O
please dance in jeweled shoes in my heart,
And
hurt not your feet on the rocky slopes of the Himalayas.
-
Adi Shankaracharya
Dance
was the language of Shiva’s heart, the accompanying `damru’ was his very
heartbeat as legends tell. His dance is significant because it symbolizes the
joyous dance of the soul within oneself. In Northern India, Shiva dancing with
rhythm and grace with the Veena is known as Veenadhara, As Nataraja and
Dakshinamurti, he is the Lord of Dance and Knowledge respectively.
Shiva,
is day, Parvati is night. Shiva is time in eternity and Shakti is energy in
cosmic space. Shiva is Purush, Parvati his Prakriti. He, is Tandava, she is
Lasya. The two are actually one – different aspects of one reality. Shiva and
Shakti represent the polar aspects of the one essence of life – The
Ardhanarishwara. The great Sanskrit poet and playwright, Kalidas described them
as an inseparable union of Vak and arth, word and meaning. Chhandam
is my blog to the beating heart that resides within the Eternal Man and Woman.
Chhandam,
itself is a journey to discover the inherent rhythm that controls all creation
and subsequently all performing arts.
There
is rhythm in our breath, in our heartbeats, rhythm in the way we move, rhythm in the
swaying of the palm fronds and in the ebb and fall of waves, rhythm in sunrise
and sunset, rhythm in life and death, rhythm in take-off and landing – that’s Chhandam!
