Kabir has recently been discovered by Urban India. For me this discovery came directly via Shabnam, her singing Kabir with an unprecedented abandon, and her deeply political and questioning movies:
1)Koi Sunta Hai (Is Anyone Listening?)
2)Kabira Khada Bazar Mein( Kabir Stands in a Market Place)
3)Chalo Hamara Desh ( Come to my Country)
4)Had Anhad (Bounded Boundless)
These movies directly brought home the power, the vast reach and the provoking, questioning of Kabir, placing him directly within our very necessary and current context of fragmenting cultures, societies - the very definition of our nationhood.
Shabnam became a solitary, but a powerful launch pad for reviving this Kabir, for catapulting him into the intellectually alive, cosmopolitan circles of urban India. And thus, Kabir resurrected amongst the urban lost, needy, and searching - like me. His became an alternative way to live - positively, amongst the myriad images of negative news that crowd our days. We could now respond - not to continual crises of everyday living, but with a deep, and laughing awareness of the insignificance and impermanence of it all - of our life. Impermanence "like a disappearing dewdrop" and similarly luminescent. Yes, I guess, that is what we all needed most - a big dose of Kabirean mirth, fits of uncontrolled laughter, to guffaw away our silly, serious ways - get tickled out of taking ourselves too seriously, grimly, ferociously and morbidly! Now a Kabir laughs continuously inside - I only have to peek to rediscover - for those moments when I forget.
4 comments:
Kabir does have a way of making you laugh at yourself. Agree!
How do you manage to put all my feelings into your words?I guess that is what Krishnamurthi meant when he said we are all like each other. Our smaller concerns may make us feel very individual , but as soon as we look at the larger picture the similarity overpowers all individual concerns.
VERY WELL SAID ARATI! And Priti too by the way.
We are all like each other because there is the Divine in each of us, which is exactly the same... we are just different manifestations of the One.
I am really missing the guffawing.
And Arati you are absolutely right and spot-on on everything!!! > it really is a new way to live.
Arati, I am gratified by your paying such rich tributes to my humble self, but I do want to quite seriously (and mirthfully) place on record that Kabir has been discovered by urban India, long before I came on the scene. Perhaps the only somewhat unique effort made by me, is to bring alive the power of the RURAL, FOLK, LIVING, PULSATING Kabir to us deprived urban Indians. And that too was not a solitary effort, but one that was possible because so so so many co-journeyers brought their ideas and skills to the process.... artists, singers, scholars, advisors, editors, etc. etc. etc....!
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