YOUNG REBEL Parvathy Baul: `City people are scared to talk to me because I have a spiritual inclination. But in our whole nation, everything is spiritual’.

Sixteen. A very mutinous and seditious age. Sixteen was when Mausumi became Parvathy Baul. At an age when most girls are busy hitting the salons and streaking their hair, hanging out with friends at cafes and pubs, she just knew she had to be a Baul.

There’s more to the wandering minstrels of Bengal — the Bauls — than their music, ektara, duggi, their flowing saffron robes and dreadlocks, if you ask Parvathy. “Baul is a path to search for the `moner manush’ or `person of my heart’. Music is a part of a Baul’s life, but it’s really about attitude and a way of life. Bauls have a rebellious attitude to everything and a humorous way of looking at things. It’s nice to have an insight into both worlds. You can take sanyasa or be a householder. A Baul says he’s neither. He is a traveller who travels from what he knows to one who knows.”

Loads of grit

And the 29-year-old has loads of grit and attitude, you are convinced. Sweet 16 was what she was when she first heard Baul music. A visual arts student at Santiniketan, she heard a blind Baul singer on the train. “It took me far away… and he seemed to be giving such light. I decided there must be something he’s seeing through his music,” says the cherubic Parvathy, in the city for a performance for Rthu Foundation, a network of organic farmers.

Born into a traditional Bengali Brahmin family, it wasn’t easy for her to break barriers to be a Baul. Bauls are initiated; the master chooses the disciple. The first person she approached to initiate her into the fold was a woman Baul, Phulmala Dashi. “She took one look at me and said, `You study at University, live in a hostel, and your parents send you money from home. What do you know of life?’ Then she asked me to go begging with her on the train. I went.” On the train she found her professors and fellow students who refused to recognise her. “It was a beautiful and hard process. I had to break myself. I was taught with the conditions of society. Now that I look back on it, that day was so much fun. It was like breathing good air after coming out from the AC.”

Since then, she’s studied with Baul greats like Sanatan Das Baul and Shashanko Goshai. There are many tests that students have to go through for the master to decide they are strong enough to be a Baul. (I’m not surprised then, when a cup of black ginger tea arrives during the interview, Parvathy quips: “Oh! He’s made it strong… like a Baul!”)

Ghoshai was a difficult teacher, so most students ran away from him, laughs Parvathy. “Initially he made me sleep outside in the cold, he would wake me at three in the morning and make me wash vessels; he made me sleep amidst scorpions; gave me only cold food. Finally he understood that I would not leave.” Her guru was 97 and in three years he crammed in what he would normally take 20 years to teach.

Having trained in classical music and Kathak at home since an early age, Parvathy was quite tuned in to the guru-shishya tradition. “University somehow didn’t fulfil these relationships. That’s why I found Baul to be a proper way,” she smiles. Her matted hair definitely draws attention and Parvathy tells me she hasn’t cut it for the last seven years and won’t for the next five. Why? “I can’t tell you the reason, but my master asked me to,” she says with a twinkle in her eye.

Largely an oral tradition, Rabindranath Tagore was the first to bring out the Baul lyrics in print. “In pre-independent India, the Baul never had to go out of his village; the village looked after him. But see the conditions of the farmers today… they were once the patrons but today they have no money themselves.”

Urban space

Tagore is also credited with taking this performing art beyond Bengal’s borders. But doesn’t the growing trend of folk art being usurped by the urban elite space and used as a sort of fashion statement bother her? “Even if it is a fashion statement, it is good that there is at least some communication between these two groups of people. Moreover, city people hold an important place economically and politically. It is important that they know their tradition. It is so important now to look at things in the Indian way. We need to protect our tradition. Otherwise look around… people sell cosmetics and spirituality side by side.”

Bauls are essentially storytellers. The stories are flexible, like flowing water that curves around the rocks in the path, Parvathy explains. Have stories essentially remained the same through the years? “Just as human beings don’t change over years, neither do the stories. But there are adaptations to modern life: now a story may have a mobile phone mentioned in it. But the important thing is that every story has two meanings — one for the world and one for the practitioner.”

As she performs at the Alliance Francaise she tells stories of Radha’s love for Krishna, of the temptations of the world, and of the Baul philosophy of eternal suffering at the hands of birth-death-and-rebirth, the way of the masters. Her entire face lights up as she is visibly transported to a world of her own. “We tell the audience to choose whether they want to jump off a cliff or they want to fly.”

Complex philosophy

Baul philosophy is pretty complex and spans a whole lot of issues. They believe that everyone is just human; Baul is meant for the woman to find the masculine in her and for the man to discover the feminine in himself. So it’s not a tradition one can practise alone. Parvathy herself is married to Ravi Gopalan Nair, a puppeteer and mask-maker and now lives with him in Thiruvananthapuram where they run an ashram called the Ektara Baul Sangeetha Kalari. A large part of what they earn goes to old and poor Baul masters who have no one to care for them.

Bauls also do not believe in religion. “Not having a religion makes a big difference in a world where people are fighting for communal power,” says Parvathy. Bauls believe in rebirth and that one continues to do in the present what one did in the past life. “I can’t become a Baul today just like that. I must have had that thread… that connection running through me. Someone else decided this for me. I didn’t. There are thousands of people, but few Bauls… “

by Bhumika K. in The Hindu

The scrolls, or patachitra, are part of a 1,000-year-old traditional art form involving story-telling through scroll (pata) paintings (chitra). The stories told are from Hindu mythology and literature – mostly from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Today, the second and third generation women descendants of those Muslim settlers carry the tradition forward with about 190 groups performing in and around East and West Midnapore districts, other areas of  Bengal, other states and even abroad.

“Our ancestors in Bangladesh also told stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It is not the religious overtones that matter here. The issues that are tackled in our stories are what count,” says Noorjahan Chitrakar, 45. 

Noorjahan, from Halichowk village in East Midnapore, says she started patachitra door-to-door storytelling when she turned 12. Her “favourite stories are that of  Sita Haran, where the focus is on the abuse of women, and the Lav-Kush episode, that deals with a single woman raising two children all alone.” 

Draupadi’s Vastra Haran and her consequent vow for revenge also figure prominently in the patachitras. The women storytellers love her spirit. Another favourite from this epic is Kunti’s inner struggle regarding her illegitimate son, Karna.

The women paint the scrolls with natural vegetable dyes. They sing songs that elaborate the paintings, as they unfold the scrolls before the viewers. The scrolls are made from paper and old bits of clothes smeared with mud, after which the women paint the background and characters of the stories of which they sing. The dyes are made from natural ingredients, such as local flowers like juhi and bela, coal dust, lime, soda, raw turmeric, clay and straw that are mixed in coconut shells. The women and their families do the entire job and the process becomes a good learning ground for the children.

“My mother had no formal training. She learnt the art of making scrolls and the related songs from her mother. However, I have a formal training in art, having attended several government-sponsored art workshops,” says Fateja Chitrakar, 24, Noorjahan’s daughter. “Along with the traditional stories, we also paint and sing about modern social evils, such as drug abuse and dowry. We also tell stories to create awareness on HIV/AIDS, polio, the environment and water conservation. I have performed in Germany and the US, too,” adds Fateja.

Carrying this art form forward has proved lucrative for these artisans. “After 9/11, we were asked by government agencies to perform at various workshops across the country for creating awareness against terrorism. During that time, our individual monthly earnings touched Rs 5,000 as compared to the average of Rs 500 per month,” says Sahida Chitrakar, 45, from Muradpur village in East Midnapore.

These women, however, find it difficult to raise money in the form of loans simply because this art-industry has not found a place within the small-scale or cottage industry segment. Yet, the door-to-door storytelling has its benefits. Apart from money, says Sahida, the villagers offer them food grains, vegetables, edible oils, brushes, coconut shells and clothing.

But the new generation artisans are now targeting a better means of earning. “After the formation of groups, we negotiate with the gram panchayats (village councils), district administrations and government agencies to book our performances for various fairs across the country and abroad. We are taken free of cost and the stalls are also given to us at no cost. We have also found a huge market for our paintings. Besides storytelling through our scrolls, we also sell etchings to ethnic art aficionados. We are trying to bring our art out of its rural image and give it a contemporary, universal appeal,” says Rukmini Chitrakar, 22, of Nankarchowk village in West Midnapore.  
“It’s amazing that these women themselves prepare the dyes, draw the paintings, write and compose the songs to go with the scrolls. That’s true, all-round artistic talent,” says Khushi Manna, a folk-art collector. “The charm of these scrolls lies in the song and the story-telling art of these women. But the paintings themselves are also very vivid and alive,” she adds.

Diversification in this art form has taken many turns, the pata chitrakars now also make flower vases, miniature paintings, wall-hangings and even complete Durga pandals (dais) in traditional designs and colours to augment their income. “Whatever we make, is immediately identified as a patachitra, as we do not compromise on the traditional aspects of our skill and always retain the unique identity of the art form,” says Meher Chitrakar, 35, who specialises in making items other than scrolls.

While a wide variety of traditional art forms across the globe are seeing a conscious revival, the patachitrakars of East and West Midnapore never needed such an intervention. These uneducated Muslim women have, on their own initiative, brought about an evolution in their skills and presentation, moving with the times, meeting new demands and tackling modern issues to keep their tradition alive and kicking. With an educated and a well trained future generation now ready to take this art form forward, one can only admire the survival skills of these creative spirits.

She worried that without preservationist efforts, the country would be left with a generation deprived of great teachers and quality dancers. Ten years ago she built Nrityagram, a Sanskrit word meaning “dance village.” She explained its goals thus: “My vision of an idyllic dance village was peopled with idealistic, hardworking, extremely talented and dedicated young dancers.”

The dancers, who are all girls, live an almost monastic existence, in near isolation. For seven years, they live in traditional Guru-shishya parampara (teacher-student tradition), where the students care for their teachers in return for knowledge. The girls are taught Indian mythology, including the ancient epics, Sanskrit poetry, yoga, meditation, mime, two martial arts (Aikido and Kalarippayat), and of course, the dance.

Odissi is a soft, lyrical dance, depicting the essential philosophies of the most popular Hindu deities. Said to date back to the temples of Orissa in the 2nd century BC, Odissi is perhaps the oldest known dance form. It is curvaceous and sensual, dividing the body into three principle parts: head, bust and torso. It involves rapid foot rhythms, head movements and intricate facial expressions, decorated with wrist-flicks and side glances.

Monterey residents Srirupa Sen and Annette Alvarez recently spent three months at the dance village. They were so moved that they returned home, traded in their previous careers, and decided to devote their energies to promoting Nrityagram, founding Nrityagram West and becoming its press agents.

The Nrityagram dance ensemble now does an annual spring tour, performing in major cities. Next Wednesday they will dance in Monterey. The New York Times called their 1996 debut show in New York, “one of the most luminous dance events of the year.” The reviewer went on to write, “They performed with a burnished grace…each member of the troupe distinguished herself as a dancer of inspiring gifts.”

Sen describes Odissi as a form of worship for the dancer; “Odissi is about love and devotion to God, based on a devotion to Lord Krishna.” Through the ages it has served not only a religious function, but allows the dancer to act as a narrator, a transmitter of Indian folklore and mythology. While she is dancing, the dancer is on a journey to “ultimate fulfillment,” and tries to carry the audience with her. Alvarez says, “That special journey is also an aesthetic one for the audience.”

The popularization of Odissi that Bedi dreamed about seems now to be taking place throughout India’’s dance community. Kelucharan Mahapatara, one of the first Indians to revive the Odissi dance form in modern years, ended up building his own dance academy after the Indian government refused his request for land. Recently an Odissi course was held in San Diego and last year three Odissi dancers, spotted performing at Rath Yatra celebrations at Venice Beach, Calif., were invited to the MTV awards to dance with Madonna when she performed her song, “Shanti/Ashtangi.”

Sen and Alvarez say they are fortunate to be able to bring this cultural experience to parts of the world that would never ordinarily get to see what they describe as a humanitarian mission using the universal language of dance. “With it you can transcend cultural gaps,” comments Alvarez. “It can become a valuable resource for schools and our youth.”

The presence of Caucasian models in Indian advertisements has grown in the past three years, industry analysts say. The trend reflects deep cultural preferences for fair skin in this predominantly brown-skinned nation of more than 1 billion people. But analysts say the fondness for “fair” is also fueled by a globalized economy that has drawn ever more models from Europe to cities such as Mumbai, India’s cultural capital.

“The Indian mind-set prefers light skin. My pictures are routinely Photoshopped to make me look a bit lighter — a lot lighter, actually,”Riya Ray, 23, a dark-skinned Indian model, said with a laugh. “But when I work in Britain and France, my color is praised as exotic. It is a two-way trend: Indian models are going abroad, and foreign models are coming here.”

White models, who usually visit India on three-month work visas, earn $500 to $1,500 for a single shoot, a rate that is relatively low, largely because the models tend to come from developing European countries and are new to the international scene.

From Sunday’s Washington Post

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excerpt from Little India

Is this fair?

Shah Rukh Khan, the undisputed Bollywood King and role model for millions in India, is touting Fair and Handsome, a whitening cream from Emami for men in commercials that hit the market this month. King Khan, whose charisma could sell just about anything to anyone, is telling hordes of young people in India and the Diaspora, most of them dark skinned, that fairness is somehow crucial to success. 

Well, at least one can say that racial stereotypes are now genderless, an equal opportunity offender! 

For decades South Asian women have been drilled with the message that fairness equates to beauty and that a whiter complexion is key to getting ahead in life, in marriage and at work. Since 1978, Hindustan Unilever’s Fair & Lovely has sold its magic potion to millions of women, monopolizing a majority share of the skin whitening market in India, which is growing at a steady clip of 10-15 per cent per year. Several cosmetic companies have jumped on the bandwagon, including Emami, Nivea,  Ponds, Garnier, the Body Shop, Jolen, Avon, L’Oreal, Lancome, Yves Saint-Laurent, Clinique, Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, and Revlon. A recent article in The New York Times noted, “Skin-lightening products are by far the most popular product in India’s fast-growing skin care market, so manufacturers say they ignore them at their peril.” 

Shah Rukh Khan, seen here with Priyanka Chopra at the premier of Don, is hawking Fair and Handsome, a whitening cream from Emami for men in commercials that hit the market recently.

Euromonitor International, a research firm, estimates the $318 million India market for skin care has grown by 43 percent since 2001. Didier Villanueva, country manager for L’Oreal India, told the Times that half of this market is fairness creams, with 60-65 percent of Indian women using these products daily. 

“I think the color bias among Indians is mostly a sexist issue,” says Aneel Karnani, associate professor of strategy at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and the author of a business study on Fair & Lovely. “It is true that even men feel they need to be ‘whiter’ and Unilever does market some products targeted at men. This is probably due to racist biases from colonial times, but the bigger issue is the sexist bias. There is much greater pressure on women to be fairer, because this is society’s and men’s notion of beauty.” 

Does one have to be fair to be successful or loved? The ads for the cream always depict a dark, unhappy and self-conscious woman, shut off from opportunities. The moment she starts applying the cream, she turns several shades lighter, gets the plum job and supreme self-confidence.

So where did this fairness-fetish come from? It has most frequently been blamed on the British Raj and identification with the colonizers, but historians also trace the prejudice to Vedic times, when the ideals of feminine beauty included a fair skin. 

Miniature paintings have a rainbow of complexions, but the darker skins are of attendants and servers, while the royalty and privileged class are fair. In India’s bazaar art the mighty Gods and Goddesses, except Krishna, who is the blue-skinned, are rosy pink. Poems and shayari across the ages celebrates sangemarmar sa badan (marble-like body) and chand sa mukhda (moon-faced). 

“Indian culture is deeply marked by two experiences: caste and colonialism,” says Vijay Prashad, professor of South Asian Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and author of several books including The Karma of Brown Folk. “The former, as a system, pushed down certain communities, either through untouchability or else the idea of hierarchy itself, so that even those who were not untouchables had to reckon with being seen as inferior to others.” 

He adds: “Race-thinking and racism came to India via colonialism, and they marked the reformulation of caste. In other words, when race-thinking came to India, the worst elements of caste were re-cast, as it were, on racial lines. The meaning of varna, for instance, was seen as a hreference to skin color rather than to feudal standards. European racism entered India through the hierarchy of caste; European racism ‘modernized’ the worst aspects of the caste system.”

Historians, anthropologists and psychologists may well argue over the reasons, but there is no dispute that the preference for white is entrenched in the India mindset. Gori (white) is a compliment and Kalia (black) is a put down. 

But what is something as archaic as Fair & Lovely doing in America, land of the free, home of the liberated woman? Surely, women of South Asian origin aren’t still hooked to the mantra of white skin to solve all of life’s problems? Every Indian store Little India called all over the country stocked Fair & Lovely and some also offered a range of ayurvedic skin whitening creams as well, such as Shahnaz Husain’s Shafair and Fair One Cream, all promising a fairer skin in weeks. 

Indian men are now being lured with the same color motivations. The men’s fairness market is booming in India, with Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and Emami battling it out with products like Fair & Lovely’s Menz Activ and Fair and Handsome respectively.

Writes Gopalkrishna Seshan in Business Standard: “When Emami was studying the market for ways to break HUL’s stranglehold on the fairness products market – HUL’s Fair & Lovely has been the undisputed market leader since its launch in the 1970s – it experienced an epiphany: over a third of Fair & Lovely’s customers were men.” It is to capitalize on this large hidden market that Emami has come up with Fair and Handsome, a $10 million brand, which is reputed to be growing at 25 percent a year. 

“Films are a hreflection of society. So Bollywood, like much of Indian soeciety, did believe that fair is beautiful.” 

So now the Indian man is being held to the standards of the color code: not only is he expected to be brainy and bright – a surgeon, engineer or a call center worker at the very least – but now he has to be fair too! On its website, Fair and Handsome asks, “Why there is need for fair skin?” The answer, it says, “To look attractive, else not good looking, people will not want to talk, it affects our confidence.”

Khubsoorti hai shakti (Beauty is strength) is the slogan of many of these whitening creams, but of course, beauty is code for a fair skin. The men’s product tagline is Badal do apni kahani (change your story) and here too it’s a whitening agent that helps transform destiny. The ads are a bit over the top, as darkish stuntmen become star heroes once they use the cream and simple, cowering women transform into self-confident divas astride jets as the paparazzi go wild with their cameras. 

Given the surging demand, scores of imitators of Fair & Lovely have cropped up in India: Fair & Natural, Fair & Sweet, Famous & Beauty, Famous & Lovely, Face and Lovely, Fure & Beauty, Fair & Care, Fairy & Lovely, Fain & Lovely, Fresh Look, Fine Love. Hindustan Lever even offers Fair & Lovely Body Fairness Milk, which takes care of the entire body and “its gentle formulation gives fairness all year round.” No point in having a fair face if the rest of your body is dark.

The color preference seems to cut across the country’s geography. Even South Indians, who are darker than North Indians, show a distinct bias toward fairness. Most of the top heroines in Southern cinema, Hema Malini, Vijayantimala and Sridevi, are fair. All the great heroes, MGR, NTR as well as the current hot favorite Rajnikant, are fairer than their audience. 

Roksana Badruddoja Rahman of Rutgers University, who studied skin color and marriage choices among Indian women in New Jersey, concluded that “feelings related to beauty and attractiveness and marriage marketability are partially determined by the lightness of their skin.” Another researcher, Zareen Grewal of the University of Michigan, similarly found that South Asian immigrants covet whiteness: “Particular physical qualities are always fetishized in constructions of beauty. However, in these communities, the stigma attached to dark color intersects with broader racial discourses in the U.S. That’s why a Desi mother of three daughters in their twenties, explicitly hrefers to dark coloring as a physical abnormality and deficiency.’

Atleast one such “dark and ugly” bride became a cause celebre in the U.S. media last year. Vijai Pandey of Belchertown, Mass., who traveled to India to meet a prospective bride, judged her too ugly and dark for his handsome and light-skinned son. He sued her U.S. relative for fraud and conspiracy for misleading him about her looks and complexion! 

In the Indian media you’ll be hard-pressed to find a dark face, be it in an ad for cell phones, bridal fashions or insurance. Everyone is fair or pleasantly “wheatish.” In Indian television serials, so hugely popular in India and now a staple in the U.S., everyone from daughters-in-law to mothers-in-law, not to mention children and male family members, is extremely fair. They all must be using Fair & Lovely. 

Bollywood has long been obsessed with the fairness mystique. Says Anupama Chopra, a noted film journalist: “Films are a hreflection of society. So Bollywood, like much of Indian society, did believe that fair is beautiful. The heroines especially were expected to be fair, have big eyes and long hair. I recall one particularly nasty film in which Rishi Kapoor had a very dark wife. The wife actually encouraged and understood his affair with the much fairer girlfriend, because she felt she was too ugly to merit his love.” This characteristic carries over to recent films, like the hugely successful Vivah, in which the fairer girl, Amrita Rao, gets the rich, city boy, but her dark skinned cousin isn’t as fortunate. 

Indian youth seem far less prejudiced: “The new generation has been accepting of people of different colors and races, because we have been more in touch with people outside of our own color and race and I think people have started to realize that it’s more than just what’s on the outside and now that we have more interaction between male and female, it’s been understood that it’s more about the personality than what you see on the outside that defines the person, not your color.” 

Babber doesn’t have a problem with whitening creams, but quibbles with the motivations of some people who apply them: “I think if people are using them, because society wants them to or their family wants them to, then it’s an issue. If they as individuals feel they want to be lighter, it gives them more self-confidence, if that’s something they personally want, then it’s a healthy choice to make for themselves. Otherwise it’s an unhealthy choice, because they are struggling with somebody else’s view of how they should be, a change from the outside being foisted on them.”

Of course, Indians are not alone in their color biases. Creams like Fair & Lovely are doing a rip-roaring business in countries as diverse as Mexico, Malaysia, China, Brazil and Korea. Even in America, many African Americans use whitening creams, peddled euphemistically as treatments for blotchy skin and hyper-pigmentation. It’s as if the whole world has enrolled in a white seminary or madrassa to chant the virtues of fairness. Color may be just a matter of pigmentation, but cultures everywhere seem to attach a special cachet to whiteness, an almost unconscious belief in its magical power to open doors, to make life better.

It will likely take generations to undo the brainwashing.

Although the comics and the magazines found a following among Indian children, the books authored by Indians took longer to find acceptance. Most children were by then so totally hooked on the wonderfully limited world of Enid Blyton that it was impossible to wean them away. And so we continued to pay homage at the altar of the Western authors. We graduated, gradually and reluctantly, from Blyton to Agatha Christie, PG Wodehouse and Georgette Heyer. The boys disdained to read such namby-pamby books and instead became avid fans of the Western sagas of JT Edson and Luis L’amour. And in the meanwhile the world of publishing in India continued to grow. And we continued to remain oblivious of it, deliberately turning our backs on it. 

And in the meanwhile another quiet revolution had been brewing, boiling up in the mind of one man, a genius far ahead of his times. This man was Anant Pai, better known today in India as ‘Uncle Pai’. Pai had worked for various publications when he was struck by the idea that what the Indian child needed was a comic book that would educate him/her about the wonderful history and impart a sense of the culture of the country. And this was how Amar Chitra Katha was launched in 1967.

Amar Chitra Katha, literally ‘Immortal Pictorial Tales’, started with the tale of Krishna, the most loved God in the pantheon of gods in India. What Pai achieved in these comics was amazing – the story was retold in a simplified form, encapsulated to interest the child reader. The colourful illustrations ensured that children would be attracted and want to read the story. Success was slow in coming, but once it did there was no stopping either the series or the man behind it. As the popularity of the comic book spread, Pai introduced various stories. He selected tales from the history of India, introducing individual books on great leaders, illustrious rulers and religious heads. He also introduced children to the many stories about the various gods of India, stressing the importance of festival and religious practices.

Today Amar Chitra Katha has over 500 titles and is a venerated institution. It came at a time when the Indian child, pressurized by the need to master English, had no time to pay attention to the vast storehouse of stories in the culture of his country. Amar Chitra Katha has introduced several generations of Indian children to the stories that make up the fabric of their lives. The success of this series prompted the intrepid Pai into launching Tinkle, a magazine for children with stories narrated through the comic book format.

The amazing story of Amar Chitra Katha started in 1967-68 when an attempt to translate the myriad tales from Indian history and culture into comics was made to cover a wide spectrum of titles . It was the creative genius and foresight of the legendary editor, Anant Pai and the entrepreneurial zeal and courage of the publisher G.L. Mirchandani, Chairman of India Book House that give birth to a brand which delighted generations of children( and their parents) since then.

It is said that one day as he was watching a quiz programme on television; Anant Pai saw that the participating children from English-medium schools were well versed with the lore of Tarzan and the exploits of Greek gods but could not answer simple questions about the Ramayana. That is when he decided to use the popular medium of comics to acquaint Indian children with their rich cultural heritage. And god bless that decision! I passed many history exams in my childhood thanks to Amar Chitra Katha. I still remember that as a student of class 3, I was the only one who could give the entire list of Mughal dynasty in a school quiz. That was easy, for I had read about all those emperors in Amar Chitra Katha and my disciplined sisters used to keep the comics on historical characters in the strict order of history.

Through the medium of comics, Amar Chitra Katha brought to life the colourful mythologies and legends of India. The Route to your Roots was the catch phrase coined to describe the efforts of Amar Chitra Katha to tell tales of heroes and heroines from Indian mythology, history and folklore.

These comics enriched my storehouse of stories manifold. I still feel that my knowledge of folk tales, tales from Buddhist Jatakas, Jainism, Panchtantra, classics of various Indian languages and Hindu myths is much more than most others. All thanks to Amar Chitra Katha which made me associate each story with beautiful illustrations and well chosen dialogues. Later in life when I read the original stories/books , the images from comics were still in my mind. Best part about these comics was their factual correctness.

According to the strict editorial policy, each detail had to be culled from a reputed reference and had to be available for any query, because Amar Chitra Katha, by the 1980s was taken as an authentic secondary source of information. I feel sad that Anant Pai’s contribution in heralding this cultural information revolution still lacks proper acknowledgement in terms of civilian honours like Padma Bhushan .

What next? I am inspired!

Anyone ready to fund my Yoga Comics idea —- riding on the global yoga wave?

It’s a lazy late-winter morning, but the second floor of Indira cinema in Bhowanipore is a whirl of frenetic feet. “Taka, dimi, taka dimi…. Hold it, I want more energy and power in the steps and movement…. We are not merely playing Lord Krishna here, we are becoming the Lord himself,” Pandit Chitresh Das bellows in his warm and engaging voice, as he corrects the pirouette of little Deblina.

For the 63-year-old kathak maestro, among the pioneers alongside the likes of Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan to bring a slice of India’s soft power to the US, it’s been a full circle — from Calcutta to California to Kalighat.

Das, who first went to America on a Whitney fellowship in 1970 to teach kathak, now divides his time between India and the US. “I consider myself a Bengali Rajput Californian, because I’m a son of Bengal, my guruji was from Rajasthan and I spend a lot of time in California,” he says during his latest visit, which also gave him the opportunity to renew his tala ties with the kids of Kalighat NGO New Light.

Calcutta is where Das took his first kathak steps at age nine under the watchful eyes of Pandit Ram Narayan Misra, and trained in both the graceful style of the Lucknow school and the dynamic and powerful rhythms of the Jaipur gharana.

Misra, who also used to teach the tawaifs of Bowbazar, often took his young disciple along with him. “I remember those narrow lanes and can relate to the plight of the Kalighat sex-workers’ children,” Das says. Through a tie-up with New Light, which works to better the lot of these kids, he has sought to integrate them into the mainstream.

“Kathak can be a panacea and the spark to ignite a new life, feels Guruji and he is also keen to connect more effectively with his innovative technique he calls kathak yoga. It is based on the fundamental yogic concept of integrating the mind, soul and body,” explains Seema, a senior student, who now coordinates Das’s India lessons.

In kathak yoga, the dancer recites a chosen tala (rhythmic structure), sings the melody and the theka (language of the drum) of the tala, while practising precise complicated footwork.

“It has turned out to be a huge hit with Silicon Valley biggies for reducing stress. We are working on the logistics of bringing it to the IT companies in Sector V, and other corporate houses in the city,” adds Seema.

Kathak is known for its fast, powerful footwork and spectacular spins, called chakkaras, according to Charlotte, the principal dancer of Chitresh Das Dance Company. Calcutta can renew its date with the breathtaking pace and power of Das’s sumptuous East-West collaborative experiment with American tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith later this year.

“Yes, we will be back with our India Jazz Suites, perhaps in a bigger and more spectacular avatar, because Calcutta deserves the very best,” promises Das.

Plans are afoot to also bring to the city a world kathak festival, on the lines of the international kathak conference organised in September 2006 in San Francisco.

Kathak at the Crossroads, the three-day, $500,000 conclave presented at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, was the largest Indian classical performing arts event in California’s history.

It brought together some of the greatest artistes, gurus, musicians, scholars and critics to discuss the past, present and future of kathak dance.

Pam Crain

The nicest thing about Crain is her sincerity.
Although she keeps travelling — her daughter has moved to the UK and
her mother lives in Las Vegas – Crain returns to the city of her birth,Calcutta,India,
where she feels her roots are. “I chat with them on the Internet. They
seem to be quite scared. Here, I don’t mind going home in a taxi at one
and two. Here I can chat with the taxi drivers,” says Crain, who, when
offered snacks by her husband Don Saigal, opted for a laddu and a barfi
instead of sandwiches.

Crain says her mother is an Anglo-Indian
and at age 13 when she was in the boarding of Dow Hill in Kurseong, she
was introduced to the piano. “That’s about it,” she says. But they were
allowed to take back the discs she bought in a small shop in New
Market. “I was consumed by jazz”, her favourite singers being Betty
Carter, Sarah Vaughan and Nina Simone. She was “very lucky” to have
performed with some of the best jazz musicians the country produced.

Perhaps
it was fated that she would subsequently “fall in love” with Carnatic
music, for impossible as it may sound, Crain had begun her career at a
masala dosa joint named Neera’s on the Chowringhee.

When she
returned from Singapore after a year there, she watched Mocambo’s being
built. Crain has performed in all the cities, and she says with a
smile, “even Indore.”

The crowds are still the same, she feels,
but she admits managers of establishments expect the music to play
softly in the background. “But just as the people at the restaurant
talk business, we want to talk our business too. It is very difficult
for a musician to do anything that is not coming out with heartfelt
power.”

Carlton Kitto

“While some turned to alcohol or drugs, many died of starvation,” remembers Kitto, who switched over to teaching at the Calcutta School of Music for 12 years. Now he teaches jazz and classical guitar at schools and at his residence. “I’m trying to keep authentic jazz alive in the city,” says the survivor. Every evening Kitto is strumming on his guitar accompanied by a pianist at the Chowringhee Bar at Oberoi Grand. “The jam session at Mocambo and Blue Fox on weekends had the youngsters queuing up to shake a leg,” he says.

Louiz Banks

Louiz Banks has been spearheading the Jazz Movement in India for the past three decades.

He has been singularly instrumental in bringing a high standard of Jazz performance for jazz devotees in India.

He has proved his calibre, time and again, by performances with greats such as Eddie Henderson, Eddie Daniels, Charlie Mariano, Yolande Bavan, John McLaughlin, Tony Lakatos, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, George Brooks , Wallace Roney , Bob Belden , Roseanna Vitro , Carl Clements, India’s best jazz singer Pam Crain, World renowned South Indian Classical Singer Ramamani, World Percussionist Sivamani, Ustad Zakir Husain, Shankar Mahadevan, the eminent Sultan Khan, among others and crowning it all with a tour all over India with the legendary Dizzy Gillespie.

When he is not playing music he paints impressionistic canvases in oil and acrylic.

And Toto Wallang, Nondon Bagchi, Louis Majaw, Usha Uthup, Rudy Wallang…..