Tossing the hat . . .Declaring the creation of VIDYARTHI SAMMAN...

http://pixandthoughts.blogspot.com

Dear Friends,

I want to share something that I have taken on.

About 7 years back there was a sudden pack up declared at the location of the first Tamil film I had signed,Pugall(The film never got completed) ...We were shooting in the Wayanad hills.. Though my village Dharmadam, was a good 5 hours away,I for some reason,chose to drive down to spend the night there before catching the Flight next morning from Calicut..

As I took the right turn from the Highway entering the vaguely familiar street lined with a few shops with tarpaulin awnings...

Dusk had already fallen,very few people were to be seen and still fewer pale yellow street bulbs lit them,as they walked back to their homes..

I was going home,to "Chaillaiyil house" on the Andalur temple road. The house where my Father Govind Vidyarthi was born in 1912.

As my red Qualis stopped by our boundary,(no gates in that part of the world) Mukund da,Ranji chi,Viji chi,Balan Aitan... and many more smiling faces enveloped me...The tiredness of the drive and the disappointment of an aborted debut project disappeared in the sea of love they showered on me,Govind Aita's son.

As Jethima,(I call her so,thanks to my bengali mother) clad in white hugged me,held my hands,and kept looking at me,her eyes watery ...There was Malayalam in the air...Every one was speaking to me in a language that I didn't know,but that evening,as every time there...I UNDERSTOOD EVERY WORD.

As we sat in the balcony,and occasionally spilled onto the courtyard,which was next to the well, where I had bathed many a times with bucket fulls of water drawn by Baba,when I visited during summer vacations as a child...


We sat amidst the mango and tamarind trees and the swishing of the coconut palms...

It was a dark night with no moon, lit only with love.


And it was then that a thought struck me.

I WAS A VERY LUCKY BEING...

Even in the environs of the city...I had experienced this love, affection and warmth every day of my life from my Father...

There was something about him that endeared him to all he came in touch with.

His smile,his calm,his purpose in life and his commitment to service...

He could have remained here in Dharmadam all his life like all his brothers, sisters and relatives...Yet by a strange quirk of fate and initiative,he stepped out,spent years travelling...living many lives...and in one of them he married Reba.A Kathak teacher who had been a student of greats like Achhan Maharaj and Shambhu Maharaj...

And to Ma,Baba I was born.

And today at I had returned to the village .

(I would be in the village again on another momentous occasion,on the night when Baba was being cremated in Mumbai on 29th Aug 2006. The last rites being done by Ma,his life's partner,while his only son was away...but that will be the subject of another sharing.)

My father had stepped out of this village in District Cannanore ,Kerala in the 1930s and did what he did with his life....

Academics,theology,politics and finally arts...Including accomplished sojourns into allied fields.

He impacted many lives,was loved by many more and yet he remained by far the epitome of the "unknown Indian".

Many well known experts would visit us in our house in Laxmi Nagar in East Delhi. They would spend days and hours recording what he spoke in answer to their queries...He would readily share his notes his research papers, anecdotes from over years of working on the field ...be it during the Freedom struggle or in the years he spent documenting the various performing arts in the remotest regions of India while working in the SANGEET NATAK AKADEMY,Delhi..

Then the books would be published by these authors,with Baba's name mentioned in the acknowledgements...in alphabetical order...

I never ever saw Baba ruing this,but It would really hurt me,to see him go unrecognized...


As I was growing up,I did fantasize,that I will become famous one day and know enough important people who would be on some committees and then will 'manage' my father to be given an award for his contributions...

And then, few years back I realized,that this is not something that would reflect choices Baba made in his life.

For someone who never applied for Freedom Fighters pension or for land from the govt from the freedom fighters quota,this would be the ultimate humiliation.

I also realized,that millions before Baba have gone unrecognized,and millions more will be treated in much the same way.


That's when I thought of creating something that would really befit his memory...

Of celebrating the common person,whose extra ordinariness is never feted...

I thought of a yearly felicitation,for the unknown,unsung and the unrecognized.


And that was the seed for VIDYARTHI SAMMAN...