people we celebrate all throughout the
year for different reasons in every
possible form and we are used to many
such images around us like this famous
festival of Navratri which is coming
soon
and we are used to such weird images of
goddesses like Kali
Kumiko Allah mother does she fit into
idea of mother in any way absolutely not
she has a very grotesque looking face
with large protruding eyes multiple arms
she is painted blue to show that she’s
dark-skinned Kali black in color
she wears a garland of skulls yet we are
quite comfortable with this very absurd
image and we accept her as a mother and
a beloved Lord Ganesha whom we celebrate
every year we welcome him and we send it
off in the same fancy way and we are
quite okay with a Ganesha in different
forms like this one holding a laptop as
the famous Bollywood hero as a beloved
Rickett oh and we can identify this form
in very graphic style in the form of
lines like these but if you look closely
this is one of the most distorted
disproportionate abstract form of all
times who sits on a rock who behaved
otherwise we want him to be out of a
house he has a potbelly very fat arms
many times four of them and to add on to
it head of an elephant a very weird
image but we are again very okay with it
in fact we adorn this image everywhere
from our wallets to our cars so many
times in our rituals we have gone forth
in the form of betel nut like this again
doesn’t look like ganpathi or Ganesha at
all but we are quite okay with it this
beetle nut is a multi-purpose object in
our culture it can be planets and
constellations in some places and can
represent deceased in some rituals like
these along with geometric patterns of
food greens and colored powders like
kumkum and turmeric
but if the same thing is done by a
modern Indian artist like the paintings
you see here we are not really okay
because we think it’s too modern it’s
too abstract and we may not understand
what they are trying to represent how do
we accept such absurd images because we
Indians culturally are not really very
radical people we have lot of abstract
ideas like the problems that we have in
our lives are mostly because of some
sins which were committed by our
ancestors and there are number of
rituals to grade us from these problems
which we do in a very closeby place
called rumba Koosh we’re very close to
nothing if at all we are responsible
ourselves for the sins we have committed
it’s very easy to take a dip in the holy
river during the kumbhamela and we can
rid ourselves of a problems there are
much more abstract ideas that are
discussed in our epics like the original
unity shuara half man and half woman a
revision representation of Shiva with
his consort or wife the Shakti shown as
a abstract image as half man and half
woman there is also character called
shikhandi from Mahabharata you must all
be knowing this character the one
responsible for killing of Bhishma this
is again a very interesting idea when
the shikhandi is a complete man
physically but he feels that he’s a
woman again a modern idea of transgender
which has been already explored in
effects there’s also a character Nikhil
er a king who was cursed that he would
be a woman for half the year and a man
for the other half and he was pregnant
so he was a father and mother both to
his children
we have also explored the idea of
cross-dressing in our faiths like Arjuna
who was dressed as bruja Narada the
dancer in the fourteenth year of his
exile till did we worship many of her
gods in very archaic form like the
phallic vegetables of shiv linga the
real genital and
Shakti or the goddess in the form of the
woman genital of vagina we see many such
images around our temples which we don’t
really pay attention to of the goddess
as mother literally showing giving birth
to her children we hold our temples we
climb stairs and finally after standing
in long queues to enter them we reach
halls sometimes multiple of them and are
pushed into a very small room called as
a garbhagriha
where we literally meet the God in face
because of the small space I am sure
most of you must have thought why can’t
they make the small rooms a little
bigger like mosque or churches maybe why
do we have to meet the gods right in the
face like this the question itself is
the answer it’s a guru guru the house of
the womb the place where you were born
it has to be cozy dark very small
because you’re meeting the Creator the
God who is your friend he is not
somebody superior to you that is why you
have to be in close proximity to the
Creator it is being one with yourself
once you have met the god you’re pushed
out of the hall into a circular path we
call as the production of ather the
shape of the which the dark patch around
here is very close to the shape of the
umbilical cord again the importance of
which has been highlighted by modern
science already we are going to a whom
and then revolving around the umbilical
path which seems to make a smart or
genetically and the erotic imagery on
our temples this is one of the most
profound and one of the most
misunderstood concepts of all times
why do we have such erotic imagery on
our temples sex is one of the activities
of human beings which needs no education
which needs no inspiration we all can
naturally do it and it is one of the
physical activities which makes use of
all the five sensory organs of a human
beings which are responsible for making
us feel good which are responsible for
the aesthetic experience that we can
have
the erotic imagery on our temples is the
embodiment of this philosophy which
tells us to feel more experienced
through our five sensory organs rather
than think with our brains unfortunately
our formal education gives us a very
typical structure it structures our life
to a very formula where we take our
education we grow old we take a job and
we are just taught to think we have
become very cerebral
rather than sensual we see we identify
we understand we analyze and then we
judge we are taught to think think and
think rather than feel perceive and
experience what is happening around us
fortunately our culture gives us lot of
breathing space lot of festivals where
we can express ourselves without any
judgment like holy baby dance around
fire where we submerge ourselves in
colorful water where women might hit
their husbands as a ritual what are we
achieving out of these festivals our
culture is helping us to bring out our
stress to bring out our repressed
emotions imagine if you were never
allowed to get angry nevershoutnever
express yourself the way you wanted to
you would have been sad depressed people
all your life
fortunately art festivals like these
where you sway your body to the rhythm
of music without any training helps you
come out of your repressed emotions and
feel good about yourself which will art
or any art for that matter helps you to
experience different kind of pain and
emotions without actually going through
those situations people we need to look
at our art in a more liberal way we need
to look at our art in our own culture
through the Indian Way which is a very
abstract and much more liberal much more
sensual based much more honor
experiences rather than what we have
been already taught we need to look at
our religious structures in a more
abstract way more like art beyond what
we have already been
it is important to look at what we are
doing in a new way in our own way thank you