taiwan

Taiwan trip was great. It was a meeting of World Creativity Summit in Taipei. Taipei was a major surprise for me. So clean and so prosperous and more importantly, so vegetarian! I reached on 4th afternoon, had a two hour sleep in the hotel, went out for a walk, bought some bread and milk from a department store and had that in the night. The next day at the conference they had some lunch boxes marked vegetarian. they even keep it separately. It was the most delicious vegetarian food I have eaten other than Indian food. Also the beautiful presentation of it all. Herbs twisted, tofu like a flower etc and the most exquisitely delicate taste. I am told they are many vegetarians there who do not even take garlic and onion and keep off tamasic food. The oil is also vegetable oil. Some even keep ekadasi fast twice a month. Apart from great interactions in the conference, visit to the 101 tall tower and the ancient treasures museum were great. I had nausea when they took us to the night market where live things were being offered on the street but this vegetarian stuff was a major surprise. It is easily available all over . Brown rice with sesame and ground nut in delicate spice steamed in leaf packets, salad with many different herbs, soups ,some vegetable, nuts and dry noodle combination which was bhelpuri like, a rasagolla like thing with lotus inside, at the end came a soup that tasted absolutely wonderful. It had camphor like smell. They said it was medicinal to help in digestion and to calm one down Absolutely a great pleasant surprise. there is a large green fruit that tastes just like our guava but is much much larger and does not have the smell. The other vegetarian with me was surprisingly, Eldad from Isreal. He is mostly vegetarian and completely avoids chicken. He also ordered veg food everywhere and it was great. He is such a lovely gentle soul.

On the first day when I came down to the breakfast room, every one came up to me and said my costume was just beautiful. The hotel had all the summit delegates from 23 countries (I was the only Indian) and some business and Holiday makers. Every one told me my Sari was beautiful. It was to repeat all five days. I revel in showing off my saris in these conferences. That reminds me of the customs at Taipei airport when I came through the green channel, the X Ray guy told me he had to open my box as it showed some long metallic object but very light. I saw the screen and told him it was all the gold in the silk sari borders. He smiled and said the saris are so beautiful and sent me out without opening the box. As I have said many times before, I wear my saris as a tribute to the weaver. I had seen a loom being installed some thirty years ago and after watching that engineering and art marvel, I decided I would only wear handloom and wear saris most of the time. My saris are my statement when I travel around and they are really a performance. I show them off with great affection.

In the bus to the conference, Liora Bresler asked me if she could sit next to me. She kept telling me how India touched her heart when she came as the wife when her electronic engineer husband had come for a conference in Chennai and had seen Mamallapuram etc. She said she had travelled in different countries but nothing had touched her as India has. In the short time we became very close to each other. She is a professor in a university in Champagne near Chicago. I loved her.

too many things to talk about.

being a critic

Being a critic has its problems. Especially when you know the artists. Do you say what you feel or do you want to stay friends. It is the eternal question. I have had many who have taken offence to what I have written and either stopped talking to me or become extremely nice. I guess it is an occupational hazard.

We had a most gracious group of faculty members from Wooster College visiting Kalakshetra on 26th. I had the honour of organising the visit. Leela Samson, the director of Kalakashetra was her most gracious self and explained the history and technique of Kalakshetra style of dancing with Haripadman and Sarita demonstrating in the most beautiful surroundings of Kalakshetra in the prayer hall. Then we went to Madras Institute for Development Studies (MIDS) to listen to Dr.A.R.Venkatachalapathy, wrap up most beautifully, the background history of political movement in Tamilnadu. Vijay Shankar, the associate editor of Frontline, a communist party sympathiser, took the opposite line wanting to have a word duel with Communist party and the Dravidian movement which must have certainly gone above the heads of the visiting academics as for them Ramakrishna Hegde or Devegowda are just names. For me and the aseema team of Vasantha and Aswini however , it was very interesting.

The most poignant moment for me on 26th May was Kumudha sitting there calmly as Dr.Aiswarya Rao narrated how 8 years ago, Kumudha had been detected to have HIV virus in her blood just before she gave birth to her baby. No doctor was willing to touch her and no one wanted to help her in her delivery. She was asked to cut her own umbelical cord and take her own placenta, go outside the hospital, dig a hole in the ground and bury it. This was because even the doctors had very little awareness then that HIV virus is not infectious and that it need not result in the carrier getting AIDS. She does not know how she got the virus. It could be through her husband who may have had other sexual partners or through some infected syringe. But in our society, the man having several partners before and after marriage is condoned but the woman is blamed for this. Sex is a taboo subject. So women are subjected to all kinds of abuse and when discovered, only the woman is blamed. The media is talking about character assassination of Arushi, the young girl who was murdered and her servant. What did you expect? leaving a young teenager and her 45 year old servant together in a large house? Expected them to do nothing? His having been married and having children and being respectable has nothing to do with his child sexual abuse. How can this be related to Arushi's character? The great traditionalists and conservatives of this country say dont talk about sex in school. . This lack of space for talking about sex is what leads to child sexual abuse. The perpetrator knows the girl will not be able to talk about it and is she does, only she will be blamed. Traditionalists say sex education has no place in our tradition. Traditionally, teenagers were already married in our society. Today's teenager is bombarded with sexual imagery and sexuality from all sides in all media, has to deal with her / his desire, changes in the body, yet remain silent on the issue. This is what leads to experimentation and the fear of not talking about it when abused by an elder relative. Ashraya, our sister organisation, dealing with child sexual abuse, gets hundreds of letters from school girls in all social categories talking about sex abuse from an elder relative which she can not talk about in the family. This also leads to HIV virus transmission.

heat

Chennai is sizzling. Even sitting under the fan is getting difficult. Should one save on energy and not switch on the AC? the dilemma is ever on. I had a group of 12 faculty members from Woosteer College in Ohio coming in from Delhi yesterday. Doing the Dakshinachitra round was in totally drenched bodies who had flown in from Delhi in the morning and had come in to Dakshinachitra at 3 pm. 3 to 5 pm is the worst time to be in the sun. They told me Delhi was having rains and was quite cool. But my talk on Gandhi got them all so responsive that Gandhi the man and myth fascinates me more. I get goose pimples as I show the visuals I have on my topic "Creating a Sahridaya - Gandhi's communication - issues and perspectives" I am applying the performance theories of Natyashastra to Gandhi's modes of communication through Angika (bodily communication), Vachika (communication through words and music), Aaharya ( through costume, symbols and decor) Satwika ( through inner understanding). I am more than happy that a group of tired, sweating senior American academics were so very responsive to Gandhi. Gandhi goes on and on. Godse did the greatest service to Gandhi by killing him the way he did at the right time and right place. He made sure Gandhi lives on forever.

view from the wing -3

I am very surprised that there is even a debate on sex education in schools. If they can be taught H2O is water, they should be taught what sex is all about. We are a billion and more and children should know what has caused it. One man says children are driven to crime when they learn about sex. Wonder how this man was born? It is also very surprising that it is the religious zealots who are opposed to sex education. Looks like they have never visited Hindu temples which were the place where everyone congregated including children and were witness to visual depiction of sex. All our literature all our sacred hymns talk about sex not just for procreation but also for devotion. Wonder if they have ever meaning of Soundhrya Lahari or Venkatesha Suprabhatham or Andal's verses.

I have taken this from the description of Pavan Varma's book "The literature of India, both religious and secular, is full of sexual allusions, sexual symbolisms and passages of such frank eroticism the likes of which are not to be found elsewhere in world literature. Sections of ancient texts like the Vedas, the Upanishads, the epics (the Mahabharata and the Ramayana), the Brahmanas, the Puranas and devotional hymns are studded with graphic sexual acts which were seen as integrated elements of human existence. Kalidasa and Jayadeva stand out a exemplars of this genre. It was basically the evangelical fervour of the Victorian era that imposed severe strictures on the so-called heathen amorous degradation and sought to cleanse the Indian people by propagating Western morality and values. And the Victorian hangover still persists. Think of erotic literature from India and what immediately comes to mind is Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra. This was indeed not the first study in erotology nor was it the last. Beginning with the Rg Veda (written some 5000 years ago) right up to the seventeenth century, Indian literature is marked by diverse genres replete with unabashed eroticism in which love, lust and life are explored to their fullest extent. Today, the philosophical acceptance of desire and the erotic sentiment has been asphyxiated by a hypocritical morality that has for much too long equated sex with sin and desire with guilt." Very right

view from the wing - 2

It was a great compliment when a teacher from PSBB Millennium called me on October 4th. She said her daughter was studying in class 3 at Bala vidya mandir and she had attended the demonstration of charkha spinning at her school. "She was very thrilled with that and has not stopped talking about it and the stories of Gandhi that you told could you please come to our school tomorrow? can there be a better compliment than this?

I have never said thank you enough for getting a person like Vasantha parathasharathy to work with me. She is sincerity personified, hardworking and is full of joy and humour. We have a great time because we are opposites in taste and life style. I can not than enough that she came along when I needed some one most. I think we are a very good team. Ashwini Kasi who has come in now has also grown into the job and is enjoying herself. What more can one ask for?