Sujavna1:5

Giri at 12 noon on March 27^th

Welcome to another great day, another Sunday that prepares each of us for an eventful and enriching week ahead.

Yesterday my wife and I attended a wonderful performance of a medley of Indian classical dance and music genres (Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music). The experiment of how two different genres of performing arts can inspire each other as well as the performance itself by Bombay Jayashree Ramnath and Priyadarshani Govind were truly entertaining and educative. An interesting observation was that the audience essentially comprised of South Indians with probably 5% belonging to people from North India and probably another 5% belonging to the “white” expat community. And, I wondered: What if the performance itself was preceded by an introductory 30 minute audio-visual appreciation lecture on Bharatnatyam and Carnatic music art forms as well as on what the experiment of the evening was aimed at achieving? Would that have seen more interest amongst the non-South-Indian community in Mumbai to attend such a wonderful performance? It is high time that well-renowned performers of Indian classical art forms seek to use their own performances to “convert” new followers by adding an educative element to their performances apart from the entertaining element.

The week that went by also saw me travel to Delhi on an official visit. Gurgaon, indeed is a place of pride for every Indian who wants to showcase the growth of Indian cities as being worldclass in the architecture of its commercial buildings, its highways, its shopping malls. What is, however, pitiable (and this is true of almost every other Indian city) is the non-existence of any clear signage boards and local boards with streetmaps that can help a new visitor navigate within the city to locate addresses. It took me more than 20 minutes to locate 24B, Udyog Vihar, Phase 5, which is located in an area that houses the Trident hotel, the TCS office, amongst other well-known compounds. So what I would like to suggest is: Can we not make it mandatory for all local municipal authorities in Indian cities to create large fluorosecent boards with street maps at major road intersections and also have a call centre to help a visitor reach her/his destination using the best possible route? In the absence of a scientific and organised planning of city addresses, this may be a viable option.

I am signing off here, but I promise my next post on 2^nd April will have a lot more on some of the information and discussions that I am collating from the internet. So until then.....