Journeys from the Indus

 

Welcome to Journeys from the Indus.

 

In the last few years a few important discoveries have taken place.

The discovery of prehistoric petroglyphs at Ratnagiri (my ancestral/native place)

Discovery of a Buddha statue and several buddha heads at a temple in Berenike, Sudan. Africa.(Not MY native place but hey , didn't all of us come from there?)

Less sensational but equally important are other discoveries in Berenike where boats from India and many important artifacts have been found. Most importantly they  have now been acknowledged by the academia as having originated in India.

This brings joy to me in no small measure. I am a teacher of aesthetics who teaches art history and Indian aesthetics to post graduates who train to be actors and theater designers.

 I am not a historian of artifacts but I do go  back again and again to ever expanding collections and archives to create work in styles of a period or to make newer modules for classes. 

Over a period of a couple decades of going back and forth with the material and new discoveries in Archeology a pattern was beginning to emerge for me. It hard to pin down because it was not related to the artifacts per se ,but to the sameness or to the rhythm of architecture, to artifacts and their relation to one another .About five years ago when tracing the evolution of the Hindu temple I stumbled upon African architecture (other than the pyramids) and the sense that there HAS TO BE a connection took a stronger hold. Within six months of staying with just looking through museum artifacts and available material on Sudanese and Meroitic artifacts I was certain that there was a Hindu/Buddhist presence in Meroe. I was also certain that the language Meroitic could be read. 

On the other hand most of my “professional” work was taking me deep into villages in India with research related to song dance and performance. I was visiting ancient sites may it be Benaras or Kodungallur or Ajanta related to work. Other  trips were taking me to  Bangkok, Thailand, Cambodia, New Mexico, Turkey, Israel and interestingly though i taught at indian conservatories I was still  calling several places in the United States as my home. 

For a few more years The project though had to be moonlit as iIwas producing and directing work, looking for kids schools, checking  out of a continent, etc

The constant travels seem to have petered out,now and a small window of opportunity seems to have opened up where what has been dumped into folders within folders within folders on the PC can be collated with confidence, because of the above discoveries. 

The journey is meandering, the tides are fickle, and as one of my friend/well wisher had pointed out when I shared the initial slideshows with glee, “the danger is this may end up as being just another horse and cart (read ratha) search.”

On another note “who we are” can be approached and has been approached in several ways. Archeology is one way to ask that question but spirituality is the other , what is the “satva” of me? One leads to digging graves the other to digging within. BUT when the dug graves tell you that what they left behind was also a measure of “how to go within” a resonance occurs, a synchronicity of sorts.

My personal take is the reason for the deep dives into “who were we” has to have the safety ropes of “what do we want to be?”intact. Creation of an artwork is always minutely personal but to make the personal political is a choice.

So this  blog. (After about three years of sitting on it.)