N O M A D S & a cryptic word

School for Un/ learning in Inter-dependent. Cinema conscious. Creative Practice.

Every work of art is a child of its time, while often it is the parent of our emotions. Deeply concentric, each art is separated from the other, but combined in their innermost tendencies; every art has its own strength which cannot be substituted for another. Thus we finally arrive at the en-croachment of the power of the various arts upon one another. From this inner tendency will arise, in the future, the truly monumen-tal art, which today we can already foresee.   

Artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), the pioneer of abstraction in modern art invokes here, an art of the future, meditating at the brink of world war I, on spiritual harmony. I sense the need to invoke the same spirit as I wade through our unsettled times. And as I reflect upon Cinema here.

NOMADS is not a cinema school. It proposes Cinema-as-school to enable a sustained focus on the Creative Process rather than the Product.

It is a Dojo for the young and the not so young, working in the interstice of Poetry, Story, Art, Philosophy & Technology.. Its as much for the dropouts as for the continued learners. Learning begins here with Un-Learning and is Inter-dependent in spirit. It invokes Cinema as the place where all creative practices meet; as the site for understanding Inter-being; offering from time to time, some unique, imaginative, rigorous and experimental programmes in the interstice of Study n Practice.

NOMADS considers being located in Indian Asia as a necessary part of its perspective -

In the Light of Asia.

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रेलागुरूचेला / RELA-GURU-CHELA

A word tugs at mii as I go about introducing NOMADS. Behind the word is a little story. A story from long ago, inscribed in the process of making a film. Allow mii to relate. Since the story was never written nor retold, it may meander and wind. But if you roll along, we’ll eventually get there together. 

The story goes: We are at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, in the 2016 annual Opera festival, Dharamshala, filming Pratityasamutpad or Kingdom of Exile.

We want to interview the last of the Opera Masters like Mr G present there. Our friends from the Kalimpong Tibetan Opera Association whom we had documented earlier in another Tibetan opera fest in Ralang, Sikkim are here too. But they are a participating opera team in the festival and none of them are available for us as interpreters. None of our crew members understand Tibetan enough to translate for us. 

I approach a woman with a video camera. She is a Tibetan from 'Voice of Tibet', USA. She obliges by accompanying us for an interview. Through the interpreter enabled conversation with Mr G the dance master from Bylakuppe refugee camp, she keeps on goading us to ask the opera master- why in all these years, he hasn’t learnt a local language like Kannada, Hindi or English?! We hesitate. The Tibetan opera master looks away, avoiding the query by the Tibetan girl…

What can be the story behind his reluctance to learn any local language of the land of his refuge, we wonder? She points to the superstition or belief in the minds of elders like G, that if they learn the local language of the land, they will get assimilated. Which by extension means they will never return to their homeland.

I understand. And I understand not. Nevertheless. I acknowledge such refusal to learn a language of the land, as if it were a pledge to remember the Exile and the kingdom.

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On the second day, there is an accident. Basu the Director-Cinematographer, walking backwards, shooting the dhwaja/ flags being tied at the opera venue, falls into an open stairway with the rented black magic camera. In a reflex to save the camera, Basu takes the fall on his knees and tears a ligament. I am required to take on as Cinematographer thereon.

In our crew is a Tibetan, a Lepcha, a Tibetan Lepcha, a Bengali, a Nepali, an Uttarakhandi and miiself a Central Indian nomad!

Takzhen is a young Lepcha we first came across in the making of Basu’s ethnographic film trilogy in Sikkim-Kalimpong. Takzhen has come with his Nepali friend, who has a tattoo studio but is also aspiring to be a filmmaker! Pushkar, another lovely young man hailing from Uttarakhand is here with us, attending to the camera.

The Tibetan Jampa, a declared orphan who we met selling Lafing at Majnu ka Tilla is game to join in as production manager. He studied in the Tibetan school in Dharamsala.

Sonam la, who owns a hotel in Kalimpong, has been on the trail of his great grandfather’s manuscript for years and is accompanying us to Dharamsala, playing himself in the film. Basu also makes him the Executive Producer. The film is for Films Division.

On the third day we request an audience with the Dalai Lama. Wading strict protocols, of keeping a small crew, we manage to squeeze Takzhen in, declaring him as the camera person who needs to be there. He is a member of the camera team, and we are confident he can be trusted with this very critical but stationery shot. I am playing the sound recordist so Takzhen can also be in the august presence.

It is Sonam la’s friend who has gotten us through to a special meeting with the Monk and its a lifetime opportunity for him to get His Holiness’s blessings. And just today he has forgotten the very khadas/ scraves he brought all the way from Kalimpong, perhaps just for such a blessed moment. I give him the two khadas I have in mii kitty, bought earlier on an impulse in the local market. He is thankful for the favour but unsettled in his mind yet. May be he needs more khadas; may be he needs to offer scarves on others’ behalf too. Is he upset for the stumble in his practice today? We will never know what was going on in his mind at the moment.

A correspondent from BBC is given an audience before us.

Basu has assumed his position as the questioner who will ask the second question. If the monk could as much as throw some light on the significance of the term Pratityasamutpad for the benefit of our team and the film we are making on the Tibetan Opera? He asks.

The Monk is eloquent as always. And deep, as he is precise. 

Elaborating on the concept of Pratityasamutpad and how it is relevant to the opera practice, the venerable talks of the Nalada school to which the term belongs.

“India is the guru!” he says. “Whatever we have learnt, is from her. But!” Thereafter he quips with a glint in his eye : “Relaguruchela! The Guru has forgotten, chela remembers!” 

India is the Guru that has forgotten who she is. That’s what the monk with a mischievous smile’s hinting at? A shiver runs down mii spine. For a split second, it’s like I become that which he is talking about- India. What have I forgotten?

I am not India. Or am I?

Relaguruchela! I have never heard this word before. I am still trying to find out what this word is, to which language it belongs...

As for the film, Takzhen of course, has taken the most inappropriate posture on earth for a cameraman. Even though being a Lepcha and not a Tibetan Buddhist, he is all the same overwhelmed by the presence of the Dalai Lama. He is througout on his knees, a humble posture of reverence and prayer as one is wont to assume in holy company. And so he stays throughout the shoot. The hands holding the camera thus, tremble through the entire dialogue. The frame holding Dalai Lama quivers.

After seeing the footage, someone from amongst our Tibetan friends, high up in the government, who helped us getting an audience with the hooly man, advises against our using this shaky clip of his Holiness in the film. It wont be appropriate. The others agree. The voice may be used, they say.

That was 2016. The film has since been made with only the voice of the Monk, minus the image. Basu has passed on. Its been a while.

Relaguruchela! The ubiquitous word yet has a habit of returning coded in a language I do not know nor recognise. Every time the compass gets jammed, it shows the way back to the source. What have I forgotten? What must I remember? Who am I?

……………………..

Every time, I pronounce the mysterious word aloud like a prayer and ask to be shown what the moment is asking of mii...I am shown. And I begin to be fine in however I am, wherever. That’s about the power of mysterious words that one always, as if, half understands. It becomes a veritable Mantra.

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This part of the world, in the Indian Asia, they believe Art and people need each other. Without the Sahriday/ audience-participant, no Natya/ drama-show. It is the Sahriday who makes the Natya real. Natya conjures up a vision of Samsara/ world, packed close together, like the atoms of a billion stories bound to each other by a trillion threads running across; a veritable explosive. Its a bomb by which nobody gets hurt. It only explodes the intricately crafted bars and bolts of the golden cage, to set free in all aspirants, something of the creative spirit. 

For NOMADS, each study / practice programme, is a chance to Re-member, to see oneself in the light of the other; a finger pointing to the moon. Moon is the vision. If one keeps looking at the finger, one doesn’t see the Moon. When people stop understanding metaphors, they understand each other no more. Much less experience life as it ought to be understood or tell stories that need be told.

We are happy building bridges between this and that, the far n the near, the young n the old, the ancient n the emergent; betwixt the home and the world.

Feel free to join, support, spread a word.

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