OMG=Om Ganeshaiya!

Happiness Class or Curriculum. What an idea, Sir ji. Whose? HH the Dalai Lama, no less. Where? Delhi govt. schools, as models. And thanks to the most sauve Delhi culture-scene broadcaster Rajiv Mehrotra – he of the PBS fame – a documentary got made on the subject, recently screened at the IIC, Delhi. Dr Binay Panda – he of crack- the-neem-DNA-team, now teaching at JNU, told me “come, let’s see a bacho ka film!”. I thought we will go to Sapru House, like we used to go to as kids growing up in the Delhi of the 60s and the 70s. Sapru House with Children’s Film Society, showed a film every Sunday morning. Pity children grew up and both the venue and society decayed then maybe died.

   

IIC seems the wrongest setting to discuss poverty! All well-heeled come there, including the organisers, who looked at odds with the subject of poor govt school children of Delhi but the filmmaker did justice to the subject. Samina Mishra, did a very good job of putting together this film. Three govt. schools, one each in Rouse Avenue, Lajpat Nagar (With Afghan refugees nearby) and the third school I couldn’t catch end credits, (as too many words roll too quickly), were good sampling of what happiness can mean to some. The film is about the PROCESS not a product. It is about the very idea that in lives of teachers and students there’s little happiness in regular curriculum. By rote we learn to earn notes! That’s our education system, which only recently has become Indianised. The worst part of the evening was a typical academician trying to intellectualise happiness! He missed the total point the film made. Just be. Don’t pontificate. Most social scientists also must earn their salary and keep their jobs, so they create division in society: then it was not like this – an innocent comment in the film – was magnified and made to sound like NOW there’s a huge divide! Wow, seems this fellow in post-film discussion had neither heard of nor suffered the Partition of India, of which I’m a grandchild or direct descendant.

Descending on Delhi for a second tenure at the only cultural institution that’s truly operational and functional – the IGNCA – is Dr Sachchidanand Joshi, who got a second term, finally, after months of being given six months extensions. He has, in the last six years:

1. Revived a comatose institution
2. Activated it with programming
3. Helped outreach virtually
4. Provided leadership in C19 times
5. Shifted a massive 24-acre institution in Central Vista, with 300 plus staff et al, to 200 renovated rooms of old hotel Janpath
6. Given artistes a platform and some earnings
7. Motivated staff, trusted them
8. Helped many other programmes of the Ministry of Culture, like managing content and deliveries for Amrit Mahotsav in Tanjore, Baroda and more to come
9. Trustees trust him and he takes them along
10. He came, he saw, he conquered. From Raipur to Rajpath that’s Delhi, the seat of govt. power and patronage

IGNCA Member Secretary Dr Sachchidanand Joshi

Dashavtar! That’s Sachchidanand Joshi for you. Sabhya, Suljhe, Samajhdar. In his second tenure as Member Secretary, he hopes to do lots more nationally and internationally. More power to him. Culture begins at home. His mother is a renowned Hindi litterateur, a Padma Shri no less, Dr Malati Joshi. His wife, Malavika Joshi, is a theatre artiste and educationist. The Joshi family is a complete package! They represent the heart and soul of India. By their cultured behaviour. True culture is inborn. Cannot be bought in a mall.

The idea of Indian culture is being abused of late. There’s inverse pleasure in putting down anything Indian. Western models and lifestyle we want to copy but their work ethics or discipline? Everyone loves to criticise the government, especially a democratically-elected PM. Elected twice. I just ask them: do you have a better choice? No answer. They can’t even come up with a name but they must put a good (mass) leader down. True, there are fissures in society but weren’t these there before? Give the man credit for simple things, if not big. 700 million – read- my- lips – 700 plus million double dose vaccinated! No country has achieved that. That’s whole Europe and America put together. I was driving from Baroda to Shirdi recently. Superb six-lane roads coming up where there were dirt tracks. I went Banglore to Tanjore by road two months ago, wow, what roads. Gadkari works quietly, too. Sitting in Delhi, or sipping champagne in farmhouses of Chandigarh or summer houses of Mussoorie, it is easy to criticise but wake up India. It is happening, right under your nose. Join in to build the India model, don’t just find fault. There’s a national resurgence of things Indian or spirit of India. Let’s celebrate the wonder that is India.

This column will profile one event that made a difference; one person and one idea. In case, you didn’t notice, that’s what I’ve just done above!

Ashish Mohan Khokar is a reputed authority on Indian arts and culture, with 40 years
of exemplary work in the field. He is also hailed as the gold standard of art journalism.
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