If you have ever sung as part of a choir, you will
experience the need to fit in, to modulate your voice and tone to be in harmony;
a feeling not unlike the strain felt by a teenager who buys the latest Nike
shoes or the latest iPhone. It takes a while for the novice to realize that
along with the accompanying beats, words and music, there is space for
individuality. This taut relationship between uniting togetherness and rippling
below-the-surface individuality is what makes for an engaging performance!
This constant battle between being one and united as
one is played out in numerous arenas. A group of amateur Garba dancers offers a
glimpse into their multifarious lives. The synchronous feet matched with every
beat and the arms swaying to the lilting song, cannot hide the different
colours. The restrained sari clad housewife ever mindful of her pallu, the
playful teenager with limbs flaying in all directions, the maverick who dances
to her own beat, the thoughtful young lady on the cusp of maturity ......all in
harmony, playing out the garba in tandem, in surprising congruity! A microcosm
at play!
The
world is all about non-conformists revealing blasphemous great truths to the
regimented troops that abound. It took a Snowden to question conformity, a Newton
to ask an obvious yet unasked question, a Gandhi to challenge the notions
of superiority of force.
And yet we are obsessed as ever with suffocating
order and discipline in schools and colleges. ‘We don’t need no education’
screamed the rebels but we looked away. It’s convenient after all to herd children
together and guide them through the same rigmarole day after deadening day. The
same chants and the same rhymes repeated year after year, long after London
Bridge and all the accompanying references fell down!
Mercifully they break away at play. Anywhere in the
world, you give me a park with a slide, and I’ll give you a child who climbs up
and refuses to merely slide down! Rules be damned! A plastic cricket bat turns
into a microphone, a guitar, an athlete’s pole vault, a road for miniature
cars, a gun, an impromptu tray, a cash counter for an imaginary retail store, a
propped up tree- what have you not!
In a world where more than ever before, we need
creative politicians, scientists, teachers, entrepreneurs...and more and more
out of the box thinkers, where are we going to get our saviours? We’ve boxed
them in!
