|
THE ARTS: DEVI AHILYA BAI FESTIVAL
Mixing Metaphors
Music, dance and tourism come together in the famed
textile centre of Maheshwar to provide sustainable synergies for development
By S. Kalidas in Maheshwar
 |
|
| STRINGS OF LIFE: Sairam, Mora,
Rajika and Serva by the Narmada |
|
Carnatic music and
Flamenco-Natyam. As cross-cultural cocktails go, this one is as exotic
as they come. At Maheshwar on the banks of the sacred Narmada it assumed
many resonances. Ricocheting across the richly carved stone courtyard
of the Devi Ahilya Bai temple in Madhya Pradesh were a hundred silent
messages. They came borne on gusts of conversations, on bits of delicious
nostalgia, on wings of languorous hope.
They alluded to the legend of the 18th century
Maratha queen, Ahilya Bai Holkar, who was deified as a goddess. They referred
to the fate of the temples along the soon to be dammed river. And there
was talk of the famed Maheshwari sari weavers returning to looms long
abandoned.
At the Devi Ahilya Bai Festival last week, time
and neglect lay suspended-sheathed in a surreal aura of native celebrities,
imported glamour and the transcontinental camaraderie. On a stage lit
by torches and oil lamps, Carnatic music teamed up with Spanish guitar
and Bharatnatyam with Flamenco. Orchestrating all this from his breathtaking
perch atop the Holkar wada (residence) within the fort was Richard Holkar,
the prodigal half-American prince, not completely at ease with his feudal
legacy and too much of a gentleman to turn a professional.
| |
 |
| |
Holkar
|
Richard is driven by a noble but somewhat vague
dream of getting classical music and dance to harness international funding
for this "jewel-like village of some 20,000 souls". Some benefactors
in Europe and America are willing to put in a few thousand dollars a year
to finance his ideas. This year, friends like Tino Puri, former head of
Mackenzie Financial Corporation in New York, chipped in to bring musicians
and dancers, including wife Rajika, all the way from New York, Mumbai
and Madrid. Among the foreign guests was the ageless ("there is no
reason a woman should look a day over 30 nor have a man older than 35
...") New York designer Mary Macfadden in her shimmering gowns and
dazzling jewellery. From Delhi arrived interior designer Sunita Kohli,
aesthete Lekha Poddar and handloom expert Martand Singh. To give the artists
a critical nudge was veteran dance expert Sunil Kothari, as resplendent
as a peacock in the monsoons.
The ambience of the fort and the temples is
magical: the ramparts overlooking the river flowing placidly below; the
charm of the village with its quaint vernacular architecture and narrow,
winding lanes; the unhurried clatter of the weavers' loom. The agenda
was full: lecture-demonstrations by the artists in the morning, sumptuous
lunches in the open courtyard, afternoons free for taking naps or shopping,
public performances at the temple courtyard at sunset, a round of cocktails
and informal discussions on the intimate verandah at the Holkar wada in
the evenings.
 |
|
| Macfadden and Kohli |
|
Richard does not flaunt too many personal memories
of the time when the Indore court (the Holkar capital after Maheshwar)
buzzed with classical musicians. But old-timers tell stories that are
as colourful as the fabric that has made this hamlet famous. They relate
anecdotes about musicians like Nasiruddin Khan Dagar, Amir Khan and of
the tawaifs (courtesans) who gathered in their finery to charm the royals.
They recount how Richard's uncle Tukojirao was made to abdicate by the
British. And how, like Lakshman venting his wrath on Surpankha in the
Ramayana, Tukoji is once said to have sent goons to cut off the nose and
ears of a hapless mistress who had spurned him.
However, talk in the Holkar wada was insulated
from local gossip. Here, one morning, Aruna Sairam delved into the repertoire
and grammar of Carnatic music. The next day David Serva and Clara Mora
explained the nuances of flamenco. The talks were engaging mainly due
to their performance skills but sketchy in theoretical articulation. Sairam,
a very fine Carnatic vocalist, and Mora, a charismatic dancer who has
been exposed to several dance styles from across the world, gave insights
into what they were going to present at their public performances later
in the day.
| |
 |
| |
Patel Babu, a local weaver
|
Serva, an American from Alabama with a "whiskey
and cigarette voice", adopted the Spanish gypsies as his "family
by choice" in his youth. He plays Flamenco with a palpable sincerity
but the elan and flamboyance that one associates with the form were missing.
The festival was conceived by Rajika Puri, who
has been working with Mora on their Bharatnatyam-Flamenco fusion for some
years now. Flamenco has been juxtaposed with Kathak, the dance form of
north India, for over three decades now. The pronounced and intricate
footwork that marks both dance forms makes for a convenient point of interaction.
Unfortunately, Rajika's display of both the Bharatnatyam rhythm and abhinaya
(mimetic expression) was far from masterly. Her figure and bodyline are
perfect and she tends to capitalise on those alone.
So overwhelming are the isolating charms of
a perceived global cross-culturalism that they tend to obliterate from
view the smaller, presumably cloistered, native scene. The trouble is
that the native scene itself is never quite static and has moved on. Simplistic
juxtapositions are no longer the ticket to contemporaneity in India.
Time is perhaps ripe for Richard's intuitive
idea of putting culture and tourism to serve development at Maheshwar.
However, amateur efforts are neither sustainable nor revolutionary. They
are at best, as the public appreciation of the festival by the local populace
would have shown, charming but a trifle irrelevant.
|
METRO TODAY
Web
Exclusives
