BENGALURU: From becoming a part of the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) in 2001 as a fundraiser, Arundhati Ghosh, now the executive director of the organisation plans to spend the coming year preparing for IFA’s future. From creating the role on paper to making the final choice of the best possible person to lead IFA, Ghosh and the Board of Trustees are learning how to detach and helpherle ave with grace. “Life is a circle. Something begins when something ends; and that is the point of celebration.
It should be a celebration of the new. I am spending time to prepare emotionally, physically, and intellectually not to be lost without this world, ” says Ghosh, who will step down from the position in 2023 after 22 years with IFA. Ghosh, who grew up in Bengal with art and artists around her, thought that supporting projects would be a super-easy job. “I used to think of the arts as a concept outside us - something which is meant to be witnessed and enjoyed only.
But 22 years later, I realised much of it is an internal process of transformation. I joined to contribute to the organisation, but I certainly got more than what I was able to give; the opportunities, the people I met including trustees, artists, scholars, and donors whose generosity makes you believe in the possibility of a better world,” she says adding: “Hope is the biggest casualty today.
Being in a place like this gives you so much light.” Founded in 1995, IFA is a facilitator, catalyst and provocateur in the field of arts and culture and has supported critical investigations, explorations and experi ments that challenge dominant narratives. A poet , writer, and erst while dancer, Ghosh beautifully overcame challenges over the last decade as the executive director.
“Right from the decision of what can be changed in the organisation and what should be left unchanged, envisioning the desired change, to planning the resources required to go ahead on the path towards the change, I realised this job is a marathon and not a sprint,” she says. According to Ghosh, the pandemic has changed a lot, especially the way in which we think about what art can do. Although it is too early to specify the change, “While the digital space emerged for artists out of necessity, I think when we put our masks on, our blindfolds come off.
The prevalent inequality and injustice were staring us in the face. We realised what an incredible disaster our health systems are, how privileged some of us are and took it for granted, and how incapable our nation is of taking care of the most vulnerable people,” she says. But Ghosh believes that artists had an important realisation. They have always relied on themselves with little help from outside. During the pandemic this was reaffirmed.
“It has ignited a sense of self-reliance, and togetherness among the artists.” she says. As an ED, courage has helped - courage that bakes and not burns, Ghosh says. “It is the most important characteristic. Courage to disrupt, to ask, to appear silly when you’re asking, to break a tradition but also to keep a tradition which makes sense. Unshaken hope and belief in the collective that we can do together much more than what we can do alone kept me going through the difficult times,” she says. On the personal front, Ghosh’s first Bengali poetry collection is all set to be out next year. “I am now working on its final manu - script,” she says.