EXPRESSIONS

They sang the folk tales of Heer-Ranjha, Rana-Moomal; they sang the bhajans of Meera, Kabir. The ritualistic percussionists from Kerala played as they do in villages during the birth of a child to enhance pedigree8217;. The presenter of the evening, Komal Kothari,informed and enlightened us, helping overcome the language barrier to a certain extent. And for those of us who understood a little bit of Multani, the pleasure was enhanced as we revelled in thoughts such as these: quot;God is inside you, but you don8217;t have eyes to seequot; and quot;He is a child8230; He is a businessman8230; tell me who He is not?quot;

When the group, Wadale Brothers, came on towards the end, the mystical spell was all but broken. Need they have been so loud? And so conscious of trying to reach the audience? When the music is for the Gods, genuinely so, surely mortals will respond.

Dancer8217;s dream

When Astad Daboo graces our city auditoriums 8212; this time, the Nehru Centre 8212; the inspiration, more often than not is poetry. Interpreting Tagore was initially composed as a dance piece for The Indian Express Festival of Indian Dance a few years ago. Naturally, the ever-innovating Daboo has brought in new work including a dance to Devima, inspired by one of the few poems Tagore wrote in English:quot;Mother, I shall weave a chain of pearls/ for thy neck with my tears8230; wealth and fame come from thee./ It is for thee to give or withhold them.quot;

Despite acclaim, Daboo still speaks of the difficulties in finding sponsors for group pieces. The corporate world, always juggling numbers, finds little mileage in such work. With very few art patrons and institutions in our midst, perhaps poet-politicians will oblige? Let8217;s hope they can appreciate some of his past performances like Lakdi-ka-Ravana, based on a Hindi poem, depicting the five faces of a man in power 8212; the politician being the Ravana.

Sand castles

My search for unusual events led me to sand-box therapy8217; reminding me of the wonder years8217;. But sand-play as meditation, as an effective tool for reaching the imagination and allowing it to become creative, perhaps works better with hands-on experience. The slide-lecture by Primaula Pandit, a Chauraha event held at the NCPA, though rich in ideas, lacked impact. The case-studyapproach adopted would have worked better with professionally-produced slides. One had to squint to spot symbols such as spiritual horses8217;. The concept nevertheless is fascinating: pictures can be made in wet or dry sand using hundreds of miniature figures kept in the sand play room. The idea being to play out your fantasies and have them interpreted later. We know, tapping those raw energies, and descending into the psyche, is what creativity is all about8230;

Photo shop

The other event, largely overlooked by the media, was a retrospective of Toshiki Ozawa8217;s work at the Bajaj Art Gallery. His computer photographs, based on original photos, is path-breaking work. Differing from computer graphics, computer photography takes advantage of the digital image processing technique to express photography as an art. Ozawa chooses to call these fiction8217; art as he feels photography is closer to literature than painting. Non-fiction8217; photos, on the other hand, merely record straight-forward expressions.

The exhibits ranged from An anthill in the twilight to The blue mosque, and each though vivid, was not quite like a painting, not quite like a photograph. New technologies defy categorisation.