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Celebrating LOVE
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As Harsha Dehejia presents "A Celebration of Love", this Friday in New Delhi, ANJANA RAJAN finds out what there is to celebrate.
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LOVE IS forever fresh, as an emotion, as a topic of discussion, as an inspiration. As pleasure, as pain. To love can be traced the highest feats of human endeavour. No wonder the ancient Indian dramatists, poets and theorists, whose works exemplify the concept that mortal life is but a mirror of the celestial, that a householder's mundane pursuits run parallel to the spiritual, have produced a huge corpus of literature detailing every aspect of love. The reams already written might have been enough. But how can they be? The authors, poets, painters, performers continue to be drawn by love.
Not least among them is Dr. Harsha Dehejia, the Canada-based professor of religion and medical doctor who has edited a collection of essays, "A Celebration of Love: The Romantic Heroine in the Indian Arts" published by Roli Books and set to be launched this Friday in New Delhi.
The book, with contributions by scholars from around the world and illustrations from Ragamala paintings, manuscripts and other sources, offers a spectrum of perspectives on the Nayika or heroine, from "The Genesis of the Nayika in the Natyashastra" by Bharat Gupt to "The Sufi Nayika: Qutban's Mrigavati" by Aditya Behl, from "The Romantic Heroine in Rajasthani Painting" by Rosemary Crill to "Wife, Widow, Renunciant, Lover: The Mirabai of Calendar Art" by Patricia Uberoi, to name just a few of the 40-odd essays. Dehejia himself - this doctor with a poet's heart - has written the open and closing pieces, "Uddipan Vela, As We Light the Lamps" and "Vidai: As We Float Our Lamps".
Harsha Dehejia
Author of "The Flute and the Lotus", which deals exhaustively with Shringar rasa, the emotion of love as classified according to the ancient theory of aesthetics, Dehejia points out, "When we talk about Shringar rasa, we always have at the back of our mind the love for God, sacred love."
Though contemporary readers might object to the traditional representation of the Nayika and the Nayak - the heroine and the hero - as the former aspiring for union with the other, higher, counterpart, thus perpetually placing the feminine at a lower level, he is unruffled. In modern thought, he says, "Whether in New York or Delhi, what we have done is to take the male and female as distinct entities."
Trying to discourse traditional concepts from a modern viewpoint will always cause problems, he feels, since the question of who is stronger, who is the best will arise. "There is a Nayak within me and a Nayika within me," he points out. "So this modern concept of dividing Prakriti and Purush is regrettably very divisive." Anyway, he adds, these concepts are bound to fade away with time. "These modern ideas that come, they last only 50 years, not 2000 years. They (the traditional concepts) have withstood the test of time over millennia."
As we revel in "A Celebration of Love", Harsha Dehejia will not remain idle either. Three of his publications are in the pipeline. One is on the Dashama Skanda (10th chapter) of the Bhagavad Purana, which he has translated and presents along with calligraphy and paintings, expected to be released by the yearend. Another is "Leaves of the Peepul Tree" to be published by Motilal Banarsidas, while the third is another compilation "Gods Beyond Temples".
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