Why doesn’t my heart exult at the Rama temple? As a teen growing up in a relatively orthodox and religious family my favourite deity was Rama at the little temple near our apartment in Wadala in Mumbai. The vigraham (stone statue) was beautiful and I said many a prayer to that deity. And I loved …
Close Encounters of a Musical kind by Lakshmi Sreeram published in Sruti Blogspot
By Lakshmi Sreeram Being a performer in two traditions is not easy. Sruti N. Pattabhiraman once told me, “At least use different names. It gets difficult at various levels. When, you are, for example, being considered for an award, committees don’t like it if you have two profiles.” Let me say this straight …
Singing of the Void
Starting out in Tamil Nadu in the outpourings of love for Vishnu and Siva, Bhakti has been a powerful, shaper of the Indian ethos. As A.K. Ramanujan has shown us, early Bhakti poets drew from love imageries in Tamil literature – the hero and lover of those poems became the Lord in the bhakti poet’s …
Sadanam Balakrishna – A Local Global artist
“Only when you are truly local can you even hope to be global”, Damon Galgut said in the recent edition of The Hindu Lit for Life festival. And how perfect an example of this is Sadanam Balakrishnan. An artist secure in his grasp of the ethos of his art form, indeed as one who creates …
Kumar Gandharva – a Life in Music
Belgaum and Dharwad, on the cusp of Maharasthra and Karnataka, have thrown up musicians that have defined their age. And this has always been in the world of Hindustani music, understandably since Maharashtra has very much been the centre of Khayal since the late 19th century. Shivaputra Siddharamayya Komkali, known to the world as Kumar …
Andal and Meera
Andal and Meera – Loving the Dark Hued God Just because they were women, and loved the dark hued lord and sang in the idiom of bridal mysticism, do Andal and Meera invite comparison? ghUnghata kA paTa khol rI, tohe piyA milEnge, That bridal veil Move it aside Your lover you will find. When …
Fragile Beauty
A fundamental philosophical query is concerned with the nature of the ultimate good that man ought to pursue. Freedom, truth, God realization, authentic existence, moksha, and so on have been proposed in myriad garbs. When hard nosed British philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries proposed that man’s ultimate goal is, simply, happiness, and – …
Pandit Puttaraj Gavai – Making a difference
When Pt. Puttaraj Gavai, Padma Bhushan recipient, and Head of the Vireshwara Punyashrama in Gadag (Karnataka) attained Samadhi on 17th September, all of Karnataka went into mourning. A blind musician with a spiritual stature that few saints command, Pt. Puttaraj Gavai had been a teacher of music of the rarest kind and commands fervent respect …
Tiger! Tiger!
The tiger seemed agitated and was snarling menacingly at the eight of us perched on two elephants. Can’t blame the tiger – it was 10 AM, bedtime for him and he had found a nice shady spot under some bushes. But the mahouts had found him too and he had to give darshan to more …
The Throw of Dice – Musings on a dance performance
“It is Panchali Sapatham” said one lady to her companion who enquired just before the show what the dance was going to be about. (Panchali being Draupadi and Sapatham being vow, it refers to Draupadi’s vow to bring about the end of the Kauravas when she is humiliated in an open court. It is a popular theme for …