I have never had any regard for the teacher as sacred, none for the student as a devout. The relationship between a teacher and student eludes categorisation. This relationship is heavily pedagogical, instantly romantic, and in any case, best left vague. We are engaged in a pas de deux; the teacher displays poise and steadies the student, and the student performs slow, erratic, elegant variations. The teacher plays the committed lover - loyal in their presence, in their address, in their intention, in their concern. The student is at all costs promiscuous - running wild, experimenting, choosing from an array of options, indiscriminately, inconsistently. When the student utters a question, it is not to the teacher but of the world at large. When the teacher responds, it is never to the student, but for the future that is imminent. This forms the principle cultural model for free relationships between us, the old and the young. Our relationship has gallantry, respect, ardent love and adoration, bashfulness, reciprocal love, and wishful looks. And this is what I have shared with these two old folks. Humble as they are, today I name you for the devastatingly poetic impact you have had on my life. Happy teachers' day you pesky elders - Keval Arora, Anuradha Kapur
O Ganesh
An inescapable irony marks the sudden rise of Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations in towns and cities across India. In 1890’s Maharashtra, Bal Gangadhar Tilak had identified Ganesh as ‘God for Everyone’. In the aftermath of Hindu-Muslim riots, Tilak urged people of new India to bring this private adoration of Ganesh to the public fore. Perhaps the chimeric playfulness of Ganesh’s body is an excellent metaphor for India’s syncretic culture. The elephant head offers the human body two sensorial gifts - a geography of memory, and an uncanny ability to hear deep sounds (from the past even). Plus, who doesn’t have an appetite for ladoos. No other mythic figure is more (un)naturally disposed towards an inter-faith dialogue than Ganesh is. But today, Ganesh Chaturthi springs up across India’s moral landscape, across the new urban markets of ‘pop-religion’ (ones which had not even heard of the festival up until very recently), not in an effort to extend the dialogue, but to aggressively reclaim the mythic figure in step with the virulent majoritarian impulse. Beware - Ganesh is an excellent listener; if he can listen to Vyasa’s voice and write down the epic Mahabharata without ‘pause and hesitation’, it is almost certain that he is writing his next epic tragedy listening keenly to the voices of our times today. <detail from a Hussain painting>
