The Diwali festival is designed as per the tithi's, that is, the sequence of days according to the lunar calendar/month. To adjust the cycle, often during the five days beginning with Vasubaras to Bhaubeej, there are extra days devoid of any particular religious significance. There are not any religious or community rituals either. There can be get- together's of friends or relatives. Yet another possibility, especially in Pune for the last decade or so, is the "Diwali Pahat" phenomenon.
Just as the Diwali special magazine issues, now available on the internet as well, provide a space to authors, young, budding, established, all the varieties, similarly the "Diwali Dawns" provide a platform to artists. Hence the title of our blog, which is a take on the famous title by Marquez, a wonderful author indeed!
Actually during our childhood, art was very much an essential part of Diwali. Aai used to draw lovely rangoli's which used to include the traditional patterns as well as very new creative imaginative ones. Like the skylights and the earthen diya's or the panati's, her rangolis used to enhance the Diwali feel. My brother's daughter-in-law, Ashwini, an accomplished dancer, is very good at it, too.
We all used to draw and colour the Diwali greeting cards. My brothers could make wonderful Akashkandil's, paper lanterns aka skylights. This year, I have made for them both decorative panati's, and skylights in bottles. Gorgeous they look. Hope my brothers and their families like the artefacts.
That brings us back to art, and Diwali in the form of "Diwali Dawns". This morning, I had the pleasure of attending a simply superb "Diwali Pahat". Organised by a music school, Trikdha, the venue was a little too far away from my place.
Yet I did not want to give it a miss because the musical instruments involved and the artists performing during this Pahat were most interesting. It was a performance by the highly accomplished disciples of Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma (Dr. Shantanu Gokhale), Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia ( Saurabh Vartak) and Ustad Taufik Qureshi (his son). They played the santoor, the flute and the djembe respectively.
Simply superb their performance was. As it was organised by a music school, there was a sizable chunk of kids. Why, even they were spell-bound! In fact, there was a baby crying convulsively before the performance began. Well, later nobody needed to quieten the little one!
The highly gifted young trio indeed transformed the morning mehfil in to a divine experience. It was simply marvellous. Literally, one felt as if the mehfil should never end, and we all should continue our standing ovation to the fabulous art of these accomplished artists.
All the three are superb artists and very sensitively communicated with each other which made their musical interaction far far better than a typical jugalbandi! Surely all the three were wonderful. Yet I felt that Shantanu Gokhale deserves a special thanks by the audience for making such a difficult instrument so very mellifluous.
The classical performance literally made the morning in to a great concert. The standing ovations, the thundering rounds of claps and the encores would not stop. It looked as if everyone wanted the mehfil to go on and on. No wonder, such "Diwali Dawns" don the festival with an art rich image. Long live Diwali Dawns!
Pratima@ If music be feel of festival, play on! Shakespeare sure would like my take on his great quote.
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