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Beyond
the Sleaze, There’s Hope
While
most people in Delhi are seized with sleaze, there’s a happier
side to Delhi which people just fail to recognise and even if they
do, it does not merit either their attention or their support. You
will have people going ballistic over some silly rotten plagiarised
fashion show but ask them to see a play and they will shy away from
it or, for that matter, ask them to absorb the nuances of the amazingly
wonderful Aditi Mangaldas and you can almost see them wince. But
there is a Delhi which is so wonderful: made up of decent people
who wish to make a difference. This is a small tribute to a handful
of them: I am aware there are many more unsung heroes but let’s
make a beginning.
Sanjoy
Roy who runs Teamwork Films is putting together a Festival of India
at Edinburgh and earlier this week he, in partnership with the ever-so-supportive
British Council, put together a fabulous evening where extracts
of that Festival were showcased: whether it was Roysten Abel’s
A Beggar’s Opera, a fine play with the actual cast comprising
street-performers from the Shadipur Depot to the strains of Indian
Ocean, to that fantastic show put up by Aditi Mangaldas, one was
driven to a world so unlike Delhi as most of us know it or how media
reports it! Sanjoy has a Herculean task ahead of himself but the
fact that he has put it all together speaks volumes of him and his
team but the pity is that Delhi will never sponsor such superb ideas
but instead will fritter away money over some silly golf tournament
or an even more wasteful fashion show where air-kissing will reign
supreme and fraudulent charity-collectors will flock hoping to make
some quick blood-money and adorn the pages of some sillier supplement
which exhorts their philanthropy: this is the real tragedy for Delhi.
What
is especially balking is that while organisations like the British
Council and the Ford Foundation are always willing to go that extra
mile for our culture and our performers, our very own organisations
do precious little: the fact that ICCR today runs the way it does
with such limited funding is a tribute to Himachal Som and his merry
men. The British Council has been doing some amazing work and if
nothing else, we need to set up an organisation perhaps funded by
some well-meaning corporates who must also play their part in this
cultural evolution and we should work towards setting up an arts
foundation which is genuine, transparent and not an individual’s
fiefdom: we do not want any further individualisation than we already
have.
As
if one evening was not enough, this week held yet another surprise
in the form of yet another unsung hero, Brian Silas. More and more
people need to hear him and see him play the piano, not only because
he is brilliant but because he is self-taught and in that lies an
inspiration. Brian Silas took people down memory lane and it was
not just bringing back Kishore Kumar to life that Brian achieved
but the hypnotising of an audience that at most times is rude and
insensitive.
It
is the touch of genius that one looks forward when the curtain rises
on yet another production of the National School of Drama or when
Aditi takes that one final movement beyond the frontiers of your
imagination or when you suddenly hear Faiz burst into a sher which
would leave you speechless at its intensity and meaning. The IIC
has been made fun of for having serious events but the IIC is also
home to some incisive discussions; the most charged discussion on
political thought as also host to films that the PVRs could neither
comprehend nor show: and for the right commercial reasons.
There
are organisations like Shadaj (and many more) doing sterling work
in the promotion of music through Baithaks as is the work done by
Spic-Macay and the ever committed Dr Kiran Seth, its Founder.
There
is not enough money to support the performing arts; to keep some
of our folk traditions alive; to see that our street performers
get their talent global exposure but there is always money to send
some MPs to China or to wherever ostensibly on a study tour: ask
them which cities they went to and you will draw a blank but this
is India’s bane: we don’t know a good cause when we see
one.
Thank
God the British left the British Council behind; thank god Sanjoy
Roy can still work despite all the odds and thank god that we still
have a semblance of superb theatre from the likes of Roysten Abel:
enough to make you still want to live in this Capital of sleaze!
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