Odissi, where my heart saunters and lingers..

Odissi dancer

Time and again I am drawn to the world of Odissi. Though I am a student of Bharatanatyam, it is Odissi that tugs at my heart with its beauty and grace. This subtle, refined, sensitive and sensuous dance form agrees so totally with my sensibilities.

The mesmerizing beauty of Odissi is crystallized in the dancer Vrinda Chaddha. She transcends technique to exude the grace and beauty of Odissi in every step, in every eye movement. Her inner stillness and composure, perfectly timed execution without any superfluous movements, her complete fulfillment of every step is an exquisite feast to the viewer. Watching her perform takes me to into those rare heavenly states of aesthetic bliss where beauty, harmony, rhythm, movement and expressions all come together into one fulfilling whole.

Rasa (aesthetic bliss) is an experience of the bliss that is the eternal. Raso Vai-Sah!

A hobby is a lifeline ..

I feel that every one must cultivate at least one hobby, one pure pursuit to devote oneself to in our spare time. Be it art, music, science or sport, a hobby can serve as a lifeline to grasp onto in times of crisis.

A hobby is a safe haven to retreat into when life or the world around is in turmoil. A hobby brings the mind to the present. It gives rest to a restless mind by eliminating pointless thoughts. Hobbies not only bring joy but also prevents us from spending our time in empty, material pursuits. 

Creativity and worship ..

No other culture in the world lays as much emphasis on creativity as Hinduism. Creativity and worship are so entwined that there is no way to distinguish one from the other. Temples are the centers of culture, where art, music, dance, poetry, plays and dramas are nurtured and offered to the gods. Ranjoli is the offering of art, Geetanjali is the offering of music, Nrityanjali is the offering of dance.

Creativity lies at the very core of Hinduism urging us to fulfill our creative potential every single day. Creativity is the highest offering to the divine. To be immersed in a creative act is worship!!

Fulfilling our creative potential is worship

The Joy of Writing

Think, feel and write

The daily demands on us leaves very little time for creative solitude. I long for quiet interludes to spend some time writing. For me, writing quenches a deep thirst leaving a refreshing feeling of fulfilment.

I just put down the book 'On the Move' by Dr Oliver Sacks. He was a voracious writer, writing journals and books all through his long life. In this book Dr Sacks captures what writing means to him which resonates entirely with my own feelings.

"For the most part, I rarely look at the journals I have kept for the greater part of a lifetime. The act of writing is itself enough; it serves to clarify my thoughts and feelings. The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing.  

My journals are not written for others, nor do I usually look at them myself, but they are a special, indispensable form of talking to myself.

..The act of writing.. gives me a pleasure,  a joy, unlike any other. It takes me to another place ...where I am totally absorbed and oblivious to distracting thoughts, worries, preoccupations, or indeed the passage of time. In those rare, heavenly states of mind, I may write nonstop until I can no longer see the paper. Only then do I realize that evening has come and that I have been writing all day.

Yehudi Menuhin: Deeper insights into playing the violin ..

Yehudi Menuhin, painting by Myfanwy Pavelic

Excerpts from Menuhin's memoir Unfinished Journey, to read and reread ..

"The performing violinist continually reviews the hours, days and weeks preceding a performance, charting the many elements that will release his potential ... he knows that when his body is exercised, his blood circulating, his stomach light, his mind clear, the music ringing in his heart, his violin clean and polished, its strings in good order, the bow hair full and evenly spread, then - but only then - he is in command ... But neglect of the least of these elements must gnaw his conscience. 

“So a violinist lives in training. He makes his body his vocation. His stance must be erect yet supple so that, like a graceful reed, he may wave with the breeze and yet remain perfectly aligned from head through spine to feet. He is a living structure stretched between the magnets of sun and earth. Just as only a stretched string can vibrate, so before a violinist's body vibrates he must feel drawn upward, his head delicately poised on the vertebrae, his diaphragm raising him on a cushion of air, while the working parts of his anatomy - shoulders and arms, hands and fingers -float and balance at different levels. Elegant management of the body is among the qualities civilisation denies us, and too often the violin, inviting surrender, only makes rigidity more rigid."

"All influences pointed towards less tension, more effective application of energy, the breaking down of resistance in every joint, the coordination of all motions into one motion; and illustrated the profound truth that strength comes not from strength but from the subtle comprehension of  process, of proportion and balance."

"..what the eye sees - the raised arm - is but the last link in a chain of events originating in the mind. To be conscious of these events as they happen, before they are apparent to the eye, is a lesson in the subtlety I believe to be a cardinal principle of violin playing; but just to awaken oneself to them is enough."

"Not for the violinist the exhibitionist and fiery springing from seat or keyboard of a virtuoso pianist, or the acrobatics of certain conductors. He is part of his violin, his left hand fingering its way, without any margin for error, over the millimetric subdivisions of a space that varies like a slide rule, and his bow never leaving the string but under precise, controlled conditions."

"Perfection cannot be achieved unless its pursuit becomes a way of life. My goal has been so to play the violin that whatever I play is an exercise for whatever I might play. Concentrated observation and practice of minuteness are gradually absorbed; the conscious brain is short-circuited;"

Federer: Display of divine intelligence ..

Subtlety, touch and finesse .. 

There are instances in our lives when we are awe struck at seeing a thing of perfect beauty and harmony.... a display of divine intelligence!!. Intelligence that arises from the synergy of mind, body and senses to produce something of exquisite beauty. No one could have come closer to capturing this feeling in words as has David Foster Wallace in his article "Roger Federer as a Religious Experience" for The New York Times. I read this article over and over again! Wallace equates watching Federer's play to a "near-religious" experience. Here are a few snippets from the article for us to savor.

On the human body and kinetic beauty ...
Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war. .. 
The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal...What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.

There are wonderful things about having a body, too, obviously - its just that these things are much harder to feel and apprecite in real time. Rather like certain kinds of rare, peak-type sensuous ephiphanies (I'm so glad I have eyes to see this sunrise!" etc), great athletes seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch and perceive, move through space, interact with matter. Granted, what great athletes can do with their bodies are things that the rest of us can only dream of. But these dreams are important - they make up for a lot.

On the beauty and grace of Federer's game ..
A top athlete’s beauty is next to impossible to describe directly. Or to evoke. Federer’s forehand is a great liquid whip, his backhand a one-hander that he can drive flat, load with topspin, or slice — the slice with such snap that the ball turns shapes in the air and skids on the grass to maybe ankle height. His serve has world-class pace and a degree of placement and variety no one else comes close to; the service motion is lithe and uneccentric, distinctive only in a certain eel-like all-body snap at the moment of impact. His anticipation and court sense are otherworldly, and his footwork is the best in the game....Of witnessing, firsthand, the beauty and genius of his game. You more have to come at the aesthetic stuff obliquely, to talk around it, or — as Aquinas did with his own ineffable subject — to try to define it in terms of what it is not.  ... The Swiss has brought to men’s tennis degrees of touch and subtlety unseen since (at least) the days of McEnroe’s prime. 

On Federer's intelligence

..  this intelligence often manifests as angle. Federer is able to see, or create, gaps and angles for winners that no one else can envision,  ... these spectacular-looking angles and winners are not coming from nowhere — they’re often set up several shots ahead, and depend as much on Federer’s manipulation of opponents’ positions as they do on the pace or placement of the coup de grâce. 

On Nadal and Federer ..
This Wimbledon final’s got the revenge narrative, the king-versus-regicide dynamic, the stark character contrasts. It’s the passionate machismo of southern Europe versus the intricate clinical artistry of the north. Apollo and Dionysus. Scalpel and cleaver!!.

On the metaphysical explanation of Federer's dominance
For almost two decades, the party line’s been that certain advances in racket technology, conditioning, and weight training have transformed pro tennis from a game of quickness and finesse into one of athleticism and brute power. How, then, someone of Federer’s consummate finesse has come to dominate the men’s tour is a source of wide and dogmatic confusion. There are three kinds of valid explanation for Federer’s ascendancy. One kind involves mystery and metaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth.

The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws. And Federer is of this type — a type that one could call genius, or mutant, or avatar. He is never hurried or off-balance. The approaching ball hangs, for him, a split-second longer than it ought to. His movements are lithe rather than athletic. ... 

Particularly in the all-white that Wimbledon ..still requires, he looks like what he may well be: a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light. .. This thing about the ball cooperatively hanging there, slowing down, as if susceptible to the Swiss’s will — there’s real metaphysical truth here.  Imagine that you’re a person with preternaturally good reflexes and coordination and speed, and that you’re playing high-level tennis. Your experience, in play, will not be that you possess phenomenal reflexes and speed; rather, it will seem to you that the tennis ball is quite large and slow-moving, and that you always have plenty of time to hit it. That is, you won’t experience anything like the (empirically real) quickness and skill that the live audience, watching tennis balls move so fast they hiss and blur, will attribute to you.

On practice and kinesthetic sense
Successfully returning a hard-served tennis ball requires what’s sometimes called “the kinesthetic sense,” meaning the ability to control the body and its artificial extensions through complex and very quick systems of tasks. English has a whole cloud of terms for various parts of this ability: feel, touch, form, proprioception, coordination, hand-eye coordination, kinesthesia, grace, control, reflexes, and so on. For promising junior players, refining the kinesthetic sense is the main goal of the extreme daily practice regimens we often hear about. The training here is both muscular and neurological. Hitting thousands of strokes, day after day, develops the ability to do by “feel” what cannot be done by regular conscious thought. Repetitive practice like this often looks tedious or even cruel to an outsider, but the outsider can’t feel what’s going on inside the player — tiny adjustments, over and over, and a sense of each change’s effects that gets more and more acute even as it recedes from normal consciousness.

So one type of technical explanation for Federer’s dominion is that he’s just a bit more kinesthetically talented than the other male pros. Only a little bit, since everyone in the Top 100 is himself kinesthetically gifted — but then, tennis is a game of inches.

Kinesthetic virtuoso or no, Roger Federer is now dominating the largest, strongest, fittest, best-trained and coached field of male pros who’ve ever existed, with everyone using a kind of nuclear racket that’s said to have made the finer calibrations of kinesthetic sense irrelevant, like trying to whistle Mozart during a Metallica concert.