Who gave you the right to abuse Indian culture in the name of culture?

I have to share this incident with all people who are true art lovers and understand Indian culture in the real sense. Well, this happened just a couple of days back and I was witness to an unnerving night of celebration. When I came out of the door after the event, just wondered what was celebrated and what was propagated?

As children we grew up learning that our rich heritage, our way of life and Art is our culture, today where do we get to see them, it is certainly a rarity. I planned for about a week ahead to make sure that I did not miss this cultural event which celebrates and propagates Indian Art and culture, this is an event organized by a legitimate Organization as part of their cross cultural Initiative, excited all week long looked forward to it and finally the day came, they had a regular meet and greet gala and the program started at 4.30PM, which I am glad started on time. The program started with a welcome speech and the first inaugural program as per the brochure distributed said Indian classical dance form and there comes the compere announcing a brief version of the richness of this classical dance…wow what just happened, classical dance to a Amir khan Bollywood song, this is not culture my dear, this is Bulture straight from Bollywood. I had loads of laughter; I had more adventure coming my way. Next is again a classical dance form from India, what was it this time, not surprised and advertisement commercial straight from the TV promoting Indian tourism of Kerala…hmmm good job all in the name of culture, this is how one can get away doing anything without stuff and the only skill you need is just be “street smart”. Another aspect worth mentioning is about, choreography and clothes, both the C’s were nowhere close to aesthetics, this is a easier strategy to getting famous faster in today’s time, sad that this strategy is gone beyond movies….

The next part of the program got more interesting with sheer murder of our folk dance forms, thanks to Bollywood dance and music which is like one size fits all; the next piece was the highlight with the dancer claiming to have a legitimate qualification, but has no teacher name or institute to talk about both in her profile nor in her compere, more like an “Anonymous type”. Well the only thing we could figure out that she was trying to attempt a very famous classical dance form, but to a disgrace it turned to be a sad version of a YouTube video of a very famous dancer from India who is considered as a great artist from India and recognized worldwide. How desperate can one get to be in the face of audience? Copy wow…

After all this, I just lived thru and was alive, then came this performance of a good artist, she stole the show, her presence for 10 mins took away all the pain that I went thru for the last 50 mins. She is a true dance lover and we could experience that throughout her performance. Kudos to her but I also feel sad that she had to share stage space with a very substandard lot of performers. Hence she stands to be ‘Best in the Worst’.

Coming back to my question, who are we - an individual an institute, who has this right to abuse Indian art and culture in the name of Culture? I strongly believe that there is right and wrong to everything, then stand up and have the guts to say we promote Bollywood why Classical. The word classical is such a divine part of our rich culture so closely woven to our heart through our Dance and Music, why does anybody want to showcase this in a wrong way on any platform?

I am so confused that we ourselves are bent upon damaging our identity and portraying this completely different from what it is, to other people leave alone people from other cultures what is happening to people from our culture who are day in and out either approving, acknowledging, witnessing, participating in such gruesome act of tarnishing our Indian Culture…  

This is what I felt like inking to all of you as an artist, art lover, critic whatever if not anything just an Indian who loves her country and the core values of who we are and what makes us unique from others…

At the end I am left with no answer but one question are we so beyond anything that we believe “any crap can sell”? If yes, all those dear legitimate organizations/ committee’s, just sit back once to think what happens to all those people who worked, are contributing unconditionally in passing on this rich art form with at most humbleness to our future generations…do we have any responsibility at all??? Please realize that if you are not directly qualified to contribute to art and culture, we all can still make a small difference in this world in our own capacity, and so NO to anything that may cause a smudge to the glowing culture.

Dance Guru

USA

Indian Dance costume stitching

For Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Mohiniyattam, Kathak dance forms

Stitching a Bharatanatyam dance costume or any other classical dance dress for your child has become such a cumbersome process nowadays. Especially if you live outside India, spending time to search for the correct color saree and finding a nice tailor is at least one full day’s work. The cloth shops in India are extremely crowded no matter what the season is and tailors are always busy. Unless you know the tailor personally, getting a dance dress stitched in couple of weeks is a herculean task. Needless to explain the process of taking measurement at the tailors place!

How about doing all this without leaving you house at your convenient time, and get the costume of your choice delivered to you within 5 weeks? This is exactly what you can do from our online store http://www.DanceCostumesAndJewelry.com. We have experienced tailors in Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Cochin and Delhi to make the costume of your choice at its own authenticity. Most of our Bharatanatyam dresses are stitched from Chennai or Coimbatore and the Mohiniyattam dresses are stitched at Cochin. We have tailors in Hyderabad and Delhi for making Kuchipudi, Odissi and Kathak dresses.

How does the process of stitching dance dress online works? Ok, we will explain the process of ordering your own custom stitched dance dress from beginning to end, in the following paragraphs. First you need to create an account in our online store. Creating an account is very important and has many advantages. Once you create an account and enter your shipping address, our store remembers it and you need not enter your address each time. However, for security reasons, we do not store your credit card number. You have to enter it each time you process an order with us. This gives you the flexibility to use any card for your order. We accept all major credit cards – VISA, Discover, MasterCard and American Express.

Before you place an order to stitch your dance costume, please open this page and see all the different types of dance costumes we stitch. Then click on the appropriate costume type. For example, if you want to stitch a Bharatanatyam dress, you would arrive at this webpage. You will see two pictures associated with this product - a line drawing and a photo of the dress. Open the line drawing and go through the measurements and the numbers associated with each measurement – for example the measurement number 8 is the sleeve size of your blouse. If you are the dancer, you need another person’s help to take the measurements. If your child is the dancer, you can take the measurements for her/him. Decide the color you want for the costume. We always ask for two choices because the sarees of a particular color and type may not be available all the time with our saree vendors.

When the dancer is ready, use a flexible tape to take the measurements and start in the order given in the website. Please see our YouTube video before you start. The first measurement you take will be height of the blouse. Please call us anytime if you have a question about how to take a measurement. You need to fill in all the columns before you click on the “add to cart” button. There is an option to mention the style of the dance costume. In this column, enter any comments you have such as – full covering blouse, 2 fans only, three fans etc…Also at the end of the page you will see the material type. The cost of the dress varies according to your selection. If you select the art silk material, the dress is less expensive and the Dharmavaram silk is most expensive. Make sure you selected the correct material and verify the price.

Once you completed all the measurement entries and clicked on “add to cart” the order will be placed on your cart. Nothing will happen until you pay. Since you are logged in, this will stay in your account, even if you log out of the system. You can come back next day and then place the order. When you are ready to place the order and have the credit card ready, go to your cart and “Proceed to check out”. You need to enter the credit card info in the next page. After entering all the necessary information, proceed to complete the order and you are done. Please make sure you have received an email from us confirming the order. If you have not received the email, check your spam folder. Please note the order ID and write down it in a safe place. You need to mention this number if you need to call us to enquire the status of the order.

As soon as we receive your order, our order processing staff in India will start looking for the correct color sarees and materials in our stock. We usually have the stock of most of the fast moving colors in Art Silk and Apoorva Silk. They will also see which tailor is suitable for this dance costume depending upon the type of the dress and how busy each tailor is. If we have the suitable saree, it will be given to the tailor immediately along with the measurement. The tailors will go through the measurements and check if everything is OK. If they see any discrepancies, they will call us and report the issue and will not stitch the costume until we give a green signal. Once cleared, they stitch the costume and send it to our shipping center. From that place your costume will be shipped to our warehouse in Indiana, US. Once it reaches here, we verify the costume for color and measurements again, before shipping out to you.

Thank you for reading and hope this will help you to make the order placing easier.

Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple will be the richest Hindu Temple in the world

Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple will the richest Hindu temple in the entire world !!! As of last week, while the stock taking was only 70% complete, the estimated value of thousands of precious stones, Gold necklaces, Gold deities and other valuable jewelry were about 11 billion US dollars.

Other items found today includes several Gold statues each weighing almost 5 pounds and Gold Jewelry necklaces as long as 3.5 meters and crowns decorated with Emeralds, Diamonds and Rubies. They also found a 4 feet tall statue of Lord Vishnu made of Gold.

It was identified by a special committee appointed by Supreme court that temple has a total of six chambers. With couple of chambers yet to be opened and the first chamber accounting ending Saturday (2 July 2011), it is expected that the inventory process may continue for a few more days.

The list of Jewelry and other valuables in the treasure found in Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple are:

Hundred thousand Gold Coins, Precious Diamonds like Indraneelam, Belgium Diamonds, Emeralds, Rubies,
Thousand Sarappoli Gold Chains, Rare Priceless Gems, Gold Crowns like Kulashekharaperumal Crown,
Kashu Mala Necklaces, 400 Gold Necklaces with Marathakam stone, Gold Plates (Swarna Thalika), Gold Chains of about 18 ft, Golden Idol of Padmanabha Swamy, Gold Dhanuss, Gold Pathakams, 4 Feet tall Golden statue of Lord Vishnu with precious emeralds, Golden Umbrellas, Gold Pots, Kumbheeyam, Gold/Silver Nilavilakku, Other Kerala traditional Jewelry of various kind.

Hope all the wealth is used for good purpose / growth of the state and the polititians do not steal it as usual.

Bharatanatyam costume color selection

At http://www.dancecostumesandjewelry.com/  you can submit the measurements accurately online and select the color of dance costumes as you wish. There is no limitation. In fact you can even upload a photo of the sample dance dress you have in mind too. We have tailors in different states in India. Most of our Bharatantyam dresses are stitched in Chennai and the Kuchipudi dresses are stitched in Hyderabad. Here are some samples of fast moving dress colors we do. This is to just give you an idea. We do not limit the color combination or style of the dance dress as we mentioned earlier. We have skirt style and pant style Bharatanatyam dress. Also we have 2 fan and 3 fan Bharatanatyam dance costumes. In our online store, you decide the color, style and the material. We make sure you get what you want in time.

Also we have many designs of imitation and real temple jewelry for Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi dance styles

Below we have shown some art silk material Bharatanatyam costumes.

To see more models and pictures, please visit http://www.dancecostumesandjewelry.com/ and explore the possibilities.
















We will update more photos of other dance styles.

Till then - have fun dancing...

Team http://www.dancecostumesandjewelry.com/