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Celebrating creativity

Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

Confluence: Sujata Mohapatra’s Odissi recital.

In its second consecutive year of “celebrating India” through a “signature festival”, the Delhi International Arts Festival extravaganza remains the sole Indian manifestation of a multi-activity, annual cultural festival located in the capital, with events spread over three weeks featuring visual and performing arts, films, literature, cuisine et al under one canopy. The main crafters of the festival, dancer Pratibha Prahlad and executive Director Arshiya Sethi, describe the purpose of this festival as being not only to sensitise the local community to the richness of India’s art forms, but also to provide, through its international component projecting many foreign art forms, a common ground for interaction between the artists and mass audience. It is “India in the world” rather than India and the World they want to project. India, having arrived as an economic power to reckon with, this is an imaginative way of using our “soft power”, by providing a meeting place of ideas and space for international understanding and intercultural dialogue through artists, writers, tourists and captains of industries and businessmen frequenting this country.

How did Prahlad become an impresario? “I like to think of myself as a visionary with ideas, one who throws up concepts, visualised with help from different quarters. I did that with festivals in Karnataka, now being mounted annually by the government. This is not my event. But during my frequent visits abroad to participate in international festivals — in Japan recently and in Germany, I have wondered why India had no festival of the type held abroad where all art forms and cultural activities find space in one signature event.” Her festival experience in New York during the Fulbright fellowship stint made Arshiya Sethi nurse the same feelings about the need for a multi-faceted festival.

How easy is funding? “Difficult,” says Pratibha. “Even during better times, and now, with the economic crisis facing the world, even more so. SNA pays us for music/dance events at a certain fixed rate, though some reputed dancers argue about the amount, and a dancer participant staying one day more or insisting on certain travel facilities becomes our responsibility. Our transactions are open and we have nothing to hide. Indian business has yet to develop the Japanese business approach where each of a committee of hundred business people contributes with a passion for putting Japan and not the individual firms, on the map. We have problems convincing business about no special mention on logos etc. Where embassies and other groups contribute components, we are helped. But even government bodies which promise funding do not deliver at once and since we follow the principle of paying the artists on the spot — it means breaking my fixed deposits and waiting for the money to be realised much later. It is not easy.”

Empowered by the success of last year’s festival, which the Youth Affairs Minster Mani Shankar Aiyer said was the best thing that had happened in India and “more important than sports”, and with the kind of audience response to events like the Sufi night at the Ashok where even DG, ICCR, Pavan Varma found it difficult to enter the amphitheatre, pushing his way through milling crowds, this year’s ambitious calendar of activities, spread over 24 days and involving 3,000 plus artists performing in 70 venues, has 18 outreach programmes in suburban venues for the benefit of school and college students and programmes in different community centres.

Over 30 countries are associated with the event, the Swiss performance Triptych coming directly as part of cultural diplomacy to mark the 60th year of Indo-Swiss Friendship. The Mexican embassy contributes an exhibition, a colloquium and a performance. “Paz after Paz” at Lalit Kala celebrates the memory of Paz who had a close relationship with India and who met his wife (participating in this event) here. The Japanese Visual Industry Promotion Organisation (VIPO) has approached the festival directly for partnership, becoming the first International film festival to seek out an association. From the French government comes a photography diptych. This year, a prestigious event is the Octave festival presented by the Ministry of Culture, showcasing arts from the Northeast. There is a rich theatre segment supervised by the National School of Drama. Experimental theatre under the Funky Fringe Section and spoken word drama pieces, Shakespeare in our times, Movement and dance theatre etc are all part of the varied fare. There is also an Indian Panorama of films. With government organisations like the SNA helping out with the music/dance section and with the ICCR contributing along with the Cultural Affairs Ministry and the various embassies, the festival is acquiring a very prominent presence. Puppet theatre, painting, the Delhi International Literary Festival — the list is endless. There is a rich Children’s component with films where there will be opportunity for interaction with actors and directors. Youth Festival, Choir music, Ghazal and Qawwali from Pakistan are all part of the fare. The Folk Festival traditions from Goa hardly anybody has seen so far.

Apprehensions have been voiced, if this celebration seems out of place against the horrors of terrorism in Mumbai. The enthusiastic festival organisers, though stunned by events, indomitably battle on. This certainly hugely increases their problems of providing security at each venue, for, all events are free and open. “Life has to go on.” And we have to defy the gloom ushered in by misdirected young minds that cause such havoc, with healing, life-asserting celebrations. We cannot give in. And we need to show that the Indian spirit will not be quelled by a handful of mad men. While being strong in defence, we will not lose out on the humane aspect that art embodies.

Above all Art sensitises the human being and was it not Bade Ghulam Ali Khan who asserted often that opening young minds to classical music was the best way of destroying any inclination to terrorism by creating a sane society?

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