TV AND PREACHERS-3

The daughter of a woman student of astrology came with her mother for consultation sometime in April 2006. In each country one lives in , the recent socio-economic developments must be taken into account before advising and guiding. I looked at her horoscope and asked her if she had learnt classical dancing. She had, she said, for full five years she said and had also given some performances.

I discourage these young women from taking to classical dancer’s career as while there are private mehfils held for classical music singers, even this opening is not available to them these days. At any rate, that would be demeaning if such an opening had existed and will carry ignominy with as it had many decades ago when Rukmini Arundale had rescued it from houses of ill fame and revived it nearly eighty years ago in south India though that was Bharat Natyam.

In the north, Kathak has been divided between Lucknow and Jaipur gharanas with their rivalries and quarrels. Those quarrels cannot carry them anywhere these days as their presence is hardly noticed these days even in a group of elitist artistes.

Pre television era

But I know of many famous dancers of India who reached the top in the pre-television era of India or say before 1990 when except Doordarshan, private television channels were unknown. Now the present day channels are more interested in showing those lewd dancers and their pieces as “news items”.

Classical dance , like classical music has no opening left through this medium. The popularity of television represents or coincides with the decline of finer culture and the classical, perhaps everywhere in the world, the triumph of the vulgar over the sublime. You now have generations of Indians who have not heard good classical music and seen classical dances in long whole night performances. A television set at home and titillating pieces have come to stay with the fast tabloidization of the media in India. She was surprised and so was her mother. What would be her career then ?

Here comes in the difficulty. Learnt dancing, studied commerce as a subject and I see a career in airlines, I said.

It surprised them. Being a Delhi girl ,neither she nor her parents would object to such a career these days. She is smart, beautiful, talks like most of the Delhi girls, good English. She applied for the post of air hostess in various airways. She was dejected when she got rejected once. I told her that her luck would improve after February 2007, not before. Who, some decades ago, would have advised a girl in India to take to such a career and how many parents would have agreed ?

She wrote to me an email and came to meet me with her mother. A decent girl who gave a timely feedback.

From:r s

<rs@mail.com>

|To: k_n_rao@rediffmail.com,

knrastro@hotmail.com, kn_rao@yahoo.com

Subject: Namaste guru ji

Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:33:23 IST

Namaste Guru Ji,

As you predicted I have cleared my interview in Jet Airways on 8th of march as an airhostess.Thank you guru ji.

With Regards

R. S.

Note: I am no one’s guru. She has chosen to address me as one !