Delhi’s art and culture scene in deep decay
global antique smugglers (to know more of this blight, read a truecrime book by S Vijay Kumar); after that visit, the National Museum is forgotten for the next decade or two. The culture ministry or the Delhi government could remedy this by developing and hawking a Capital museum circuit, but they are at loggerheads with each other due to relentless political rivalry.
Similarly is the music scene. When I arrived in Delhi in late 1986, the centrally located Mandi House roundabout with its galleries and auditoriums was a place one could reliably find a musical or theatrical performance to attend. Music performances pop up in winters, in the Nehru Park or Garden of Five Senses near Saket, where recently Carnatic maestro TM Krishna was invited by the Delhi government to perform in front of an overflowing audience after the airports authority (run by the central government) disinvited him because of his antipathy to majoritarianism.
However, the musical fare is scant and for the average citizen, invisible. Worse is the scene for Western classical music. I listen to as much Western classical music as possible either on YouTube or on Amazon Prime. YouTube exposes you to how many world capitals have philharmonic orchestras: besides American cities and European capitals, the East Asian capitals have their own conductors and concert halls. Dubai has an opera house. Sydney has an opera house, though Australia is not famous for its classical music or musicians. Indeed, many of the best modern pianists are from East Asia, an important point to be made to bone-headed pseudo-nationalists who think that appreciating Western art is slavish or unpatriotic.
I began learning the piano in May, a month before I turned 54. An illness in April kept me at home during which I watched Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece,
and decided to immerse myself in western classical music. I had no previous training or ability but I now cherish my time at the piano, my refuge from the world. One of my recent daydream fantasies is being a concert pianist but I come awake to the cold realisation that Delhi will never have an orchestra. The children at the music school seem to be sent by their middle-class parents who don’t expect them to become musicians but money machines. Delhi has no patrons of the arts to dream of an orchestra.
Forget about having an orchestra, Delhi is unlikely to ever invite a Western conductor and orchestra to perform because it has neither the facilities nor, I shamefully confess, the class to do so. This must be one of the advantages of living in Dubai over Delhi: you have the option of immersion in classical arts.
The other problem with art appreciation in India’s national capital is that venues sit in the centre of Delhi which has again become a collection of villages. Traffic is frustrating to the point of tears; in the summer it’s too hot and in the winter it’s too polluted to travel; if you travel for work, it’s not a family visit so you don’t plan for visits to a museum, etc; and since everyone’s daily needs are locally available, no one is motivated to travel out of their localities for an afternoon.
No wonder, then, that Delhi is so philistine a place as to be insufferable. Art is a bridge to the unknown, a point of departure to the endless possibilities the mind and the universe hold. If politics globally has grown more nativist, then art is eternal, transcendental and global. More than ever, we all need art as an antidote to the times into which the planet has descended. A city’s character is, after all, defined by its access to art.
One of the advantages of living in Dubai over Delhi: you have the option of immersion in classical arts.
VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THESE COLUMNS DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF