Woodstock School Alumni Magazine Vol CIV, 2011

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