A thing as too much beauty
But maybe that's why we need art: to know that beauty is not a perfect, solid, happy thing. It is, indeed, too much: kuchh zyaada hi, spilling out of conventional definitions.
"Kuchh zyaada hi beauty hai, in classical dance. Life isn't like that, na?"
After spending two days of rehearsals with musicians, I don't lie when I say, I have been wondering whether there is such a thing as too much beauty. There were some moments today, while the music and the dancers soared together, and I had too look away because it was too much for my little imploding heart to handle. I couldn't handle the fact that this world of art is just so intense, so vibrant, so goddamn alive: and that world of life that I live the rest of my time, although filled with the same emotions, is just so scattered, so random, so arbitrary.
But maybe that's why we need art: to know that beauty is not a perfect, solid, happy thing. It is, indeed, too much: kuchh zyaada hi, spilling out of conventional definitions.
Even the beauty of intense love has a dark lining when we experience it in Odissi - so sweet that it hurts to watch, like it did for me this morning. And its dark moments - of deeply sorrowful Radhas, raging blood-drinking yoginis, horrifying cremation ground night scenes where Shiva dances - have something oddly enjoyable about them. I can't take my eyes off, though my insides are on total recoil. The ugly too, is some kind of beautiful.
I sort of get it now, why perfect & beautiful things make me cry. (And also why everyone I know has been awed by Game of Thrones.) There is an invisble, quiet irony called beauty everywhere: in our lives, our world, each moment of our days. And nowhere do we glimpse it as brightly and intensely as in the way it makes us feel, when we recognise it in art.
Photo credit: Gaurav Aggarwal. Photo art: Jaya Mehta