Matters of unreason

SOCIETY

This week I met an artist, well, let's just call her an aspiring one, with huge, Impressionist canvases of trees. The lady even does Vaastu-inspired creations (trees in the right direction, the right shape, overlooking a water stream flowing in the right direction) but only for close friends.

She is sure she does not want to bow to commerce, scoffs at anyone who may be looking to take home a colourful work simply because it matches the tapestry, but in moments of candour has just one request: "Just make me famous as an artist!" I'm not sure what the reaction to her works will be when she exhibits. But for me, it is she who'll be the more interesting piece!

The artist spouts Advaita "" non-duality of matter and spirit "" as casually as if we were talking about oranges in her kitchen garden. She also feels she is the bindu of Tantric existence, having journeyed through many existences like the Buddha (wherein she even picked up her art because, in this birth, she hasn't needed to learn!) and so forth.

When I told friends about this conversation that I had on a working day, they all suppressed their grins and said my subject was high on unmentionables. I didn't see any signs of that but it led me to observe how we are all uncomfortable at any obvious display of "unreason".

While "feelings" in work/public spaces are gaining currency (I'm not sure about how acceptable they are in Indian offices), "spirituality" is another area that everyone has discovered. It is quite fashionable to attend Art of Living sessions, reproduce Deepak Chopra's reproductions, listen to Sufi rock...

But anyone dwelling on these for more than a couple of minutes in a social conversation invites the same grins. You may carry on a party conversation about your Vipassana camp that Priyanka Gandhi visits but not a detailed methodology about how you awoke your kundalini!

Cut to Jodhaa Akbar. You may have been dazzled by the jewels or irked by Gowariker's history (not Rajput, but things like Din-e-Ilahi, or hand-to-hand combats). But what was your reaction to Rahman's "Khwaja mere Khwaja" song?

The choreography is unique: all men, dressed in the manner of Turkish dervishes, doing a slow twirl. When Hrithik-Akbar joins in, drawn to the murids, filled with a sense of spiritualism, it is supposed to be a moment of quiet wonder.

It isn't. In the theatres, the audiences giggle. Uncomfortable giggles. But perhaps at this point in our history, we are only ready to talk about organised religion "" and sometimes not just talk.