First step to Temple Town Tales (Day 1)

We started the first class by our Introduction.

Introduction, which wasn’t ordinary.

Introduction which lead us to know about ourselves in a way we had never known before.

Introduction which lead us to our ancestors,

Which lead us to an encounter to our community

Community which is long lost and is no longer being cared about

Community whose authenticity is bygone.

Bloodline traits which were unmapped in the new world of machines instead of machine makers.

This task helped us to discover our as well as other communities across India and helped us understand why it is important to know one’s community and helped us to map some formations of communities and their culture along with geography. While discussing about everyone’s communities and origin, we realised how much each community is different but same. Every community has its own identity, own festivals, own thinkings etc.

It is important to know the communities around us as we are directly affected by them as the communities were made by people like me and you and they have been moulded by the events caused in years by people like me and you. 

There is a beauty in every culture, every community. When we delve deeper into them we realise that there is an intricate beautiful pattern in which community works and is held together by people. Every culture says a story. A story which is unique and directly affects the community.

In today’s world, community does exist but not in cultural sense. People no longer feel  the cultural belongingness. The world is changing and so is the meaning of belongingness and communities.

From this course I wish to get more sense of belongingness, culture, communities and how are events affected by them.

The second task of the day was to present an Indian dance and share some insights about the dance to the class. My group chose garba from Gujarat as we wanted to present that this vibrant 9 day festival called navratri’s one form of worshipping in form of dance.

While doing this I gained more insights on dance forms and how they affect human’s body and how different regions developed a certain kind of dance form and how is it related to human health as well as culture.

After this we had a class discussion on a story on chappal. Chappal which says a story by being completely worn out. Every gone layer did leave a mark on chappal at the same time making breathing space to chappal, laying it bare to ground, the thicks and thins of ground, unlayering the set reality, unlayering the defined boundaries leaving the foot bare to thought so that it can wander without dimensions.