Woodstock School Alumni Magazine Vol CIV, 2011
Woodstock School Alumni Magazine Vol CIV, 2011
Woodstock School Alumni Magazine Vol CIV, 2011
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20 - Quadrangle<br />
But the artist’s life is truly different. It’s like<br />
balancing on the highwire with no safety<br />
net, and the ground below is littered with<br />
those who fell off. Not just in the case of<br />
financial security of which there is none,<br />
but in the case of a misjudgment, an over<br />
estimation of one’s own talent. That talent<br />
has to have a spine of great integrity, an<br />
insight, an instinct for what is true and good<br />
and beautiful—Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram.<br />
One cannot exist without the other. Art, when<br />
it is great, is like a mystical experience. An<br />
experience of harmony and joy, a fleeting<br />
glimpse of divinity.<br />
Because it is the divinity in great art that<br />
touches the divine in each one of us with<br />
whom it communicates. But it is a long, long<br />
road, a long, long quest to get there.<br />
Are you prepared for all this unknown? You<br />
who are just eighteen and dew beaded fresh<br />
in your hair?<br />
Maybe some of you are. If you are lucky you<br />
will have a good arts school to carry you a<br />
little further on. Even if you do not find one<br />
you will still be an artist if it is inside you.<br />
I told you about a fairy tale start to Gopal<br />
and my lives. We are blessed to have had,<br />
to still have each other. Not that we have not<br />
experienced pain and want and going without,<br />
and people not able to see what we are doing.<br />
When we first met Gopal wrote this for me:<br />
A Woman<br />
A woman is not made: she happens, like<br />
The rainbow which just happens. She is<br />
The sun, the wind-chased cloud, the<br />
Evening, raintime and rainend<br />
But the rainbow —<br />
She just happens.<br />
And between the tips of the arch then<br />
I am strung like the string on<br />
A bow. Or better, like the singing string<br />
On a lute.<br />
Pluck me woman and see how I sing,<br />
This high strung string!<br />
Probably the most important lesson art<br />
teaches one is to focus on what one is doing<br />
so strongly, so intently, that one ’s self disappears,<br />
only the work remains. You are doing it<br />
to tell someone, something inside you, that is<br />
precious. The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas said:<br />
In My Craft and Sullen Art<br />
Exercised in the still night<br />
When only the moon rages<br />
And the lovers lie abed<br />
With all their griefs in their arms,<br />
I labour by singing light<br />
Not for ambition or bread<br />
Or the strut and trade of charms<br />
On the ivory stages<br />
But for the common wages<br />
Of their most secret heart.<br />
Not for the proud man apart<br />
From the raging moon I write<br />
On these spindrift pages,<br />
Nor for the towering dead<br />
With their nightingales and psalms<br />
But for the lovers, their arms<br />
Round the grief of the ages,<br />
Who pay no praise or wages.<br />
Nor heed my craft or art.<br />
Jalabala Vaidya is a stage actress who has<br />
had a lifelong passion for opera and western<br />
classical music. Ms. Jalabala Vaidya is<br />
the Secretary of Akshara National Classical<br />
Theatre of India which was founded by poetplaywright<br />
Gopal Sharman, her husband.<br />
Akshara Theatre is well known for its theatrical<br />
productions, like the “Ramayana”, and<br />
is a non-profit making, non-governmental<br />
organization, established with the purpose of<br />
presenting live theatrical performances and<br />
to make recordings and films of drama, music,<br />
dance and poetry.<br />
Presented by Sareega Shetty ’10 on<br />
behalf of her grandmother, Jalabala<br />
Vaidya.<br />
Milestone Reunions<br />
Do you remember your graduation?<br />
What better way to celebrate your anniversary than by revisiting<br />
<strong>Woodstock</strong>.<br />
Take your seat again in Parker Hall. Walk the path from Hostel and<br />
Midlands – and bemoan the passing of years as you remember<br />
how you used to run up the hill! Walk the chakkar and see the<br />
snow peaks again.<br />
The <strong>Alumni</strong> Office can help you make your milestone reunion<br />
special by booking hotels, arranging transport from Delhi and<br />
organizing activities within the school.<br />
Contact Monica Roberts, <strong>Alumni</strong> Secretary, for more information<br />
at alumni@woodstock.ac.in.