By Narayani Ganesh

From Dec to mid-Jan, Chennai is a mecca for music lovers with its hugely popular festival of performing arts, culminating in Pongal festivities that celebrate the harvest. One such concert by Ashwini Bhide of the Jaipur Gharana, organised by National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), stood out not only for a superb performance but also for the tagline that read: Aadi Anant – from here to eternity, the timelessness of Indian music.

Suvarnalata of NCPA points out that the concept of eternity is integral to Indian philosophy, where time is viewed as being cyclic rather than linear. “In Tantric Buddhism, too, the concept of cyclical time, Kalachakra, points to an incessant cycle of existence and knowledge. Human history shows that even the greatest of civilisations thrived only for a specific period. But the wisdom and experience collected over generations seem to live on, setting the tone for the overarching philosophy of a specific community,” she says.

Creative minds emerge in every generation, leading to exploration of new horizons. Creative expressions may be rooted in tradition, but they also bloom in contemporary thought processes, leading to a blending of tradition and modern expressions. Says Suvarnalata, “The process is vital for ushering in changes that help to refresh and redefine traditions, which otherwise might remain stagnant and risk slowly becoming irrelevant, eventually to perish, over the years.”

Culture, many aspects of which are often confused with dogmatic religion, tends to adapt and evolve over time, discarding a few things and embracing other, newer elements, in its effort to stay relevant and contemporary rather than get fossilised and forgotten. Just as language, cuisine, dress, birth and death rituals are all cultural, so, too, creative expressions like the performing arts and other art forms like painting and sculpture tend to evolve with time even as some stay purely traditional, with their own flavour of time, space and context. So, you have fusion, innovation, and you have pure tradition, each with its own space.

Religion, spirituality and culture are not cast in stone. All of these evolve with time, just as our own thoughts and behaviours do. Change is of the essence. The only aspect that perhaps remains constant is ethical considerations –that no act should hurt another.

No stepping on another’s toes. Ahimsa paramo dharm – Non-violence is the supreme dharm, duty. Anything that is eternal, timeless, infinite, cannot be bound. For, the nature of anant is boundlessness. There are infinite ways to invite joy and happiness into our lives.

Adi Anant is another name for Shiv, who with neither origin nor end, is said to exist even when nothing else does, for he is a symbol of creation, sustenance and destruction in an endless cycle, just as time is cyclical. A legend talks of how Brahma and Vishnu were in an argument and Shiv intervenes, asking them to look for his beginning and end. He takes the form of a blazing pillar of light, Jyotirlingam. Vishnu took the form of a boar and dug deep to find the source.

Brahma became abird and flew high up to observe the end. Neither were successful because what they were looking for was beginningless and endless – aadi and anant.

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