Pongam
Wondering. Wandering. Finding.Archive for Books
Contradictions that kill
A month ago, I worked with a school for children with learning disorders. I was teaching them to dance the Bhangra, it was for a show they were putting up for parents. I loved the kids and working with them, but I felt I was doing more damage than good by making them learn to move in a particular way. Some of the children really had a difficult time learning the dance. I was having to ignore their individual abilities in the interest of a performance. When I had a problem with some of them not trying, I had to use the performance as an excuse – The show’ll be cancelled if you don’t try harder! It felt horrible to do that, I was eroding any learning that was taking place.
As the sessions drew to a close and the performance loomed large on our heads, the pressure to remember, the need to do well, the need for praise – all of this reached a point of frenzy. I couldn’t wait for it to be over and I felt really rotten.
In a meeting with a teacher from the school a week later, I voiced (rather vehemently) my apprehensions about pushing kids to perform. Especially them, because they were all carrying scars from being in mainstream schools that had made them out to be ‘losers’, told them they were dumb, had thrown them out because they didn’t do well, because they wouldn’t figure in the ’success’ of those schools. To my questions, the teacher said simply that being on stage gave the kids a sense of confidence, a feeling of achievement when they saw how appreciative their parents were. If they didn’t do that, they would be like the other schools, who would never put these kids on stage.
I want so much to find a meeting point that is something more – filled with a lot more care, perhaps.
But, thinking back to my high school days, I remember I had been classified as a ’slow learner’ when I got to tenth standard. And all slow learners had to attend extra classes. It had been purely based on my scores in the previous annual exam. I had cried for a few days. My already non-existent self esteem had taken a plunge to sub-zero levels, I felt like a misfit in class, I withdrew even more into silence and for a few months wanted to desperately prove myself to ‘them’.
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As part of research for the next project I have spent a whole week or more reading a translation of a novel by Vibhavari Shirurkar called The Victim. I spend most late evenings reading a gut wrenching description of a young Dalit boy’s life in a settlement for the people called Criminal Tribes in British India. I know as I read it that not much has changed for many Dalits since then. I want so much to be able to create something out of it.
And, in the meanwhile, the whole of last week I have been meeting dancers to rehearse a performance that we will show at a popular pub in town. Behind a glass, in designer clothes and speaking text in English.
These worlds co-exist. It just kills me to know in such graphic detail that they do.
Meandering around language
I have become very conscious of the fact that a lot of my life is dominated by English. This has come about largely because of the questions my colleagues and I have faced, for some years now, on how relevant our theatre work really is to the context we live in. I have vehemently defended our and my choice of English for very long. But of late I am beginning to reconsider.
Yesterday, I helped a friend conduct a movement session. My job was to translate what he said in English to Kannada. It was a Feldenkrais session and much to our disappointment, we found that the group that had arrived was well versed in both languages, most of them at least. But we went ahead anyway and I discovered how bad my Kannada had become. I struggled for words and especially with conveying the right meaning, as my friend meant it.
I have had this experience before, a few years ago. In many theatre workshops, I translated into Kannada whatever was being said in English and there was much that was lost. Not only meaning, but also experience as a consequence of that.
I watched Kuvempu’s Kindari Jogi in Kannada over the weekend and was struck by how differently the actors moved and spoke, how different their expression was (I mean this very simply – how they communicated anger) and of course, the response they received from the audience was one I have never found with English theatre. (And their use of English was fantastic – in much the same way as a Lingo Leela would use English with a Kannada accent. It was really funny.)
Recently, I have been reading English translations of writing in Kannada (part of research for the next theatre project). The translations rob the beauty of Kannada and sometimes obscure much of the meaning. It has been frustrating. But I also find the writing so different from contemporary English writing. The imagination and sensibility in Kannada writing seems worlds apart from the English. So much so that I have begun believing that people who speak different languages inhabit different worlds.
Hmmmm. Inhabit is a good word. How we inhabit the world we live in is informed so much by the language. The meanings we create for ourselves depends on the language. And so again, the monster raises it’s head again – How removed or connected am I really to the world I want so much to live in. ( This is also connected with the whole ‘Indian’ question.)
I wonder what would happen if I gave up English and all things ‘English’ for a bit. Wore only Indian clothes, spoke and read only in an Indian language, wrote in that as well. So many things might just become irrelevant and meaningless. What would my world look like?
