Tribute to M.D. Ramanathan - Poem
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Tribute to Vechoor Harihara Subramania Iyer
MURALI and Me - A Tribute
Unsung Genius - Tribute to M.D. Ramanathan
Vishwa Palam Shri Padmanabham!
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The Natural and Unnatural in Art
Kalpitham and Kalpana in our Music
The Queen of the Travancore Kitchen
A Tribute to Madurai Mani Iyer on his 40th death anniversary
A brief and practical introduction to South Indian Classical Music
According to our ancient scriptures the six deadly sins are Kaama (Lust/Desire), Krodha (Anger), Lobha (Miserliness), Moha (Temptation), Mada (Arrogance) and Maathsarya (Competitiveness.). The last in the list seems to have been overshadowed by the ones before in people's consciousness. Yet these days, Maathsarya seems to be the order of the day. One finds parents giving children names beginning with A in the expectation that later in life, should they share the same score with someone else for some competitive exam, they should get an edge over the other person at least alphabetically. It is only a question of time before we get to meet people with names spelt Aanand, Aaarathi, Aaaarsehole and so on. I remember reading somewhere that even if one were to score a victory in the rat race, one would still remain a rat. *Ouch!* Yes, one has to earn a living. Yes, it is a cut throat world out there. Yes, one is taught to run faster, push harder, fly higher. While qualities like grace, tolerance, kindness, patience, generosity and gentleness take a back seat, attributes like speed, smartness, efficiency, competance, decisiveness and ruthlessness are lauded. Mass production is in. Individual attention is out. Excitement is in. Tranquillity, out. In the middle of all this, one finds the mad rush of desparately unhappy souls seeking solace in the anodyne company of so called enlightened souls and lifestlye gurus who calmly end up making more money than corporate giants do and quietly satisfy their love of power by spouting tried and tested cliches about the power of love. Consolation pours out, money pours in. And the poor devotees eventually end up seeing the so called Gurus as the ultimate destination rather than as guides to show them the way to salvation. Quite sad really.
In this scenario the need for each of us to find peace, solace and fulfilment Within is more urgent than ever before. And this is where the fine arts come in, be it music, dance, poetry or painting. Here's Gustave Flaubert writing to a friend about great art.
"The most beautiful works....are serene in aspect, unfathomable. The means by which they act on us are various : they are motionless as cliffs, stormy as the sea, leafy, green and murmurous as the forest, forlorn as the desert, blue as the sky. Rabelais, Goethe, Shakespeare and Michelangelo seem to me PITILESS. They are bottomless, infinite, manifold. Through small apertures we glimpse abysses whose sombre depths turn us faint. And yet over the whole, there hovers an extraordinary Tenderness. It is like the brilliance of light, the smile of the sun....and it is calm.....calm and strong." I know dozens of educated, affluent young people who speak with affected accents, write in text messagelike abbreviations and consider themselves super cool who would go "F*** man ! What the hell is this dude goin on about ?" if they were to read Flaubert's lines or for that matter my own lines. While wishing them a safe journey to the therapist's couch later in life, let us ponder ahwile on the significance of the arts. And what is happenning to them these days.
Since the dawn of the fine arts, there have been people who have practised......rather, Lived....art for art's sake as well as those who have been hungry for fame and fortune. Many of the former have lived and died unknown and unrecognized and some of them have been hailed as having been truly great, long after their time. Many among the latter have enjoyed huge celebrity during their lifetime, but have faded into oblivion later. Having had the privilege of interacting closely with some amazing people from both categories and having seen the downside of sticking to either extreme (Completely idealistic or totally commercial), I have come to believe that it is possible to strike a healthy balance between these two courses of action in art and for that matter, in life itself. But I digress. I wish to share some thoughts about Maathsaryam or competitiveness in the arts. While I enjoy the thrill of a well fought match as much as any normal person, be it the finals at Wimbledon between Borg and Mc Enroe or Federer and Nadal in recent times, watching, enjoying and being inspired by the timeless charm and brilliance of Muhammed Ali's legendary fights against Frazier, Foreman and others or experiencing the mad frenzy of attending a snake boat race, live at Alleppy, bobbing up and down in a boat surrounded by inebriated Keralite men and bemused tourists, I somehow fail to see the point in bringing an Unhealthy element of competition into the arts....."Unhealthy" with a
The major reason why nobody seems to be able to make the kind of perfect violin Antonio Stradivarius did more than two centuries ago, why nobody seems to be able to build a structure like the Acropolis any more, why nobody writes the kind of music Beethoven wrote and why nobody seems to be able to accomplish a tiny percentage of what Michelangelo accomplished doesn't seem to be because of a short supply of brilliant minds around..... on the contrary, seriously talented and brilliant children are a dime a dozen these days.....but because the time, energy and focus of our kids these days gets scattered over a variety of things. And we get generations and generations of kids who are okay in several things, who do well in a few things but few of whom eventually do anything so great that they would "leave their footprints in the sands of time", even if the phrase may sound pretentious. And we hang our heads in collective shame each time the Olympics comes around when India comes back with a single bronze medal and perhaps a silver, while countries so many times smaller and poorer than ours rake in the gold medals. But I digress again.....somewhat, though not totally.
To come back to the point in question....why this so called Carnatic music based show bothers me so much.....
1) It gives people the completely wrong impression that one has to sing several kinds of related and unrelated music to become a Carnatic musician, especially during the formative years when it is in fact completely destructive, damaging and dangerous for a student of music to do so.
2) When the participants are innocent ten year olds who may not yet be familiar with the harsh realities of life, it would definitely crush their spirit and injure them deeply at a psychological level when they know that though they sang better, a less competant singer with greater political clout and consequently more SMS votes walked off with the trophy.
3) While it maybe a noble idea to render classical art forms less exclusive, the right way to do it would be to educate and enlighten the listeners and not pervert and bastardize the art form itself in the guise of making it more "User friendly." I already feel sorry for the poor parents of the losers, each of whom will have to cope with a bitter, depressed, demoralized and confused kid in their hands. And because of what? Because of competing by singing songs composed by people like Thyagaraja, most of which are replete with messages which go directly against every single thing these TV shows stand for. Ironic, really. At this rate it won't be long before they have reality shows featuring competitions in Yoga and meditation. The kids may suffer, people like me may rave and rant, but the producers laugh all the way to the bank. A handful of heart broken and messed up kids doesn't seem to be too great a price to pay for the money they make or at least hope to make. I do wonder about the parents though. Are they simply misguided or are they so totally blinded by ambition that they fail to see what a mess they are getting their children into ? At least
Wise people from all parts of the world ask us to view everything in a positive light. So let us celebrate the fact that our children get a significant head start over people of our generation in gaining first hand experience of one of the six deadly sins. Whether they ever get to sing Thodi or Bhairavi correctly or not, the smart ones from among these kids will soon learn about the six Ms they would need to succeed in life. Money, Money, Money, Money, Money.....and Money. And the show goes on. May the Best win.