Appreciating art, the sensible way.

I witnessed something spectacular last evening.

I was riding down through a little deserted road, which is usually considered to be a short cut to my place. The more I went ahead, more desolate the road turned out to be . Then this happened.

I came across a lonely old temple decorated with Diyas on the side of the road and a cross dresser (clad inDhoti, Gamcha and a tilak on the forehead) dancing to the tune of Bhikari Bala music coming out of the temple. The classical dance moves along with the ecstatically pleased expressions were pure ‘poetry’.

The pure and unadulterated pleasure that it was savouring out of the dance, music and devotion was something divine. There was no expectation for applaud, standing ovation, felicitation or any other form of attention from the world outside. It was something like art for art’s sake, complete in itself .

I am not sure whether it was a moment of epiphany for me or not, but It was definitely a wow moment for me when I realised a cross dresser probably working in an adjacent dhaba, savouring pure pleasure out of the dance, music and unconditional devotion can teach the world ‘how to appreciate aesthetics ’ at a point of time when poets earn lakhs of rupees reading poems in poetry festival, dancers compete to win shows for a lucrative amount and singers kill each other to win the rate race.