Capital time

There’s a certain cognitive dissonance in saying that residents of Delhi are among the luckiest in the world. But when temperatures dip and the number of cultural events multiply dizzyingly, presenting options as diverse as mushaira and qawwali, desert tunes from the dunes, jazz, ghazal, stand-up comedy, heritage walks, flamenco dance, Sufi singing, a cappella, 80-piece philharmonic orchestras, Sindhi folk music, Jamaican ska and psy-trance, an Aga Khan Foundation sponsored Apni Basti mela — and most of them free and accessible to all — then that dissonance between reality and belief vanishes.

Several of these are partly-funded by the Delhi government — yup, it may not be able to keep the city clean or provide water, electricity or other basic infrastructure to its residents, but no one can deny its commitment to keeping the cultural river flowing freely.

Each year, the number and diversity of events go up, adding to the “regular” art openings and book releases, as well as annual festivals like Ananya, the Indian classical dance festival held against the background of the Old Fort ruins, or Bookaroo children’s litfest or Nigah queerfest — something for everyone — but overwhelming in its entirety.

Today, to my delight, I find indie culture gaining ground. Whether it is music, theatre, films, stand-up comedy or other icons of contemporary culture, the fringes are moving in. And better still, over time, the quality of most of these events has improved.

In all of this noise, I found a couple of events that cut across cultural fault lines, in formats that are fresh — and designed to engage the attention of the young by speaking to them in their language.

Now, I’m enough of a stick-in-the mud to want to keep our classical and traditional art forms pure — we need those in order to know who we are and anchor our identity. I’m also old enough to not enjoy psychedelic techno and rave or edgy, open-ended stream of consciousness narratives. But I like to see young people enjoying whatever works for them, as long as it touches their mind, heart, soul or spirit and they can derive some meaning from it.

In a hyperconnected world where external cultures are quickly absorbed (and now, it’s a two-way process, as the viral success of Tam-glish “Kolaveri di” proves) the first thing that struck me was that these platforms are no longer being created in an in an off-hand I-still-haven’t-found-what-I’m-looking-for sort of way, but are well designed and thought through.

For example, the India Music Week — featuring 40 artists from 10 countries performing at 40 venues in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru over seven days, playing jazz, blues, folk, electronica, rock, Jamaican Ska dance music and psychedelic trance — went way beyond being just a music festival. By organising a two-day music conference, aimed at providing a platform for musicians and their support structures to engage in conversations and help build their knowledge base and offer networking opportunities with global music professionals, it raised the entire event head and shoulders above others.

Similarly, the high-energy Short+Sweet 10-minute theatre festival did a great job of collecting existing local talent and mixing it up with fresh, young blood in a crisply-edited format that easily found that sweet spot between pop culture and its more highbrow counter-cultures. What made it interesting was its interactive platform where audience votes decided the winning play, in a reality TV-meets-Indian Idol sort of way. Independent judges embedded in the audience helped maintain quality control.

Short+Sweet began in Australia 10 years ago and has since, spread to Singapore, Malaysia and India (Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, and next Bangalore, in February 2012). “We want to encourage fresh talent. And we have a very strong theatre development and local community focus,” says Michael Wood, a diplomat-on-leave who brought the fest to India last year. “There’s something precious about being able to do something meaningful in 10 minutes that would get diluted if it was longer,” says Wood. And perhaps, it’s a testimony to how short our attention spans have become in the Age of Twitter that the only way to grab eyeballs is to keep it short — and electrifying.

Jyoti Pande Lavakare is a Delhi-based writer