Some of what I need to do

Take time away from the clamour and nonsense of everyday business. Go for walks. Visit a hill or two. Turn clay on the wheel. Apply glazes. Make drawings. Meditate.

Raku with Nirmala Patwardhan

In the fifties she travelled to Germany and UK to learn about pottery and glazes. She has a glaze that is named after her. She is particular about how a place is kept. She is very systematic. At close-to-eighty she is passionate about glazes. "Raku" she explains means joy and happiness, pleasure and well being, contemplation and meditation. "We had so little of that, I am sorry" she says. "It is my doing. I should not have been so harsh with the students." The workshop after some initial uncertainty because Sandeep's uncle's heart-attack, went off well. However, there is much to be learnt in the things that Nirmala Patwardhan spoke about. Sounds like a lament for a rigour that is missing - and since one cannot demand this of another, it is best that we begin journeys that take us into the heart of our own limitations.

Dr Jehangir Sorabjee above Bombay

Here is a doctor who loves his patients and photographs in equal measure. A doctor lives in close proximity with the dying - but that perhaps does not explain Sorabjee's urge to carry his camera to cemeteries. Death, has always been a subject for artists. Whether in Paris or Istanbul, Barcelona or Bombay - one comes across the buried and the dead - their resting places adorned with plaques and statuary. "My friends," says Sorabjee are amongst the best photographers in Bombay and they are very critical of my work. That does not stop Sorabjee from continuing in his adventures with the camera. Sometimes at ten in the night, after dinner - I call a close friend and we go out for photographing Bombay in the night - that's the new work that I am doing. A few years ago, Sorabjee got a whole lot of permissions to fly over Bombay and reveal views that the city and its people had never seen before. If there is one lesson to be learnt - it is about a love for whatever one does.

Dr. Anil Sadgopal on Neo-Liberal Education

Dr. Sadgopal presented an analysis that suggests that the neo-liberal education policies compromise on some of the earlier ideas on primary education laid down in the constitution. Dr. Sadgopal suggests that the notions of decentralization; and doing away with land acquisition controls arise out of forces that seek to undermine the Indian state; and that the market-based outlook that transforms the ministry of education to the ministry of human-resources - reduces the human being to a resource.

Dr. Sadgopal envisages political struggles - by the Dalits, by Muslims and by women as forces that will humanize the oppressors.

The dividing mind

Jiddu Krishnamurti narrates an anecdote where man finds delight in organizing and re-organizing the truth with the help of the mind. It does appear that the mind can look at anything only by dividing. When seeing happens through the mind - the act of seeing, separates the seer from the seen; with a mind that is silent - the seer becomes the seen. One becomes adept at writing this sort of thing after a stint with K stuff, zen and such like.

The theatre fest concluded yesterday. Was in pain because of a sore throat and found breathing difficult. Pain drives away all enthusiasm - and reveals the hanging sword that shall one day bring our physical selves to transit into the earth.

When morning came, I put together the framework for the talk. Thought of Rashid Khan and music, weighed theatre against music and watched the conditioned mind at work - dis-ordering and ordering! I must go back to Tibet!

Living in nature

Strange that I should want to get away to some quiet place - considering that I live in nature. All the windows where I live look out at majestic raintrees. What makes me want to get away to some place that is quieter? Perhaps I let my professional life spill over. Perhaps the city of Bombay with its relentless industrial logic spills over. Perhaps the times that we live in spill over into my being and make me feel like "getting away". I remember my father's abode on the banks of a mighty river - humid and sultry in summer; green and fecund; oppressive and calming in turns. I could easily get away to that abode and yet I do not. Is this a nostalgic longing - gilded only when it exists as a longing?

An inner monologue

It is strange how an editing filter starts operating the moment I start to write down things. Good theatre, like good writing makes visible the inner monologue, thus becoming a mirror that allows a collective engagement with inner movements. The price that an actor (or a writer) must pay is to offer her or his own inner self to the scrutiny of the collective eye. Should this spectacle contain the light of a hard-won truth, the audience goes back renewed or even transformed - this is the reward for the actor who dares to appear on stage, bereft of the masks that we shield our selves with.

Clearly it is theatre-actor- unlike the cinema-actor who has the protective distance of the camera and editing who undertakes a far-more arduous venture. And on a day on which the inner monologues of the writer, the director, and the audience come close enough for synapses - sparks can fly!

Art and the Spirit

Art without Spirit shall fall prey to the Marxist Critique of Art - which is a critique that all artists should pass through - like a baptism through fire.

Pride and Prejudice

Two things (amongst many others) that keep us from a connection with our real selves - Pride and Prejudice! Freud (the third Jew according to Shilpa) spoke of how it is all about love for our mothers (and fathers) and thus a man (and a woman) might apparently transcended this infantile urge for love and attention and yet hanker after recognition, fame. The winner paints the town red, the loser plots in underground bunkers - the silent stays away from the currents of pride and prejudice.

Would be good to get the scripts of the plays. A bicycle. Dogs. Two brothers in what can be spoken of as sibling rivalry and is yet not that - Premchand's language carries with it all the nuances of cultural evocations. The worship that the elder brother evokes from the younger one - supremely content to merely be a shadow - running behind. Quite amazing to see these sixty year old tales still weave their magic! What makes singing special is that it needs just a human voice to sing (or a sparrows for that matter!) - no add-ons. What makes theatre special is that the voice holds together a room full of grown-up people happily engaged. The transformative capacity that art has is marvellous!

Problems and Concerns

Problems
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1.
any question or matter involving doubt, uncertainty, or difficulty.
2.
a question proposed for solution or discussion.

Concerns
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1.
to relate to; be connected with; be of interest or importance to; affect: The water shortage concerns us all.
2.
to interest or engage (used reflexively or in the passive, often fol. by with or in): She concerns herself with every aspect of the business

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Developing societies have problems. Affluent societies have concerns. Those in the middle have overcome the pressing problems and are beginning to have concerns.

Having stated the obvious to now scrtunize it. Developing societies have concerns too! They are concerned about the wastes generated by the affluent societies. Affluent societies have a problem of obesity. Those in the middle have not solved all their problems and cannot pursue all their concerns.

Language often pretends to be like a fishing net cast into the ocean of wisdoms. How does one transcend language? Through the careful orchestration of words that does not add upto verbosity? Through a mediative silence? Must the question be posed as a choice between two? Why do we practice "OR" and not "AND" approaches?

The Colonization of the Mind

It struck me - and nothing that strikes me is short of an epiphany! - that the internet and blogging and reading about a budget airline crashing at Phuket, Thailand last night and all the discussions that are going to follow and how there is no evidence that regular airlines have better safety records and reading about a thousand other obscure and significant happenings in even more obscure corners of the planet does not make me any less lonely. Strange that a connected planet has more and more loneliness!

The only thing that a blog seems to do is to invite the echoing of seemingly wise but largely useless thoughts that ricochet ad infinitum. The internet and the digital world have hit upon the ultimate shield that saves us from human experience. I must stop now and hasten, lest the light falls on pots in some special way is going to change!

Teaching and Learning

It struck me with a ferocious intensity, that the ordinary teacher who year after year mouths the same set of ideas (give or take a few new ones) slowly comes to resemble the chinese room that artificial intelligence speaks about. The chinese room metaphor, visualizes an intelligent machine that replies all questions posed to it in chinese, as though it understood chinese very well. (This thought needs to be expanded).

I shuddered and made a note that I should run away as soon as I could. And if this was impossible, I should create a new hide within which I could shield myself from the onslaught of mediocrity and repetetive inanities. A place in which I could read Larkin and go back to feeling happy about the things that brought me happiness!

Group Seminar: The Arts in India

A single ant is a solitary ant...it is not even an idea! Take a community of ants and then you have something powerful. The writer Lewis Thomas says something to this effect in his essays "The Lives of a Cell". The entire class was given the option of making groups that would choose one article from the Marg Publication, "2000: The Arts of India". The group members photocopied the chosen article, read and discussed it and made a power-point presentation of all that they had digested. In this manner, the class could gain from the efforts of the others. However, the process deserves scrutiny.

While the class does indeed stand to benefit from the efforts of the other groups, it is pertinent to check how many of the ideas are retained. What does such exposure achieve? On one hand such a process enables a quick bird's eye view of diverse ideas and one hopes that such a view can slowly lead to the development of multiple perspectives. Indeed for such perspectives to gain in depth and understanding, further efforts at an individual level would be necessary.

"The Intellectual History of Design"

Prof. M.P. Ranjan was at IDC on the 8th of September to talk about the history of design. Design he believes began 20 million years ago when people first started using fire. It is this that constitutes design and not the theory of combustion and the science that came to be developed over the next million years or so...a statement like that makes me wonder.

What is design? If the use of fire is design, what about matches and friction and safety matchboxes and all of that? Is that not design? It appears that even these are designed. Why then does Prof. Ranjan ask us to view the science of fire as something different from the use of fire?

Raja Mohanty

Visit to the Art Galleries

Visited the NGMA; the Jehangir Art Galleries; the Museum Art Gallery and Bodhi Art. Traffic at Sion was $%$#@#*&*** bad and had to hurry through NGMA. Felt terrible asking those who appeared to connect so well to the paintings that they should see the entire space and come back later for a more leisurely viewing.

The writing is by and large terrible! Most mention the names of galleries and even that incorrectly. Few speak of specific works or artists and a very few speak of movements that they discern within - in response to art. Perhaps the arts beckon those who are looking out of the window that they have opened within themselves; most it appears are asleep - let alone being aware that there are windows within us that need to be opened so that the light and the breeze can come in.

Remember the words of my teacher, who used to say-"There are many who sit on the fence. Your words should pull them into the circle of intimacy and not push them away."