Kalakshetra
I lived for several months each year for three years at , an art school of classical South Indian dance and music just south of (Chennai, India).
Shortly after sunrise each day, all the teachers and young girls and boys join together in prayers beneath the lateral roots of an immense banyan tree. There, they sing hymns to the universal God and to the many Gods and Goddesses whose rituals they individually observe. The only image in this sacred spot is an ancient stone sculpture of , the elephant-headed God of Beginnings — an appropriate and gentle acknowledgment for the beginning of the day’s activities.
My working day there was regularly interrupted by the chanting of groups of children who, as they walked from class to class, would sing out in unison the complex percussion rhythms that their feet would be required to duplicate later in dance classes. Ta ta, tik ka tik ka tik ta ta, tik tik ta ta, tik ka tik ka ta ta tik. Their repetitions became ingrained deeply within my soul so that late at night, years later, I still hear them in the midst of my sleep.
is an art historian, author, curator, cultural anthropologist, and photographer conducting a lifelong survey of the art and people of India, chronicled in his memoir, . A curator for more than twenty-five museum exhibitions of Indian art, Huyler is a leading photographer of India, with solo exhibitions at the Smithsonian, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and the Kodak Center for Creative Imaging. Huyler’s previous books include Sonabai: Another Way of Seeing (Mapin Press, 2009), Daughters of India: Art and Identity (Abbeville Press & Mapin Publications, 2008), Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion (Yale University Press, 1999), Gifts of Earth: Terracottas & Clay Sculptures of India (Mapin Press, 1996), Village India, Mud, Mirror, and Thread: Folk Traditions of Rural India (Museum of New Mexico Press, 1994), and Painted Prayers: Women’s Art in Village India (Rizzoli International, 1994).
