humming the pan Nodiram melodiously at daybreak. So Bauli as a morning raga is really a long tradition! By the way, Silappadikaram also contains plenty of other information on music, for example on how to play the instrument called yazh which predates what we identify as the veena today. It also gives the names of the seven swaras in ancient Tamil music, in other words the Tamil words which correspond to our Sa Re Ga Ma today which are taken from Sanskrit. Incidentally, the animals associated with the seven swaras in the past were also different from what music teachers now teach - the shrill of the peacock being Sa, bellowing of cow being Re and so on, that is just from the Sanskrit tradition. Well this is not to talk as if one should replace all the Sanskrit words with Tamil now like people replacing Sanskrit prayers with Tamil, all that stuff about Brahmins using Sanskrit to dominate and so on. Culture is something that keeps evolving, there is no need to revise things to inconvenience oneself. But history is something that is always interesting to know.

2006-07-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

Life is short. I'm always reminded of that whenever the tune of Kal Ho Naa Ho is ringing in my head. For life is as unpredictable as the weather and you never know what tomorrow may hold, so you have to seize the day and make the best of what you have. I can't help dwelling on this point again and again during the last few weeks of the World Cup. Just think about it, even if you are a football star of worldwide fame, how many times in your life can you enjoy the World Cup action? Three times maybe? And then you have to head for retirement. You may well be the top scorer 8 years ago but this time it may already be your last appearance; you may have arrived on the scene with a bang back then but this time you may well be leaving the stadium quietly with only a shadow of that former glory. That's why I will always tell anyone, if you really believe in something, just go for it, whether you want to be a scientist or an artist, a dancer or an adventurer. Not everyone will go all the way to the top in life, but at least you give it a shot. If you keep thinking you must earn enough first to buy a decent house and a decent car and so on, you can't afford to choose a job according to your interests, or you can't even afford free time to pursue your hobbies, before you know it you will be too old for anything, for the body tends to decay and the brain tends to go slow.

Vivekananda once said: "You will be nearer to Heaven through football than through a study of the Gita." He liked to preach the importance of strength over religious theories, for it is weakness that leads to sin, fear that leads to selfishness. "Stand up, be bold, be strong," he said. "Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny." The problem with our world today is just like the problem with the World Cup now - the players have too much fear for losing. That's why they resort to tactics like diving and they relish seeing their opponents get the red card, instead of concentrating on playing a beautiful game. Why don't people try to rise like heroes instead of cowering as cowards? Life is short, you don't get much extra time. When it's the time to work, work; when it's the time to disco, disco! What is there to be afraid of?

2006-07-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

There was a time, when Tamil film songs were more interesting to me than Carnatic music, especially when A.R. Rahman was the rage of the day for making Indian songs sound as contemporary as western pop. One of the turning points for me was probably the song Alaipayuthey. I was rather intrigued when told it's a classical piece. Still, at first I was simply thinking, yes the tune sounds nice, and yes I can tell it's a classical piece with the drone and the bells in the background, but so what? Then the tune just grew and grew on me, and I began to feel how the melody just winds and turns, rises and falls, coming at you like one wave after another. It's like you can listen to all that nu-metal and surf rock stuff but it won't take you on a rollercoaster ride like this music. Never mind the techno and drum and bass stuff that just sounds monotonous and sterile after a while. I was then convinced, if there's one thing that A.R. Rahman did right here, it's that he did a very simple arrangement, basically just a driving beat like a remix that stays faithful to the original otherwise. Why add on unnecessarily when something is already so great?

It was more recently that I actually learnt about the composer of the song, Oothukkadu Venkatasubbaiyer, who lived through the first half of the 18th century, predating the Trinity of Carnatic music. I had found by chance a recording by Sudha Ragunathan of Oothukkadu songs. Apart from Alaipaayuthe Kannaa in Kanada raga, the most famous song there is Thaaye Yasodha in Thodi raga, in which the gopis tell Krishna's mother Yasodha of his michievous tricks. Both songs are well-known in the Bharata Natyam repertoire. Krishna is said to be Oothukkadu's chosen deity and source of inspiration. Despite being a prolific composer, Oothukkadu was some kind of recluse, he signed off his name in the lyrics only in few works.

There remains a lot in the works of Othukkadu that I have to discover and learn to appreciate. But I suppose Alaipaayuthe will always occupy a special space in my heart. It's a song that I can listen to and hum to at all times, whether I'm feeling happy or sad, or simply confused. Alaipaayuthe... en manam alaipaayuthe...

2006-06-28T19:26:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite Hindi songs of all time is Satyam Shivam Sundaram, sung by Lata Mangeshkar. God is truth, truth is goodness, goodness is beauty, so the song goes. The movie of the same name had a wonderful premise for a story: a man falls in love with a woman just by listening to her voice, but rejects her when he realises she has been disfigured. Unfortunately from what I understand, it is ultimately just another typical product of Bollywood, finding clever excuses for erotic scenes with a generous display of bosoms, so maybe one should be happier just listening to the song and not watch the movie.

Truth, Goodness and Beauty - three very simple words indeed that define the very ideals of human endeavours as civilised beings, yet so little of it is evident in our society which is mercenary and depraved, full of dishonesty, inequality, corruption and hypocrisy. Art is measured in our society by its economic value, while morals and facts exist only in academic books that no one cares to read. We prefer to watch movies that are more sexy and violent than we can experience in our mundane lives. The godly figures we look up to are heroes that only exist on the silver screen, the only beauty we understand is cinematic glamour, as if we have given up hope on real life. We tend to go for things that are superficial and choose the easiest ways in life according to the habits we are used to, we stop looking for deeper meanings in what we do. Scientists and engineers forget to invent things for the welfare of people who hardly have enough to eat, instead they keep coming up with latest models just for our luxury and vanity. Artists keep trying to perfect their techniques and worrying about how to sell themselves, but forget that the most important thing in any art work is the soul they put in it. The world fails to recognise that truth without goodness is aimless, just as beauty without truth and goodness is vain and meaningless.

The ultimate pursuit of truth is of course religion. But then 'truth' too often becomes an excuse for fighting and killing, all in the name of religion when in fact, it is just a human habit of settling old scores, or a skewed understanding of religious teachings. Ramakrishna has said: God is one but his aspects are many. Just as the same thing like water is called by different names by different people, "so the one Sat-kit-ananda, the Everlasting-Intelligent-Bliss, is invoked by some as God, by some as Allah, by some as Hari, and by others as Brahman". What we like to call religious difference is really a matter of cultural difference. Otherwise, if we say religions only serve to breed hatred, then they are not even half as positive as a sport like football - at least the World Cup has universal appeal and it inspires people to unite behind their countries too; there may be violence in a match but most of it is just taken out on a ball anyway. As the slogan goes at this year's World Cup in Germany, it's a time to make friends, say no to racism. Well maybe in the case of Indian communities, you need cricket instead like in the movie Lagaan, but you know what I mean.