Understanding time in Barcelona

We felt the Mediterranean sun on our faces but were transported to the ghats of Benaras with four austere young women chanting Vedic hymns. ...

We felt the Mediterranean sun on our faces but were transported to the ghats of Benaras with four austere young women chanting Vedic hymns. It was a unique start to a dialogue on Intangible Culture at Forum 2004 in Barcelona.

How will we seek the intangible, I wondered, as I pushed my identity card in a steel machine and walked through automatic doors into a vast hall with a simulated grass canopy and parrot green art deco sofa chairs. Amidst this hi-tech scenario Rajeev Sethi managed to induce a rare intimacy. He converted a patch of wasteland outside the seminar room into a make believe bamboo garden. Participants arrived here at the crack of dawn to listen to Vedic chants. The sound of Om broke out of the concrete jungle and floated out to the sea. We were not able to see the sun but feel its warmth. The sound took us back to that primordial time when man knew he was a small part of the universe.

8220;Word flies. It is fire. It lies in the heart and we must know how to recognise it,8221; said a bearded Catalan. At 18, he had decided to travel to India and had stumbled upon the Bhagavad Gita. Reading it, Oscar Pujol realised that his real destiny staying on in Benaras and studying Sanskrit and the texts. Sixteen years later, he is back in Spain, slowly returning to the life of a robust Catalonia.

Today he finds himself in Asia House directing programmes to helps build bridges between the West and East. The word 8216;paz8217; in Spanish means building together, alliance. And the word 8216;shan8217; in Sanskrit means to calm down. How do we build alliances between people and help them pacify their inner demons, wonders Punjol.8221;I get a feeling not an understanding,8221; rejoins Britta, the German designer opening her eyes after 20 minutes. James Early, the American curator from the Smithsonian, takes time to return to the concrete reality of the Forum. The chants had taken him out in space, he laughs.

But Jay, the petite Welsh woman seems in tune with the chant and its pace. For she has travelled the world and understood that there is not one time but many. 8220;Time is not a synonym for clock,8221; she says. She takes us on a journey: in the Andaman forests people have a scent calendar, she says. The year is marked by the scent of different fruits and flowers. Among the Lakota people of North America the year is measured in moons. The variations of landscape characterise time in contrast to the Euro-American dominant time that is colourless, monotonous. We realise that there is not one monocultural time, one that focuses on speed, efficiency, punctuality.

What does time mean in such a space wonders Bruckner, the German architect. Though abstract it is a theme to which everyone relates. We are living in a territory different from India, geographically and metaphorically he admits. But we are not working to gain things but afraid of losing what we have. It is a question of time, I tell him. In another l00 years we will perhaps catch up. Oscar hopes not.

Modern life is affecting our identities. They are being questioned. Hence the intolerance. Tradition needs to be kept alive, not through religious revivalism, but in a non-exclusive, non-militant way.