It was a visit to a homeopath in the National Capital Region for a minor ailment back in the 1980s that led me to a major realisation about the way people outside the art field saw the world of artists. “What do you do?” asked the doctor. On hearing that her patient was involved in Bharatanatyam, the good lady looked up from her note taking, startled. “Oh, that is a terrible field! My late husband worked in All India Radio, and he said it was such a dangerous place, he never let the children near his office,” she said. “He would say, ‘I can get their names announced as many times as they like, but don’t let them come here.’ That’s how dangerous it was,” she babbled on, till it seemed I was the one who should be taking notes. Removing my potentially dangerous presence from her clinic, I left, bewildered as to what could be lurking in the music studios of Akashvani or the flower filled roundabout of Mandi House.
I quickly changed doctors. The decades passed, Mandi House eventually acquired a state-of-the-art metro station, and the roundabout with its flowers — like much of Delhi — was hidden behind the trappings of a more ‘modern’ city. But for many people in this hardworking metropolis, the hallmark of art and artists continues to be that dangerous scent of the forbidden, that refusal to fit into socially accepted norms.
Carnatic vocalist T.V. Manikandan feels there is a kind of “taboo” associated with the artist’s life in the minds of people shackled by middle class notions of propriety. Therefore they hesitate to let their children learn the arts, even in hobby classes. As for serious artists, those immersed in their vocation to such an extent that they can’t be tied down by society’s notions of propriety, they may well, with students who are equally immersed (and adult), go beyond the boundary of the strictly conventional teacher-student relationship. “We know of many guru and shishya partnerships like that,” he says. “The rest of society thinks this is just an attraction between two people, but their mindset is beyond the mundane.”
He also contends that in the classical arts field, the shishya is not as bound to one guru as, say, a research scholar might be to the research guide or a corporate employee to the boss. In these two cases, the power of authority might compel the subordinate to accede to unwanted advances, but if a student finds the guru’s behaviour unwelcome the student can easily move to another guru. Also, in the case of immersed artists, such a reaching out might ensue even “unintentionally” on the part of the teacher, says Manikandan. It is also true, he concedes, there are not many such immersed artists to be found. “If they are doing it intentionally, then there is no art.” Therefore, he feels, the same yardstick cannot be applied in judging the actions of those in the field of art. “If something is intentionally done, then where is the artist’s creation? But out of this creation, if some relationship happens, where is no issue (of coercion, etc.), in that case we cannot accuse the teacher also.”
Having laid out his views, he points out that though a concert performer himself, he doesn’t call himself an artist. “I feel I am in the profession (not in the art). We are caught up in so many other things.” As a university teacher too, he cannot let himself flow freely in artistic pursuits alone and must let mundane concerns enter his mind space. But most artists are what he calls “job seekers,” peddling their art for money. They take students for the fees they bring in, regardless of whether they have an aptitude or not. In such a scenario, if the teacher should attempt to go beyond the norms of the teacher-taught relationship, the transgression on the part of the guru would be “inexcusable”.
“Why do we do namaskaram to the guru?” he asks. Is it not because the guru is supposed to be wiser and a guide to the student? Thus those who take advantage of their position cannot be excused, nor considered artists, he says.
