BENGALURU : I have always maintained that our good old Indian way of greeting people with folded hands was a great idea. When Cardi-B came along, the virus sat waiting patiently as we shook (unwashed) hands, while it merrily transported itself onto another (unwitting) host! We are a tropical country where our national pastime is to sweat, spit and wee incessantly. So, logically and hygienically speaking, a namaskara is the best option! Not only can we flout our ‘Indianess’ but we can make all the misogynist fringe groupshappy at our ladylike demureness! I was nursing a twisted knee and many bruises after my fall, and being in constant pain is not on my agenda.
Many a head was bitten off when a silly question was asked at work and I got the hint to rest out my injuries at home when I got a ‘get well soon card’ from my colleagues while I was still at work! With both my ego and body battered and bruised I decided to take it easy, until I realised that staying at home was far more exhausting! I have often expounded at my lecture-seminars (very often banging on the speaker’s podium for effect), that a woman’s work is never done. I couldn’t be more right! Whenever a woman leaves her home to work, a vacuum is formed that never fills up.
Maybe a temporary substitute for some time but the bulk of the ‘work’ is still pending, including giving detailed instructions to the nanny, cook and sundry who ‘pretend’ to help you! Straight after my fall, I was checked for serious injuries by my hubby and son and on finding out there were no broken bones, I was gently steered into the kitchen to complete the important task of feeding the brood! Emancipation is truly a fickle word that has many interpretations.
During the lockdown with no cultural or artistic stimulation, my brain and soul (only an artiste will understand my angst), felt dry and parched like a desert. So it was with was with a spring in my step and a song in my heart that I entered the cool dark auditorium at BIC, (something I hadn’t done in two years) to revel and listen to scholars, world-class artistes, historians and enablers exploring the concept of ‘re-imagining re-generating and re-activating’ the concept of performing arts.
My dear friend Madhu Natraj, the daughter of the famed Kathak dancer and choreographer Dr Maya Rao, is in my eyes the best ‘enabler’ of performing arts. Just to hear danseuses like Malavika Sarukkai and Anitha Rathnam, stalwarts who held forth on the essence of dance and the connection to the soul was thrilling.
But when Malavika shared, what she had read scratched on the side of a mighty oak tree... “I was once a seed that stood its ground’’…I knew I was home! This week, I was determined to do what pleased me. I even backed out of a highfalutin Consulate dinner because my body said ‘No’! But celebrating my good friend’s birthday at Navu Project, a fabulous contemporary bistro run by my good friend Kainishka Sharma, was a ball. ‘Girls just wanna have fun!’ And yes! We did bring the house down. Don’t count the things that you did. Do the things that count.