Mayank Chhaya Daily

A thousand years hence a celestial dancer casts her spell

'Celestial Dancer', Chandela period, mid-11th century, the Metropolitan Museum of Art

About a thousand years ago a sculptor somewhere in Madhya Pradesh began chipping away at a slab of sandstone for a temple. The result was this inconceivably sensuous sculpture titled ‘Celestial Dancer’. During my routine online visits to museum and other related sites I chanced upon this breathtaking work. I was immediately captivated by the precision of the sculptor’s chiseling.

Beyond that though to imbue a piece of stone with such personality and character, not to mention the obvious oomph, is a work of astounding talent. This piece is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but its website offers some remarkable close-ups. It is from the Chandela period of the mid-11^th century. It is obvious that the sculpture follows the canons of beauty prevalent in that period. However, nearly 1000 years hence they work just as bewitchingly well.

The accompanying description says, “Her body is contorted in an improbable pose, her legs projecting to her right while her upper torso and head turn sharply left. The extreme flexion reflects dance positions (karunas and sthanas) described in the Natyasastra, an ancient dramatic arts treatise. It is understood in Indian aesthetics that such positions enhance the appreciation of beauty.”

Once you get past the arresting physical features of the dancer, you begin to appreciate the detailing in the sculpture. The ornaments are to die for. Contrast the intricately carved jewelry with the flawlessly smooth body and you get a measure of the sculptor’s genius. Notice the flying necklace and tassels around her waist. They are all designed to enhance the female form. To make a piece of stone look like a living, throbbing dancer with such grace demands abilities of the highest order.

It is a pity that such ancient sculptors never left their bylines as it were unlike painters. One would have loved to know about the sculptor and his or her story.  I am curious how long it might have taken to create a piece of this quality.

I am absolutely enraptured by this. The passage of nearly a thousand years has not even slightly diminished its appeal.

My Leh Holiday and Princess Anne

Princess Anne (Left next to the board) in Leh, Ladakh, India. The year, I think was 1989. (Photo: MC)

 

Every so often, I watch 'Roman Holiday' in the hope that some of Joe Bradley's luck might rub off on me. Not being even remotely romantic, I watch it for the possibility that in the intervening decades the film may magically have a different ending where Bradley (Gregory Peck) does choose to publish his exclusive story about Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn). That's how little a romantic and so much a journalist I am. 

 

I watched movie again yesterday, perhaps my 600th time, give or take 550. To commemorate that viewing, let me republish a post I wrote on June 23, 2015. It involved me, a wire correspondent, and a Princess Anne. Sort of. Here it is:

 

June 23, 2015

 

As a perpetually penurious print journalist (Brilliant alliteration) the 1953 film ‘Roman Holiday’ is the ultimate press romcom. Having watched it more number of times than I care to remember or count over the past 35 years, I am yet to find any parallels in my own professional life. There is the penury, of course. That’s there. Other than that there has been no Peckian suave or Hepburnian elegance. I did in fact work once for a wire service better known as IANS like Joe Bradley’s American News Service (ANS). ‘I’ was missing from ANS in the movie.

 

I began watching the movie again last night in the hope that the plot might have changed on its own in the past 62 years. I have often wondered about what if movies were organic in the sense that over a period of time they changed their plots on their own, evolved into something that their makers did not intend. What if they were intelligent enough to change their storylines from time to time? That is a separate subject for some other time.

 

There has been only one assignment in my hard news career spanning over 33 (now 40) years which had me follow a princess. It was Princess Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip and sister of Prince Charles. I use these useless honorifics purely as identifiers. She was visiting Leh in Ladakh region of India in the late 1980s  (I think it was 1989) as patron of the Save the Children Charity. I was reporting her visit for IANS. Princess Anne was no Princess Ann of ‘Roman Holiday’ and I was no Joe Bradley. She did not have the Hepburnian elegance, nor I the Peckian suave.

 

It strikes me even as I write this that I too had my Princess Anne moments minus the subtle romance or even any access whatsoever. The setting was Leh which is at the altitude of 3524 meters or 11,562 feet. One feels breathless at that height not because of any feminine beauty in front of you but because of the thin air. Anne was not a reluctant princess like Hepburn’s Ann and seemed to enjoy the life she was born into. Royal reporters and photographers, who accompanied her from London, took down every detail of her royal paraphernalia including her hats and luggage. She looked propah at all times. Her smile was finely rehearsed and deportment impeccable. She looked like someone accustomed to deference from the world for no apparent reason.

 

That's me in Leh, most likely 1989, covering Anne

 

The thing with the movies about journalists and newspapers is that for those of us living that life for a living the plot never quite unfolds the way it does on the big screen. For Anne it was a sort of holiday and for me an assignment. Unlike Bradley I was not likely to miss any event because I was in a real life situation with the prospects of being fired for missing a story being very real. For Gregory Peck/Joe Bradley it was just a movie assignment. Anne did not run away from the palace to experience a life free of regimental royal encumbrances. And I certainly did not promise my wire service any exclusives. There was none to be had other than talking about how charming her hat boxes were.

 

I wrote several inconsequential stories about the visit during which she did not hold forth on the future of Europe or the world because she had no authority to. We did not have ice cream together. She was blissfully unaware of my presence. For the record, I was too preoccupied with the awe-inspiring beauty of Leh to really notice much of her either. That’s how I spent my Leh Holiday.

Like a wanton boy I swipe ants away

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.

That’s what Shakespeare so memorably and brilliantly said in King Lear.

I am not quite a wanton boy swatting flies; I never have. However, I have been doing something that is not entirely kind—to ants. No, I do not kill them. Not at all. But since there has been a steady stream of them showing up every day on my desk lately, I have to frequently blow them away or swipe them away. Strangely, they never give up. They come back persistently even though there is no food to be had on my desk. I am not sure what they are looking for in the faux growth rings of the faux wooden desk of mine. I have seen some of them staying there unmoved for several minutes at a time. Most peculiar.

The reason why I thought of wanton boys and Shakespeare and gods is because what I do to them by swiping them away or blowing them away ought to be absolutely shocking to them if they had the ability to process it. I put myself in their situation and wonder how I might feel if I were unexpectedly swiped or blown away by a force I cannot necessarily fathom. I am reasonably certain that ants do not know who or what I am, if they are at all aware of my existence. These small black ants are not harmful to me in that they do not sting even though they have biting mandibles and stinger.

The problem is left to them they would show up in tens of thousands causing a terrible nuisance to me. I would not be able to write about ants if thousands of them started crawling on my keyboard and desk. I can handle a few. For instance, a couple just showed up while writing this sentence and I gently swiped them off using a handkerchief. I could see that they landed on the windowsill about a foot away from desk. In order for them to come back they have to travel down the window and up my desk’s leg which is quite a task. And yet they return. I am not sure if they are same ants or different ones because I can’t tell the difference. They all look the same to me. I am not being an ant racist here. I genuinely cannot. Can you?

Suicide on my mind in a manner of speaking

Steps--MC, Watercolor on Paper

I had written this post many Mondays ago. It is a rumination over suicide.

***

Suicide has been on my mind lately; not as in committing it, perhaps someday that too though, but for now it’s power.

In this context I have often thought about the following verse by Zauq (Sheikh Ibrahim Zauq: 1790—1854) who was famously Mirza Ghalib’s contemporary and nemesis.

लाई हयात आए क़ज़ा ले चली चले

अपनी ख़ुशी न आए न अपनी ख़ुशी चले

Life brought me here, death took me away

Came without my consent, without consent I went away

Zauq seems to rue the fact that he was born without his consent and would die without. I agree with the first part that he was born without his consent. I used to tell my mother Snehlata in all seriousness that she and my father Manharray should have stopped before I was born. When I first said it to her some three decades ago she was both deeply anguished as well as intrigued, the latter because she knew the philosophical bent of my mind. In later years she used be amused by it.

My point to her being that it was unnecessary for her to have conceived me because she already had three other children, which to me was two too many already.

Coming back to Zauq’s verse in the context of my rumination about suicide, he appears to have disregarded the fact that death could be induced. It is true that we are all born without our consent but we could easily choose to end it of our own volition. I am not an advocate of suicide generally but when it comes to self and that too at a philosophical, poetic level it is certainly worth talking about.

It is the ultimate power that one has oneself. Buddhists have used it as the ultimate form of protest through self-immolation which is obviously beyond comprehension for most people.

Suicide as a theme has also been rattling about in my mind because of the renewed debate within the scientific community whether the universe that we live in is a simulation of a more advanced civilization. I have written about this theme but for this morning suffice it to see it in the context of suicide. If everything is a simulation, including our every single behavior and action, frailty and strength, like and dislike, success and failure, then I suppose those choosing to end their lives can also be marked down under that column. Unless, of course, the simulator did not have account for that contingency. If that was not accounted for, then suicide is the way to breach that simulation.

I seriously doubt if a civilization or a simulator could think of such mindboggling complexities in its programming such as imposing the speed of light as the ultimate speed would not have thought about the contingency such as entities like us inhabiting the simulation self-destructing.

Something to think about on a Monday morning, I think.

***

And how is that headline for clickbait?