He lays the whole of existence in front of us more vividly than our own imaginations could conjure

Damian Whitworth From The Times April 11, 2007

Examining the abuse of Cressida, as well as Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew and Emilia in Othello , can help us to shape our own lives by avoiding similar mistakes, Dr Maguire believes.
This is Shakespeare that the Oprah generation can grab hold of. In King Lear , the bad bastard Edmund wants to be loved. So does Lear, of course. Cordelia, may have been principled and honest when she refused to compete with her sisters to say who loved their father most. But she lacked the imagination to see the situation from his point of view. Would she have behaved this way if she had seen that beneath the bizarre test lay an old man’s fear of being unloved? Shakespeare seems to suggest that finding forgiveness for those close to you and telling them that you love them can go a long way to salving the world’s ills.

He does not specifically prescribe strategies for navigating life. But he lays the whole of existence in front of us more vividly than our own imaginations could conjure and allows us to see our little lives in the giant characters he has created. The individual can extract whatever self-help lessons he chooses. And if he sees the play, rather than reads it, he’ll feel even better. A night at the theatre watching Romeo and Juliet or Antony and Cleopatra must be worth a lifetime of poring over Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus , however many copies it has sold.

At the very least Shakespeare provides comfort by telling us more beautifully than any other member of our species has managed that we all share the same experiences. And he has words for any occasion. Just last week my father reminded me that nobody does it better than Shakespeare when he read this passage from Cymbeline at my grandmother’s funeral.

“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,/Nor the furious winter’s rages;/Thou thy worldly task hast done,/Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;/Golden lads and girls all must,/As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”

Earning the right to receive Great Art

Yes, that's the thing with Great Artistry posted by MD Amidst this Roger Kimball commentary about Sol LeWitt and minimalist art, a sentence in paragraph six:

Great art repays renewed scrutiny with new insights, new perceptions.Another way of saying this is that Great Art beckons longterm friendship with the audience. Such art, like one's friends, rewards the time, energy, and sacrifice required for intimacy. Good friends, in the sense that they uplift each other to their most expansive, fullest nature, are sometimes easy, and sometimes not, are they not? Truly relating to someone for their deepest benefit is certainly not a 24/7 bowl of cherries; and you can be sure that the same goes for such people for your deepest benefit. (For more about this sort of friendship, see Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.)

All of which is to say that Great Art isn't necessarily easy to read or experience, doesn't present itself without its perceiver earning his or her right to receive. Of course, sometimes great art, those you have lived with for many years, comforts, heals, and rejuvenates. Great Art is worth the investment, worth the patience, worth the confusion. This sort of rationale was common to the "Great Books" movement in 20th century America; it remains in use in my Basic Program at UChicago. It is also entirely applicable to not just literary thought, but all disciplines of art, and the rest of the Humanities. Labels: Great Artistry 2:20 PM

Her poems accentuated a deep anguish and identity-crisis

At present Meena is distinguished professor at Hunter College, New York...Her poems accentuated a deep anguish and identity-crisis, which eventually characterizes all expatriate writing. What makes her different from others is her desire to connect to her past. The sense of being one in exile and struggle to forge a sense of identity are prevalent features of her writing.

Her autobiography Fault Lines also demonstrates her struggle for identity and self-creation amidst a world that strives for definitions demanded by greater society and cultural identification. Fault Lines reflects both her triumph of will and her talent as a writer.

Moreover, the remarkable facet of her muse is that not only her poems possess such sharp and emotional nuances, but also reflects her naturally gifted ability to give vent to these feelings in a manner which enthralls from a common student to a colossal critic of poetry. Posted by Dhirendra Mishra at 1:05 PM Thursday, March 29, 2007 Meena Alexander in Allahabad

Kahnucharan was a household name in Orissa for over half a century

A master storyteller HARIHARAN BALAKRISHNAN Kahnucharan Mohanty's stories evoked something personal in each reader. In his last days: Kahnucharan was a household name in Orissa. Photo: Courtesy Pratibha Ray

GOPINATH MOHANTY is a name that evokes instant recognition in literary circles across India, and in some other parts of the world; but not the name of his elder brother, Kahnucharan. Against more than 1000 links for the former in Google, a lone link to "Kahnucharan Mohanty" mocks you from the screen. While Gopinath, the first Jnanpith awardee from Orissa, undoubtedly deserves his place in the firmament, Kahnucharan is considered to be the true successor of Fakirmohan Senapati, "the father of the Oriya novel". In a span of 57 years from 1924 to 1982, he wrote an astounding 55 novels and four collections of short stories. He had the rare honour of being made a Fellow of the Sahitya Akademi.

This prolific novelist inspired Pratibha Ray, one of contemporary India's foremost novelists. His works like Adekha Hatho (The Invisible Hand) and Chutiley Ghata (When Life Departs) left a lasting impression on future Oriya legends like Sitakant Mahapatra. Kahnucharan's novels, like Fakirmohan's, had their hand on the pulse of the poor, the destitute, the disempowered and the disowned. In Shaasthi, a seminal novel about hopeless love and the inner strength of women against the backdrop of the Great Famine, he captures rural Orissa as it was 40 years before he was born. This is considered a remarkable feat by itself. Jayashree Mohanraj of CIEFL, Hyderabad, who translated this novel from Oriya to Telugu, thinks that Kahnucharan had an instinctive feel for the heartbeat of victims of circumstance. She is the only one to have translated any of his works into another Indian language.

Kahnucharan's language was earthy and colloquial. It did not require a scholar to understand what he had to say. The stories touched a chord in the heart of the paan-shop owner, rickshaw puller, the tenant farmer, a woman in the kitchen and the girl waiting to be a bride. In those days, women were not encouraged to study. The marginalised, with limited opportunity for education, had a hunger for the written word. As a result, Kahnucharan's novels were read in those places where scholastic works never found a place earlier — the wayside tea stall, languorous bullock-cart, urban kitchen and village haystack...

Kahnucharan was a household name in Orissa for over half a century because his language was closer to the people's vocabulary, the themes were of daily life mostly in rural setting and there was a romantic touch in every novel. During his lifetime, the TV was a dream in India. Yet, at least four novels were made into films with remarkable success. Annapurna Theatre staged dramas of his stories with the legendary actors of the day. The Hindu Literary Review Sunday, Mar 04, 2007

This Dream's a bright and colourful treat for the eyes

Though the aim is to make money no one's compromising on the bold vision he and his cast of 23 worked on at Auroville in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Only about half the dialogue is in English - the rest is in a mixture of Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Sinhalese, Malayalam, Marathi and Sanskrit...

Indian designer Sumant Jayakrishnan and lighting designer Zuleikha Chaudhari have conjured up the essence of South Asia on stage: this Dream's a bright and colourful treat for the eyes.

The play is one of Shakespeare's most exotic works
The cast dance and sing, although Mr Supple says that he wants to avoid too clichéd a stage view of India.
Actors weave in and out of a tall bamboo frame and swing from ropes above the red soil of South Asia.
Tim Supple says the core of the play is highly relevant to Indians.
"At least a third of this company will have had severe family ruptures over marriage or career choice.
"So the dilemma of the play - the insistence by Egeus that his daughter Hermia marry the man he chose for her - is much closer to many of this company than it would be in Britain.
"Also many of them will live where belief in the spirit-world is much stronger than in the UK.
"And extreme differences between rich and poor, which underlie so much of the play, are much more alive in India than in the West."

The play has started a commercial run in the UK
Archana Ramaswamy, who plays Titania, says the actors haven't had to look far for parallels between Shakespeare's story and their own lives.
"The complete madness that we all carry within ourselves - the vibrancy of Indian culture - the richness, the earthiness, the spirit... it's all there in the play. It's like the chaotic lives we all live!"
Chandan Roy Sanyal, playing Lysander, thinks Shakespeare isn't far removed from today's Bollywood.
"When we film a love story in India it's based on Romeo and Juliet. That's the essence of any love story: there is a girl and there is a boy. It's still prevalent in society right now. I've realised that Shakespeare was a very commercial writer."
This is a production for the open-minded.

By Vincent Dowd BBC arts reporter

Baudrillard had a unique way of casting peace and clarity over the Valley of Shadows

integralgrid // Mar 8th 2007 at 5:04 pm I don’t recall to have ever been so touched by someone’s passing as I am now. My whole day today has been ruined–I can’t even read or write properly!

Baudrillard died many deaths–and has ressurected an equal number of times. When he died to sociology, sociology experienced a rebirth through him. He died to Reality, and Reality rescued him promptly. Political economy and Marxism have also lost Baudrillard at some point, and they were then forced to secrete him anew. Modern art, including the Hollywood industry of film also suffered defeat after defeat when trying to take on Baudrillardesque faces, but Baudrillard was always quicker and smarter, and knew how to come clean before his copies.

As disruptive as his texts may have been, stirring up the depth of our depths and seemingly inviting trouble to set in, Baudrillard had a unique way of casting peace and clarity over the Valley of Shadows. He was a special kind of challenger–one knowing how to remain alert and ready, while at the same time keeping a safe distance from things that most people would very likely have invaded without much thought. And if Baudrillard is primarily seen as a challenger, I’d say that he was infinitely respectful towards things–including the thing called “man”. But that which people thought insulting–to be treated as objects–was in fact an hommage payed to them, a bow before their immortal nature.

An extravagant non-functional energy

Living Tradition. An interview with Veenapani Chawla
From time to time we make it a point to meet someone who, though not an ex-student, is part of the larger Aurobindonian family and has done significant work in his or her field. "Our Guest" this time is Veenapani Chawla, a renowned theatre personality who has researched traditional Indian performance arts and used them in her plays, which include A Greater Dawn(Savitri)(1992), Impressions of Bhima (1994), Khandava Prastha (1998), Brhannala (1998) and Ganapati (2000). She is known as someone who has always experimented, as someone who extends the boundaries and possibilities of theatre to the maximum. We met her at Adishakti, the theatre space and research centre she has created not far from Pondicherry.
A visit to Adishakti is in itself a revelation. The compound looks almost like a farm — there are many trees (those that help replenish ground-water were specifically chosen), there is a vegetable and flower patch, there are a couple of cows standing peacefully — and that is because the land itself helps sustain the members of Adishakti. The four or five buildings which are spread around the campus are strikingly beautiful and remind one vaguely of Kerala. Natural and traditional building materials have been used as far as possible: blocks of laterite or fossilized mud from Kerala for the walls of the theatre, finely finished varnished mud walls for the guest house, coconut shells in the ceiling of Veenapani’s home. Everywhere one sees the intelligent use of appropriate traditional technologies to create something contemporary, elegant and practical. After having gone around the Adishakti campus we settle down to have a chat...

THE SPIRIT AND PURPOSE OF THEATRE MAY 2005 The Golden Chain What are the failings of the conventional realistic form of theatre? Why the urge to experiment and create a different language?

The realistic or representational form of theatre comes to us from the West. It is not our convention. I don’t want to reject it as such, but it loses ground in the age of cinema. In fact theatre is losing its validity today because cinema can do everything that representational theatre does and much better.
Theatre therefore has to reinvent itself and reinforce its validity. It can do that because it has an edge over cinema. While cinema can accommodate every other reality, it lacks the reality of the actor. On the other hand Presence is the only reality in theatre. Theatre’s forte therefore, its inimitable strength, is the live, sensorial presence of the performer, which elevates the audience through a contagion of consciousness/energy. And it is around this strength that theatre must try to re-invent itself. It must try to evolve a performance language, which enhances this presence. This will ensure its continuing validity in the times of cinema.
Hence any performance language that we try to develop must be one which enhances the performer’s energy and consciousness to the largest degree. The performance language perforce will have to be one which does not use the language of daily behaviour, but one which employs an extravagant non-functional energy. There is in our tradition the distinction between natya and lok dharmi; the behaviour of performance and the behaviour of daily life. Natya dharmi uses non-functional energy [as you see in all our dance and performance forms], lok dharmi uses functional and therefore little energy.
The problem with daily, functional behaviour is that the use of the body occurs without reflection or choice. It is stereotyped and executed unconsciously. The more our actions are carried out spontaneously, without the least difficulty, the more can attention be directed to something else. But this spontaneity is a conditioned reflex and it does not encourage the performer to be present in every detail of her action when in performance.
If however one wants to free oneself from reflexive response, which is what natya dharmi demands, one must fight against the spontaneous and the natural in the body. One must initiate a process, which undermines automatisms, by using the body in a different way: by re-learning how to stand, by using a different balance axis, by moving according to rules which deny those of daily behaviour. This will call for a constant awareness in the body. Only by using the body in this non-functional way, is the consciousness in the body stimulated to take on a more active role, thus displacing automatisms.
This is what is demanded from performance behaviour, which aims at enhancing the presence of the performer so as to lead an audience into an elevated experience. I believe that our traditional forms employ these very methods too.

Nearer our times we have Sri Aurobindo writing poetry as part of his `Yoga sadhana'

Integration of the sacred and the secular PREMA NANDAKUMAR The Hindu Book Review Tuesday, Mar 06, 2007 ANCESTRAL VOICES - Reflections on Vedic, Classical and Bhakti Poetry: Ramesh Chandra Shah; Motilal Banarsidass, 41, U. A. Bungalow Road, Jawahar Nagar, Delhi-110007. Rs. 195.

One needs intelligence to understand a word but one must perform tapasya to understand the word. The words spoken by our ancients were a divine Morse code that conveyed immense areas of imaginative experience that gave a rounded perfection to man's earthly life. Indian epics are not a celebration of mere battle heroism. Rama, Arjuna, Karna, Ravana: they all have characteristics that are not just a brilliant wielding of the bow, the sword and the mace. Arriving at the core concept that moves all these heroes, one comes face to face with Dharma, a word so mantric that it has defied all attempts at translation.

The genius of Indian culture links even poetic criticism to a soul view of Beauty seeing it as no different from Truth. Art experience is looked upon as an instrument of Yogic realisation. The theory of `Rasa-dhwani' posited by eminent critics like Ananadavardhana and Abhinavagupta helps us appreciate all Indian literature without losing significant perspectives.

Fusion: By the time of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, there is a perfect fusion of the near and the far, the integration of the here and the hereafter, of poetry and spirituality. Nearer our times we have Sri Aurobindo writing poetry as part of his `Yoga sadhana'. Ramesh Chandra Shah asks himself: "How exactly is Yoga, that realm of silent wordless inward action related to the same man's unrelenting passion for the order of words?" Relation there must be, a connection with our earliest dawns but which we have lost by limiting our visions to our own "egoistic shells of separativity." These ideas and more are woven with expertise by Shah in a seamless argument.

In her foreword, Kathleen Raine makes a passionate statement: "The time has come to re-learn from the Orient — and above all from the spiritual mainstream of India — that special kind of wisdom of which Professor Shah speaks." There has been too much doctrinaire deconstruction and compartmentalisation of thoughts, a sourness of the intellect that can only forage through agony and disillusionment. The author rightly feels that we must hark back to the medieval Bhakti movement which can give spiritual nourishment by positing the delight of existence. Not a turning away from life nor seeing it as a field of broken shards but becoming electrically free to watch existence as the eternal Ras of soul-unity. Ancestral Voices contains not only reflections but also pointers for the reconstruction of our critical tools to unify the sacred and the secular. As the Vedic poet sang: "Let the sacred threads by which we weave the coloured web of our song remain intact." Yes, for all future time.

If Sri Aurobindo is Whitman’s poetic successor

Whitman’s Views on Shakespeare: Some Clarifications by Sarani Ghosal (Mondal)

Whitman does not find in Shakespeare any completed statement of the moral, the true and the beautiful. The search for a true democracy is a one-pointed quest for the supreme soul. The true splendour flies away like an “uncaught bird”. Even a mediocre writer attempting to find that glory fascinates Whitman. Hence he is drawn to George Fox, who was born just a few years after Shakespeare’s death....

For Whitman, art must mirror the quest for the immortality of Identity, which is the most neglected aspect of life and yet the material for the “deepest depths” and “highest heights of art”. And to have found just a little flavour of that gives a different value to our life. Poetry in Whitman’s eyes was a progressive manifestation of the soul, a constant search for the ever progressive new. According to Whitman, the grand elitism of Shakespeare-- the projection of aristocracy – was not quite in harmony with the theme and form of his own poetry. But, the great American poet seems to have lost sight of the fact that the common human nature is not far from the central passions of the mighty kings and lords.

Although Whitman’s stress on the limitations of Shakespeare has a strong logic behind it, his own limitations as a Shakespeare critic become obvious in the context of Sri Aurobindo’s positive approach to Shakespeare. Unlike Sri Aurobindo, another evolutionary poet of identical complexion, Whitman fails to see the relevance of Shakespeare in the field of psychological investigation into the human self. The common human nature is still in the trap of the Shakespearian moments. One must know how to tame and transform this world before reaching out to the spiritual peaks. That is why I bring in Sri Aurobindo to pinpoint the limitations of Whitman’s criticism of Shakespeare, who is still relevant, because the average human being is firmly rooted still in the consciousness of an Othello or a Lear. Somehow, Whitman forgot that true spirituality is an evolution of awareness and that it does not exclude the experience of the lower sensations of life.

Sri Aurobindo calls him a seer of life, meaning much deeper than the traditional phrase. Shakespeare in Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation is not just the seer of surface life, but also of the inner mechanism of the surface life. In the great tragic figures, like Hamlet or Macbeth, there is a much vaster and more potent subconscious mind, which loses nothing of what the senses bring to it. It keeps all its observations in an inexhaustible store of memory. Shakespeare, according to Sri Aurobindo, has explored those areas of the human mind, although he has not shown ways to go beyond those troubled areas, which stand as a stumbling block against the transformation of human nature leading to the Whitmanesque idea of Oneness.

Humanity owes a great debt to Shakespeare, because he has hinted at those troubled territories located between our heart and the sex-centre. The poet of Savitri himself experiences the Shakespearean world in Book II, Canto IV of the epic, the world of the soliloquies: sensations, stabs, edges of desire, passion’s leaps, the casual colloquy of flesh with flesh, the ill-lighted mansions of our thought etc. If Sri Aurobindo is Whitman’s poetic successor, then he rightly covers up the limitations of Whitman’s Shakespeare criticism by making Shakespeare relevant to the spiritual progress of human society. (Paper presented at World Shakespeare Conference, 2007, Kolkata) posted by RY Deshpande on Sun 04 Mar 2007 07:55 AM PST Permanent Link

We thank you for our physical bodies, for lining up every muscle and every joint

Moved by the Spirit to Dance With the Lord By JULIE BLOOM NYTimes.com Homepage: March 4, 2007

“We thank you, God, that you created the dance and you made it pure. Father, we want to dance your words through our limbs.” Wendy Heagy’s voice rises as she leads the circle in prayer. She is the founder of Raise Him Up Praise Dance School and Ministry, and she is about to start her Saturday class. “We thank you for our physical bodies, for lining up every muscle and every joint,” Ms. Heagy continues. “We don’t want to just be dancers. We want to be ministers of you, Lord God.” The class, mostly African-Americans ranging in age from early 20s through mid-60s and clad in warm-up clothes, several with scripture written on the backs of their T-shirts, answers loudly, “Amen.” ...

Praise dance is a form of worship that seeks to articulate the word and spirit of God through the body. Though it is far from a new phenomenon — in biblical times, dancing was embraced during celebrations and worship — it was forced out of the Christian church during the Reformation, and has been fully welcomed back only in the past 20 or so years. In recent years praise dance has become an increasingly popular part of church services across the country, particularly among America’s growing Pentecostal movement, and it has emerged in New York too, where experts say one in 10 people is Pentecostal.

Depending on the history and denomination of a particular church, a praise dance may be a choreographed balletic piece in the middle of a service or an improvised riff in the aisles, and the practice draws from a hybrid of movement vocabularies, from jazz to modern to African. Many praise dance ministries also include American sign language to sign out scripture during a song.

The language itself has fallen silent

The place of Sanskrit in India today is much like that of Latin in the West. It is part of the bedrock of our history and its words are the root words of our contemporary speech, but it has long ceased to play a role in the commerce of daily life and, like all dead languages, it has become the preserve of priests and schoolchildren. Many of the greatest works of Indian literature are written in Sanskrit, but apart from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, their influence upon us is muted because the language itself has fallen silent.

Now an ambitious new publishing project, the Clay Sanskrit Library, brings together leading Sanskrit translators and scholars of Indology from around the world to celebrate in translating the beauty and range of classical Sanskrit literature. Two dozen volumes of a projected 100 titles have been issued already. Published as smart green hardbacks that are small enough to fit into a jeans pocket, the volumes are meant to satisfy both the scholar and the lay reader. Each volume has a transliteration of the original Sanskrit text on the left-hand page and an English translation on the right, as also a helpful introduction and notes.

Alongside definitive translations of the great Indian epics—30 or so volumes will be devoted to the Mahabharata itself—Clay Sanskrit Library makes available to the English-speaking reader many other delights: The earthy verse of Bhartrhari, the pungent satire of Jayanta Bhatta and the roving narratives of Dandin, among others. All these writers belong properly not just to Indian literature, but to world literature. Sunday, February 25, 2007 This piece on the Clay Sanskrit Library project and on Kalidasa's play The Recognition of Shakuntala appeared yesterday in Mint. Chandrahas, 7:52 AM

Inventing their own book

“How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read?” has become a best seller here, with translation rights snapped up across Europe and under negotiation in Britain and the United States. “I am surprised because I hadn’t imagined how guilty nonreaders feel,” Mr. Bayard, 52, said in an interview. “With this book, they can shake off their guilt without psychoanalysis, so it’s much cheaper.”

Mr. Bayard reassures them that there is no obligation to read, and confesses to lecturing students on books that he has either not read or has merely skimmed. And he recalls passionate exchanges with people who also have not read the book under discussion. He further cites writers like Montaigne, who could not remember what he read, and Paul Valéry, who found ways of praising authors whose books he had never opened. Mr. Bayard finds characters in novels by Graham Greene, David Lodge and others who cheerfully question the need to read at all. And he refuses to be intimidated by Proust or Joyce...

Students, he noted from experience, are skilled at opining about books they have not read, building on elements he may have provided in a lecture. This approach can also work in the more exposed arena of social gatherings: the book’s cover, reviews and other public reaction to it, gossip about the author and even the current conversation can all provide food for sounding informed.

One alternative, he said, is to try to change the subject. Another is to admit not knowing a particular book while suggesting knowledge of the so-called “collective library” into which the book fits. But Mr. Bayard’s most daring suggestion is that nonreaders should talk about themselves, using the pretext of the book without dwelling on its contents. In this way, he said, they are forced to tap their imagination and, in effect, invent their own book...

But he chose this device, he said, because he wanted to help people conquer their fear of culture by challenging the way that literature is presented to students and the public in France...“They see culture as a huge wall, as a terrifying specter of ‘knowledge,’ ” he went on. “But we intellectuals, who are avid readers, know there are many ways of reading a book. You can skim it, you can start and not finish it, you can look at the index. You learn to live with a book.” By ALAN RIDING The New York Times: February 24, 2007

Dance needs to be portrayed in a spirit of total ecstasy

A Dancer's Quest for Prema or Divine Love

Padmaja Suresh The Times of India 20 Feb, 2007

The role of prema or devotional love is pivotal in divine dance forms such as Bharatanatyam. The combination of nritta or pure dance, abhinaya or pure expression and nritya or expressive dancing leads the dancer close to the infinite domain of the cosmic self. For this, dance needs to be portrayed in a spirit of total ecstasy, rising above the physical realm and parameters of the body. Natyopasana or devotional fervour in dance wherein the dance assumes worshipful nature, leads to natyabrahmn:

Realising the Universe within the individual self, a dancer uses her own personality comprising physical form and mental states as the primary vehicle in the first stage. She then acquires the personality of the various charac-ters represented as the secondary vehicle in the second stage and unwinds shackles of personal traits as the dance level evolves and deepens. Finally she gets elevated to the highest spiritual sphere, sringara or love. This is the first among rasas that are aesthetic flavours of dance and drama. Sringara considered as rasa raja as its portrayal alone has the scope to touch upon other bhavas too, taking its three basic delineations as vatsalya or motherly affection, rati or union of male and female principles and bhakti or self-surrender and devotion to the Almighty.

Sringara becomes delectable in any form and offers the easiest path to be one with the ethereal world: that's natya yoga. A dancer could be skilled and sincere too, but unless there is sublimation of ego, the dance cannot create rasanubhava, the impact of splendour. The dancer merges in the spirit of dance, surrenders to its magnificence and spontaneously expresses a divine energy, and transports the audience to similar experiences. Through inspiration and intuition, dance makes the audience feel divine energy. The dancer's quest is to negate egoistic tendencies by submitting herself as an instrument to experience divinity. It is said that true movement cannot lie. True joy can be experienced through devotional love. This cannot always be taught but can perhaps be imbibed from eminent gurus.

We can assess philosophical terms like advaita, vishishta advaita and dvaita in the context of dance. The concept of a dancer becoming one with the dance through natya yoga is holistic and advaitic, while the aesthetic representation and appreciation of manifestations of divinity incorporated in dance are examples of admitting to theosophies like vishishta advaita. Again, the bhakti-marg or pathway to God prescribed by saints is so suffused with infectious love, humble devotion and self-surrender, that dancing to their innumerable compositions has the potency to infuse spiritual well-being. Creating, adding form — from nirguna to saguna — and placing this divinity on the highest pedestal become tools for communication, a must for successful dramatic representation.

Advaitam, true shantam, resting in Monism can be the 'end'. Indeed where there cannot be any mundane expression but natya, in order to carry the dancer and spectators, it has to be thoroughly expressive and appear world-related. It is multidimensional, physically externalising through movement and emotions using eyes, parts of face, neck, limbs... and also all along internalising by correlating the mind. Witnessing all these ephemeral states is the 'mystical eye' that can make one see divine reality in dance. Hence, one can understand dance as life itself... as cosmic movement... as infinite cycle of creation, sustenance and destruction. Presented at the first international indology conference, Goa, Feb 7-10.

Phantom of the Opera, Cats & West Side story

Musicale program @ Auroville Went for a weekend to auroville, listened to musicale - Phantom of the Opera, Cats & West Side story. The choir sang really well, specialy liked the songs - Phantom of the opera & Macavity the mystery Cat. Posted by Tluanga at 1:09 PM Monday, February 12, 2007 Labels: Pondy

The rasikas passionately responded to our dance and communicated their appreciation in cheers and tears of joy

Arts & Fashion Sunday January 28, 2007 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd Dancing through India By RAMLI IBRAHIM Pictures by KARTHIK VENKATARAMAN

The Sutra Dance Theatre overcame long, tedious train journeys, rickety makeshift stages and even threats to win the hearts of Indian audiences across the sub-continent with their performances of the odissi and the bharatanatyam.

RIGHT after our Canada-Europe Tour (September/October 2006), we embarked on our “Circumambulatory” India Tour 2006 (Nov 19 – Dec 31)). It was an ambitious and gruelling six-week round India tour, mainly by train. Our first destination in India was New Delhi and a bus immediately took us to Jaipur. We began our marathon performance schedule the next day.

Performing the odissi for schoolchildren with the City Palace as a backdrop.After five back-to-back performances in Jaipur, we returned to Delhi and proceeded to Neemrana in Rajasthan for another series of performances. We then travelled by train to Mumbai, Bangalore, Belur, Coimbatore, Chennai, Pondicherry, Auroville and finally, Bhubaneswar. As the tour took its own momentum, we stopped counting the number of performances we had done. Six weeks later, the Sutra team found themselves once again in New Delhi for their return flight to Malaysia. We were ourselves amazed that we had literally circumambulated the Indian sub-continent by train and performed no fewer than 25 performances watched by at least 50,000 people!

We took two programmes, “Vision of Forever” (odissi) and “Divine Encounters” (bharatanatyam) and a new contemporary work “Kamala”. Ramli does sentry duty with the guards at the City Palace in Jaipur.

Now, tracing our performance route in retrospect, we are amazed at what we had achieved! We had danced in gloriously wonderful venues, from ancient fort palaces (Neemrana), major cultural centres (Jawarhalal Cultural Centre Jaipur, designed by famous India architect Charles Correa; the Kamani Auditorium; National Centre of Performing Arts, Mumbai), ancient temples (Belur, 12th century, Karnataka), ashrams (Isha Foundation, Pondicherry;) to constructed make-shift stages on esplanades and parks in front of huge crowds. We were greatly appreciated everywhere we went. The pattern was the same in each city. We arrived, danced and conquered! ...

There were performances at the Isha and Pondicherry Ashrams where the audiences’ reaction completely floored us – the rasikas passionately responded to our dance and communicated their appreciation in cheers and tears of joy. These are the highlights that will forever be etched in our memories.

Ramli and Sutra dancers peeking out of a shack that served as their dressing room as they wait to perform on a makeshift stage in a Pondicherry night market.But two performances were landmarks in establishing Sutra as a major Indian dance group in India.

The first was in New Delhi, organised by Aurodhan Gallery (Pondicherry). This performance managed to capture art connoisseurs and the crème de la crème of dance in India’s capital city. Lalit Verma, the director of Aurodhan Gallery brought Dr Karan Singh (member of the Raja Sabha and chairman of Council for Cultural Relations) and Parvan Varma (director of ICCR) to see us for the first time.

In it is life new-born to live and move in the Time of Eternity

Re: 04: Now her Life Shared the Cosmic Load by RY Deshpande on Sat 10 Feb 2007 06:32 AM PST Profile Permanent Link

The sonnet is a perfect piece of poetry; it easily ranks as one of the best Amal has written. I am sure, Sri Aurobindo himself would have remarked: “Very fine indeed. This time you have got the sonnet movement very well.” The images are Amalian and daring; the sequencing of poetic thought is impeccable; phrases like “blind force of mortal doom”, “Parthenon’s pillars” massive and beautiful in exquisite proportion lifting up a whole civilisation to the blue of the sky, “brute hands” of Time breaking the leaden chains of authority, “this one death” coming as a master-stroke, all these and many more are amply artistic to make the “paradox of a death that is a breakthrough into a new life for humanity” sufficiently convincing. The phrase “divine Aurobindo died” is heart-shattering no doubt, unacceptable, unbearable to the tradition-bound and the feeble with his small soul of bhakti or worshipful timid devotion; but it has the inspirational magic of transforming the Gita’s “transience and unhappiness” into the enduring and the blissful, proclaiming forcefully of the triumph through willed death. To quote a phrase from Amal’s another poem we have here a “fire of mystic mind” ready to leap into the great Flame. In it is life new-born to live and move in the Time of Eternity.

And yet the sonnet looks to be too perfect to be occult-spiritually acceptable with the connotations it should carry; for, I wonder, if the “divine Aurobindo died” does plunge at all deep enough into the mystery of the deathless embracing death. It sounds too loud, trumpeting a triumph which should have come from the womb of the omniscient hush—to use a Savitri-phrase. Its “overhead”-ness is patently mental, though perhaps of a very high order; the absoluteness of the spiritual demanded for such a theme is not there. Contrast this with “This was the day when Satyavan must die.” Its foundation is luminous peace and its birth is in the creative transcendent, simple and bare in its beauty. We could look into it in more detail, at least from one or two points of view. RYD

Chuvanistic tendencies to dismiss, demean or patronize the experience of "the other"

Re: Post Human Variations by Richard Carlson by Rich on Sun 04 Feb 2007 07:30 PM PST Profile Permanent Link

That we would tend to privilege ideas or poetics, which find inspiration in the experience of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother maybe natural for those of us who find an affinity with their teachings. However, while recognizing the difference in teaching between Integral Yoga and Other disciplines, I do not believe such recognition necessities a “Go Team” sensibility which excludes other experiences of inner praxis or narratives of other spiritual topography. Such exclusivist practices I have found become chuvanistic over time and inspire ideological tendencies to dismiss, demean or patronize the experience of "the other" . This is in fact contrary to my understanding (however slight) of integral spirituality.

My own concern is to open up the dialog to others besides the IY faithful. And if we are attempting inter-subjective dialog with those who may share our concerns but not our beliefs, there would be little proof we could demonstrate to champion our cause over theirs. Similarly I think it impossible to conclusively demonstrate that one form of (esp. spiritual) poetry is superior to any other. Now one can argue about style, meter, imagery, complexity or simplicity of expression and their utility for accomplishing the poetic intention, but the valorization of poetry, and especially the championing of its particular imaginative source is largely a matter of personal taste and/or cultural preference. rc 2:47 AM

Six divergent writers

Indian Imagination Critical Essays On by K D Verma More Books by K D Verma Synopses & Reviews Publisher Comments:
The Indian Imagination focuses on literary developments in English both in the colonial and postcolonial periods of Indian history. Six divergent writers—Aurobindo Ghose (Sri Aurobindo), Mulk Raj Anand, Balachandra Rajan, Nissim Ezekiel, Anita Desai, and Arun Joshi—represent a consciousness that has emerged from the confrontation between tradition and modernity. The colonial fantasy of British India was finally dissolved in the first half of this century, only to be succeeded by another fantasy, that of the reinstituted sovereign nation-state. This study argues that the two phases of history—like the two phases of Indian writing in English— together represent the sociohistorical process of colonization and decolonization and the affirmation of identity.
About the Author: K.D. Verma is Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Table of Contents
Indian Writing in English: Structure of Consciousness, Literary History, and Critical Theory * Sri Aurobindo as a Poet: A Reassessment * The Social and Political Vision of Sri Aurobindo * Sri Aurobindo as Critic * Mulk Raj Anand: A Reappraisal * Ideological Confrontation and Synthesis in Mulk Raj Anand’s Conversations in Bloomsbury * Balachandra Rajan’s The Dark Dancer : A Critical Reading * Humanity Defrauded: Notes Toward a Reading of Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay * Myth and Imagery in Nissim Ezekiel’s The Unfinished Man : A Critical Reading * Alienation, Identity and Structure in Arun Joshi’s The Apprentice * The Metaphysics and Metastructure of Appearance and Reality in Arun Joshi’s The Last Labyrinth

An Artist of Transformation

The Concept of the Poet in the Aesthetics of Sri Aurobindo

By Dr. Ranjan Ghosh Darjeeling Government College, University of North Bengal (India)

Sri Aurobindo is, like all true poets, an artist of transformation that extends the experiential self to embrace the reality of the world and obeying the higher law that has the body's cells holding the immortal flame. Like the vedic rishi, he climbs beyond himself where the Ineffable has a secret voice and the Imperishable burns through "Matter's Screen." His awareness knows the harmonious and the luminous totality of man's Being, the genuine voyant possessed with Samyakdrishti or Totalitatdenken (Joshi 52). So "all problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony" (Aurobindo, Life Divine 4). However, this harmony cannot be monochromatic in the sense that intellectual knowledge and the will of action are not the ultimate instruments of our consciousness and energy.

The cognate of supra-rationality is vital for it creates the spaces of creation. Tagore believed that our realisation should not end with the reasoning mind, for it must acknowledge the creative imagination in the same breath. "The rational or intellectual man is not the last and the highest ideal of manhood. The spirit that manifests itself in man and dominates secretly the phases of his development is greater and profounder than his intellect" (Aurobindo, Human Cycle 124).

For Aurobindo, the rational is surpassed and left behind by the genius, for the rational only constructs, but does not create. In this light one must better understand Kant’s celebrated view that creations of the mind which do not owe their origin in any way to the spiritual faculty in man (freedom and autonomy) are only a product of mechanical operations, of association of ideas, or even of mere lucky accidents. "Rule and precept are incapable of serving as the requisite subjective standard for . . . the aesthetic and unconditioned finality in fine art" (Meredith 212). Kant finds the explanation of genius in "the supersensible substrate of all the subjects (unattainable by any concept of understanding), and consequently in that which forms the point of reference for the harmonious accord of all our faculties of cognition . . . ." (Meredith 212).

Despite obvious differences between Kant’s and Sri Aurobindo’s respective philosophical positions, the points of accord also are striking. It may be noted in this context that Sri Aurobindo is not an advocate of reductionism. Though art or the aesthetic impulse, properly speaking, springs from the infra-rational parts of our being, it does seek the help of the rational. Reason lays down the laws of aesthetics, purifies our appreciation and improves our taste. Within restricted bounds, reason corrects and sets aright our aesthetic instinct and impulse, by making it self-conscious and rationally discriminative. The rational as such may not also be the artistic but it is the creator of our aesthetic conscience, judge and guide.

So the super-existentialist Sri Aurobindo, manifests a supra-normal familiarity with the intensities of our subliminal and supraliminal being. Spirituality for him is a much wider thing than formal religion. Art reaches its highest self expression when it is pressed into the service of spirituality. And spirituality denotes a threefold line of human aspiration – divine knowledge, strength, love and joy. Art needs to reach beyond what the best European Art satisfies – "the physical requirements of the aesthetic sense, the laws of formal beauty, the emotional demand of humanity, the portrayal of life and outward reality" – to manifest the inner spiritual truth, the "deeper not obvious reality of things, the joy of God in the world and its beauty and desirableness and the manifestation of divine face and energy in phenomenal creation" (Aurbindo, National Value 46).

So Sri Aurobindo’s integralism delimits the content of art that clearly emphasizes the supreme intellectual value of art and his weltanchauung smoothes all the rough zones of our stratified existence. His theory of art is impregnated with the poignant belief that "what nature is, what God is, what man is, can be triumphantly revealed in stone or on canvas" (Aurbindo, National Value 48). So it is for the poet to realize the three tier use of art - aesthetic, intellectual or educative, and the spiritual which is the highest.
In the dead wall closing us from wider self,
Into a secrecy of apparent sleep,
The mystic tract beyond our waking thoughts,
A door parted, built in by Matter’s force,
Releasing things unseized by earthly sense:
A world unseen, unknown by outward mind
Appeared in the silent spaces of the soul. (Savitri, 27)

WORKS CITED
Sri Aurobindo. Collected Poems. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1994.
---. Future Poetry, The. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1994.
---. Human Cycle, The. New York, New York: Sri Aurobindo Library, 1949.
---. Hymns to the Mystic Fire. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1991.
---. Letters of Sri Aurobindo. Bombay: Sri Aurobindo Circle, 1949.
---. Life Divine, The. Twin Lakes, Wisconsin: Lotus Press, 1949/2000.
---. National Value of Art. Calcutta: Arya Publishing, 1936.
---. Savitri. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1996.
---. Synthesis of Yoga, The. New York: Sri Aurobindo Library, 1950.
---. Talks on Poetry. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, 1989.
Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram 1972 vol 15.
Heidegger, Martin. On the Way to Language. (trans.) Stambaugh, New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Joshi, V.C. Ed. Sri Aurobindo, An Interpretation. Delhi: Vikas Publishing, 1973.
Nandi, S.K. Studies in Modern Indian Aesthetics. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1975.

Purani, A.B. Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970.
Sethna, K.D. The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1974.

Beauty is a ceremony of symmetry and form that turns into a ballet

A Philosophy of Beauty Emil Michelle

The first action of philosophy, the inital step, is to reduce uniformity to exception: what distinguishes one person from another is her/his beauty.

• Beauty is unreachable, not because it is impenetrable, but because it approaches the infinite. Each beautiful person hides an infinity.
• Beauty is deceptive, for essentially, we see ourselves in it, we never see the other person.
• Beauty is concrete -- it rests upon its own reality. It only becomes abstract when we think about it. Thinking mutates beauty into an instrument or a concept -- it abandons reality. And by that I mean this: that a beautiful person cannot be turned into a thing without ceasing to be a person.
• For beauty is not settled in itself. Beautiful people are not a reality -- they create their own realities. The beautiful person is neither a person nor a thing, but perhaps a relation, or more precisely, a function: a solipsistic autonomy that alters in accordance with the perspectives of those that determine it.
• The victim of beauty is a function of the beautiful, not in the physioligical sense of the word, but in the mathematical sense: beauty has mutated into a number, a sign, a symbol. And mankind is seduced by numbers. Every number hides an infinity -- every number contains all the totality of all numbers, total enumeration. Beauty takes on a mathematical form.
• The reality of beauty is cerebral. It is easier, almost, to think of beauty than to see it. Beauty represents magnitudes of sensations. Beauty is a ceremony of symmetry and form that turns into a ballet -- a mathematical, mystical sacrifice to the organs of sense. A situation, or perhaps, a demonstration -- a theater of pulchritude. But since beauty is mathetical, it cannot be destroyed because numbers are immortal -- it cannot be nullified by time or by age.
• The whole of beauty is greater than all the beauty it contains. And in that sense, beauty is unreal. Beauty is supermortal, that is, a mortal who neutralizes all else -- insensate in sensation. It is the mystical paradox: the wonderment of insensibility which has its foundation in sensibility.
• Beauty is hyaline matter. It is the supreme pleasure, the most natural of pleasures. All of history, legend, memoirs, and medical observation prove the point: beauty is a ferocious copulation of viewer and viewed. The recognition of beauty is a triumph of intelligence and sensation and emotion.
• Beauty is immense and unique -- wherever it is discovered. Beauty is a tyrranical philosophy. For beauty postulates a curious despotism over all mankind -- beauty does not liberate, it tosses mankind into dungeons, it binds, it imprisons, it compels, coerces and enslaves. And it enthralls. It is an incubator for a whole congerie of neuroses. Although, what a way to go, huh?!
• What, then, is beauty? What is the epistemology of beauty? In a sense, it is indefinable -- but it may be perceived: its only feature is that it is an exception, through this it may be isolated and determined. Beauty is an exception among the beautiful exceptions, a reflection among the beautiful reflections. A true consensus may be impossible. Still, I will make an attempt: beauty is a miraculous concatenation which tittilates my soul when I look upon it. posted by Emil Michelle at 8:43 AM Saturday, January 13, 2007

The Heaven of Indra where Apsaras dance on gleaming crystal floors

Re: 01: Savitri Awakes among the Human Tribes

RY Deshpande Fri 12 Jan 2007 05:32 AM PST

Savitri had brought with her power, wide consciousness, bliss, calm delight, the delight that the Upanishads would say weds one soul to all, the delight that is the key to the flaming doors of ecstasy. But the unfortunate fact is the littleness of life that is ours, ignorant and death-bound. It denied all that she had brought with her, did not use the key for the doors of ecstasy. Consequently life must suffer. The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy is to a life that is vaster and brighter than the life that is in heavens. It is also a life that does not remain static in its typal joy, confined to its own form of happiness, forms that are only expressive and not determinative of the world to which they belong...

In the Life Heavens is the music that wanders behind the mortal ear; the notes of rapture heap one over another; forms and senses are a-thrill there; beauty has her enchantment in the voluptuous and affective.

But suddenly there soared a dateless cry,

Deep as Night, imperishable as Time;

It seemed Death’s dire appeal to Eternity,

Earth’s outcry to the limitless Sublime.

(The Life Heavens, Collected Poems pp. 574-75.)

And the result is, Eternity gets broken into fleeting lives and Godhead pents in the mire and the stone. But beyond the flaming doors of ecstasy are forms that are at once expressive and determinative and progressive in their flaming moods and wide-sweeping manners of truth-and-beauty-and delight-and-life-and-spirit. That is the aspect of Savitri’s waking up on the fated day.

To which worlds do the flaming doors of ecstasy open? Surely, they are far beyond the frail or gossamer Life Heavens, beyond the celestial worlds, beyond swargaloka, the Heaven of Indra where Apsaras dance on gleaming crystal floors, with tiny jingling silver bells tied to their anklets, and their rich bosoms heaving in luxurious delight. Savitri’s flaming doors open to the worlds of the transcendent spirit. The Upanishad speaks of passing through the solar gate, sūryasya dwāra, into the world of immortality. Such must be the flaming gates of ecstasy through which Savitri can move in and out in her full freedom, in the joy that is and that shall be. RYD

The Muse of Poetry sighed and waited — to kiss me once in a while

Abiding faith SACHIDANANDA MOHANTY
Manoj Das, eminent author, talks about his work and the place of a writer in an era of cultural globalisation. Belief in the permanence of words: Manoj Das. Sachidananda Mohanty is Professor of English at the University of Hyderabad.

A bilingual author who has received wide recognition, Manoj Das is perhaps the most influential writer in post-independence Orissa. Born in 1934 in a remote coastal village, Manoj Das has to his credit about 40 books in English and an equal number in his mother tongue. A critic, columnist, educationist and a devoted student of mysticism and Integral Yoga, he lives in Pondicherry and is a Professor of English Literature at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. He has received numerous literary awards including the Central and Orissa State Sahitya Akademi Awards. Excerpts from an interview... The Hindu Literary Review Sunday, Jan 07, 2007

Your first book in Oriya was published at the age of 14. How did it happen?
Writing came to me like several other functions in life — beholding the splendour of a rainbow or the beauty of a garden. It mattered when the little book received attention and appreciation came from connoisseurs in the field of literature.

Although an acclaimed novelist and short story writer, you also wrote remarkable poetry early in your career. Why did you give it up?
Alas, for reasons quite pragmatic. Poetry and fiction came to me spontaneously. But certain themes could be worked out only through fiction. Not only the editors and publishers, but also the readership demanded more and more of fiction .The creative force of this mode made me its captive. The Muse of Poetry sighed and waited — to kiss me once in a while.

At 15, you launched Diganta a reputed literary journal in Oriya. What was your inspiration?
Few periodicals then existed in Oriya, unlike today. Diganta was my humble effort to improve the situation. I struggled, and was happy to see it growing as a forum where renowned talent mingled with the new.

What prompted you to join radical politics and the Students' Federation of India?
Mine was a charming village on the sea, inhabited by people kind and courteous. A terrible cyclone ruined all, ushering in famine and epidemic. The human misery kindled in me the search for a panacea. I found the answer in Marxism. That was an exciting time: the Communist movement was still undivided.

In 1956 you attended the historic Bandung Conference in Indonesia. How did this experience shape your literary imagination?
The Afro-Asian Students Conference following the great Conference of Afro-Asian leaders who formulated the famous Panchsheel. It had no direct impact on my creativity, but it changed my attitude to reality. 11:10 AM

Finally arrives the Sun

Re: Savitri Awakes among the Human Tribes
by RY Deshpande on Wed 03 Jan 2007 07:12 AM PST Profile Permanent Link

Let us look into the first two lines of the above passage:
And Savitri too awoke among these tribes
That hastened to join the brilliant Summoner's chant

Savitri awakes and joins the brilliant Summoner’s chant. But who is this brilliant Summoner, and what is his chant? With that chant Savitri awakes from her sleep, the sleep of Prajna consciousness, of perfect knowledge. The Summoner calls her and she is here now to do her work in the dynamism of perfect knowledge.

Savitri’s waking is described as the beginning of the day on which Satyavan is to die. Narad has already foretold the exact place and time when this death is going to occur, and Savitri is aware of it. On the fated day she gets up early in the morning, offers her worships to Goddess Durga, the Protectress of the Worlds, and is now ready to face the God of Death. The death will occur by a kingly tree in the Shalwa woods and the Goddess is already present there.

The Sun-God is the brilliant Summoner. He is the divine Aditya beckoning her early in the morning. The second half of the night itself has two parts: between midnight and 3.00 am, tamasobhāga, the dark part, and between 3.00 to 6.00 am jyotirbhāga, the bright part. The divine Ashwinikumars appear in the sky on horseback heralding the advent of Light. Running through the night, they then hand over the charge to Usha, the Dawn, and the sky is aglow with her rosy light, the rosy-fingered dawn of Homer. She is then followed by Savita, the Progenitor of Light. After him comes Bhaga with his aiśwarya, with his majesty and richness. Finally arrives the Sun. The Sun himself attains the full form in Pushan the Nourisher. The highest form of Light reaches its zenith in the highest heavens presided by Vishnu. Sri Krishna in the Gita says that among the Adityas he is Vishnu. He then becomes the Summoner to whose call awakes Savitri.

And what is his chant? Narad is Vishnu’s devotee, bhakta, and he is always immersed in him. From his home in Paradise when he starts journeying towards King Aswapati’s palace in Madra, to deliver the Word of Fate, he sings on the way the Name of Vishnu. He sings in it of (Savitri, pp. 416-17) ...

Sri Aurobindo Institute of Mass Communication: short films festival

Publish Date : 1/2/2007 1:47:00 PM Source : Entertainment News Onlypunjab.com

Cine buffs in the capital will get to see a selection of 50 short films at a three-day festival, Twilight 07, from Wednesday. The festival will start with the Indo-Belgian co-production "Akhnoor", a film on terrorism by Sudipto Sen, which stars Yashpal Sharma in the main lead. It will be followed by Anurag Kashyap's "When God said Cheers" featuring Tom Alter and Cyrus Dastur. The closing film Friday will be Gitanjali Rao's award winning animation film "Printed Rainbow". The 15-minute film won the critic's award at Cannes Film Festival in 2006.

Organised by the Sri Aurobindo Institute of Mass Communication, 50 short films in the festival will be screened under two sections - open and competitive. All the screenings will be held at the India International Centre and Alliance Francaise.

"Twilight is primarily aimed at students and young filmmakers," said Shankhajeet De, festival coordinator and a teacher of filmmaking at the Sri Aurobindo Institute of Mass Communication.

"Our endeavour is to encourage young talent by providing a platform for budding filmmakers and filmmaking students across the country to showcase their creativity and tell a story in 30 minutes. The basic idea of the short films is to experiment with a little money and get recognised," Shankhajeet said in a statement.