An Experience

 

                                                                                                          Mesmerized, speechless, motionless, I  was standing like a tiny insect with wide-open eyes; ready to gobble a big feast. The vast expansion of the sea in front of me diminished the height of my ego and dwarfed the physical existence to which I cling desperately with the big words like Existentialism, Feminism, and Marxism and so on.  The same feeling of emptiness, I had experienced while watching the great heights of the Himalayas, standing on the frozen Changu Lake.  Eyes fixed on the waves, ears glued to the sound of the water; I stood meditating on the ocean, one of the five elements – akasa, water, air, light and earth-  elements of life.  The whole essence of life was unveiling at that moment. It seemed, I could immerse into water, air, and light, and become one with it - if my entity surrendered. I tried to do it, but consciousness was not letting me go free with all its vicious desires and bindings.  For several minutes, I was intently watching the beautiful visuals the sea offered.  Big and small waves with glistening streaks of sun light were coming and going continuously in succession. I meditated on the visual beauty for some time and absorbed it and felt enriched. I stepped into the water: the waves came, embraced and tried to pull me in. Each wave was different; each time the wave touched - I felt I was a different person. As there was no one between me and the sea, it was possible to connect with the divine beauty and sound of the sea.

     I shut my eyes and started meditating on the sound.  Oh!  It was fearsome and  affected my psyche and proved my existence a zero. The sound seemed emerging powerful each second and with each ripple it was playing its music .  At that moment, I realized the relationship between nature and music. Nature composes its divine music – Music of the valley, music of the mountains, music of water- all is significantly beautiful and different. Nature is a great teacher and philosopher.  The visual and audible experiences and perceptions  gave me totally different insights of divine nature. 

Ragamala Paintings - 2 : A fusion of poetry,music and painting

                                                               

we find raga,a sanskrit word,  in the famous book Natya Shastra, written by sage Bharat.   Raga is defined as the act of coloring of  moods and emotions.  Ragamala  means  a  garland  of  ragas.  Raga is a musical form of swara, a melodic scheme,  on which Indian music is  based and rendered extensively.  According to traditional rules, these ragas have been formed and have alphabetical notes as the base, and  differ slightly from one raga to another.  These ragas are played  at particular seasons and  at particular  time of the day. Ragas have been classified as dawn ragas, mid-day ragas, dusk ragas and mid-night ragas based on time theory. Mainly, the ragas have a strong association with nature and reflect the cycles and moods of nature in a subtle and sensitive way.

                                 Bhairavi Raga,  one of the main six ragas on which ragamala paintings are based, is a morning raga.  Associated with summer season, this raga is one of the rare ragas, which is played in all seasons. The reigning deity of this raga is Shiva.  Bhairav is another name of god shiva, who is  the creator  of  the world.  So we find a number of paintings based god Shiva in Bhairav  ragamala paintings [Bhairava –raga, and Bhairavi- ragini  - are male and female ragas]. The paintings  based on this raga are religious, devotional, and spiritual. In this series, one sees  god Shiva in different forms and being worshipped. This raga evokes a peaceful and soothing feelings; sometimes serious and sad feelings too.

                              Shaivism is practiced as a religion widely in India. Usually in the temples, Shiva is worshiped in the form of lingam. Linga as a signifier denotes Lord Shiva, and the signified is creation of the universe. Linga and yoni, representing the universe and the earth respectively, in union as the creators of world, are worshiped throughout India. This philosophy speaks about the origination of life on the earth and the relation of soul with the divine and its evolution. This philosophy reflects in the paintings through the amalgamation of music, poetry and painting.

                                                                            Visually rich and poetic ,this painting offers a view of  a woman  worshiping lingam, which is  a sign of Shiva, the creator of the world. The mood of the painting gives a feeling of peace blended with devotion and spirituality. The background with rhythmically flowing water, and flora and fauna, signifies the birth and the activities  of life. The amalgamation of blue and white colors in soft tones, in the composition, produces a peaceful effect.  Horizontally and vertically arranged forms offer an interesting visual effect to the viewers. Another woman seems to be assisting  and  chanting devotedly.

 

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                                         In Indian Mythology, we see number of gods with specific animals as their vehicles and with their particular weapons and musical instruments. Here in this interesting painting, we see Shiva sitting on Nandi, a bull. Bull as his vehicle is seen in all shaiva temples throughout India. Usually, Nandi [Bull] is seen in seated position in front of lingam. Trishul is Shiva's weapon; damaru his musical instrument.  We come across big size bulls in front of lingam, in Shaiva temples throughout India. To get insights, these small details help to identify the significance of forms and relate to other forms. These paintings shows what was the culture of that period and how they revered and glorified beauty of  nature with music, poetry and painting.

Moments of Life and Hidden Nuggets

                                 At some moment in life, it seems life has lost its sheen and looks drab and stagnant. To make the matter worse, it appears to be moving at snail speed - this morbid feeling come to every one of us. At one time or the other , one is compelled to cogitate on the significance of life. Life is a chain of innumerable moments, a combination of good and bad both. Each moment is the grace of god, each moment adds experience to our life, and each moment is precious and has to be  lived and preserved. Moments are the basis of experience and cannot be repeated. Some precious exceptional moments are stored and preserved in the memory and that are cherished until the last breath.  Life moves through these small moments and these small moments weaved together form into time. By adding value to these moments, life becomes rich and happy. Waiting for an unseen destiny to change the course of our life is futile and endless. We have to change the course and master it, and lead a happy content life. Change in life is essential; life becomes magical and adorable when creativity is blended to these moments. Small moments with hidden pleasures are at our disposal, all the time. Only thing is, we have to unveil and explore the moment to find the hidden nuggets. We have to grab it and make it ours by living that very moment positively and creatively. Adding value to each moment means adding value to our existence, which brings meaning to our life. Life has to be lived with dignity, empathy, compassion, humility, and humor.

Each moment, each event teaches us how to live beautifully and experience life in completeness.

All most all events and activities had ended; the next day was the closing day of the Youth Festival. Young boys and girls enthusiastically had participated in many events like drama, singing, skit, painting and so on. As they were to depart the next day, all students had gathered near the food courts and were having tea and snacks, and were chatting non-stop. Suddenly it started drizzling, inspired and prompted by it the boys and girls immediately gathered in a big circle and started dancing and singing in chorus. The sun, who was watching the drizzle-dance amusingly, disappeared half halfheartedly as his duty was over, the electric lights were switched on in the campus, and the drizzle mixed with golden lights created an enchanting scene .The boys and girls, crazy and carefree, were dancing to the tunes of drums. To me it seemed the craziest and the happiest movement for them. At that precious moment, they were completely free and had lost into frenzy. There was no expectation, nothing to prove, nothing to lose for them, at that moment. When one is completely free from ambitions, expectations and desires, total involvement and pleasure are possible.  It was a sheer blissful moment for them. One cannot buy this pleasure for any amount of money. In daily life, a score of events take place one after another, only we have to free ourselves from our preoccupations and enjoy the precious moments. As a jury member, I had seen the boys and girls performing at the festival events, but this was their best performance. They danced and swayed until midnight, in the drizzle.

                                 

Charkha :sign and decoding

                                                                          

                                    

                                            A society as a structure has many dimensions and layers and within this structure, cultural, political, religious happenings take place continuously and these happenings evolve gradually in different forms and manners.  It may be economical, political or religious; power creates hierarchy in the society and dictates the norms for the society. Power play, hierarchy, dictate, submission, and marginalization – all silently, work as coded messages and communicate within the structures of the society. This huge network plays in a significant way through signs and the communication is conveyed in a subtle way. Signs act and communicate as languages. To decode a sign and to understand its meanings and implications, one has to study it in the context of history, politics, culture, and the studies reveals how signs have been evolved over time and are coded and assigned significant value in contextual levels.

 Charkha is a simple wooden spinning wheel, through which cotton and silk yarns were hand-spinned in India, in large quantity,the rural handicrafts and their economy was imperatively depending on it before the British colonized India.  The charka is an important sign; it stands for freedom, non-violence, independence, self- sufficiency, and simplicity. Studying the sign in the light of semiotics,  the charka reflects not only the ideology but also exposes the  underlying dyads and stands for handmade against machine made products, simplicity against showoff, independence against dependence, rural against urban.  Placed in the Indian context, this sign gains a greater importance and significance and communicates, and reveal as a tool how it secured independence and economic liberation for India from the clutches of the British.

  The famous and popular photograph of Gandhiji with Charkha speaks of Swadeshi Movement, which Gandhiji started with the spinning wheel – charkha - inspired every Indian to weave his cloth himself and ban foreign clothes, so that Indian economy could be improved and balanced. With this movement, everyone got involved in the freedom movement and torched machine produced foreign fabrics. This incident led to Freedom Movement in India. Looking into history, sources tell that earlier only women used to spin yarn for clothes. During this Swadeshi Movement, Gandhiji himself started spinning and encouraged others to involve into the movement. This sign has political and cultural significance. Due to Industrialization in India, many handicraft units were closed down affecting the rural economy. All finer handicrafts of which India was proud of were destroyed permanently to boost market for industry-produced products. Agitation started when one by one handicraft started dying and machine made clothes were forced upon unwilling locals at high prices. Behind all this frustration and agitation stands the simple charkha, which gave a call for freedom movement.          

Charkha is not just a spinning wheel; it stands for freedom, independence, equality, dignity of labour and simplicity, more than that – for Gandhian economy.

What To Read and What Not To Read

                                                                                   Whenever I am in a big town or city, I prefer to go to bookshops and spend some time with the newly arrived books, which carry the smell of fresh papers and ink. Sometimes I sincerely and secretly wish I could have more time and more money to buy and read all these enticing books, which come in beautiful jackets with interesting cover designs. When I was in bookstore recently, very analytically, I was going through the rows of books of eminent writers and soliloquizing how dedicatedly and persistently they did their job to produce masterpieces, which retain their interest for the readers till today. My reading started with Dennis Robin’s novels, which were circulated regularly among friends in college days, and after some time slowly I moved to Sidney Sheldon, a bigger version. One day my father seeing me with one of those novels expressed his displeasure and told me not to indulge in such books and waste time. He used to read at least eighteen hours a day after his retirement. Since he himself was a voracious reader, we had a very good sizable library at our home in those days and that library consisted of English and Kannada literature extensively. Nearly for fifteen years after his retirement, he read eighteen hours a day. Books were his best friends and kept him busy and happy until his end.

 Now I have realized what serious reading is all about. Since I have realized the merits of serious reading, I have cursed my father many times, wished he should have been more elaborate, and explained me then what serious reading meant by, so that I would have spent my time more constructively. After that incident, I started reading serious literature by authors like Dostoyevsky, Thomas Hardy, Emily Bronte, Oscar Wilde and others, as I was a literature student then. To be honest,even then, I was not into serious reading.

Now I have realized how important it is to have the knowledge of history, psychology, philosophy, literature and all the other subjects, as all are interlinked. To have in depth knowledge, it is necessary to select the right books and arrange our time schedules in disciplined manner to indulge into the books constructively. After two-three persistent readings, these books reveal the secrets, for that need discipline and patience on the reader’s side.  While going through Plato's and Aristotle’s philosophy I remember my father’s words and regret my inability to read between the lines then.

   

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