I let the pitcher drift away

As I encounter Mohini Chandra’s moving image piece Belated, I reflect on the delicate shimmer and sound of the dancer’s anklets chiming alongside the poetic melody of Tagore’s words...

As I stand at the crossroads of my life, I turn over in my mind the questions that may guide my movement. What will I find when I take this step? Will it be towards the future, or perhaps a welcome retreat into the past?

It would be easy to wallow in the comfort of what has been before, to smile at memories of happier times and a normality that we did not even know was normal. We could frown at the current physical manifestation of horrors that we have never previously encountered. Touch has become an abnormality; smiles are hidden behind masks. Our communities have fractured yet further now that our encounters have moved from the physical and personal to the digital and distanced.

Shall we then be guided, unthinkingly, into a cycle of ever-decreasing circles of encounter, or do we brave a step into the physical realm towards our humanity?

It is no easy choice for us to consider and face challenges alone in today’s world, especially when the outcomes are uncertain and our potential interactions with one another are untested. I struggle with the decision to move into a space that may bring me before the judgement of others and their fearful reactions to my movement through what used to be our public space. My belief in our shared humanity and our deep-seated psychological and physical need for one another sparks my first step. The new world begins.

My travels have brought me to a hallowed place where the water flows and the grass grows. As the water beckons and I walk along the riverside, I pass the ancient church ringed with yew trees in the springtime. Tagore’s footsteps preceded mine. While we saw the same things, not all our senses are engaged.

In my world, my touch is restrained: after all, I can fill my pitcher but I may no longer share my water with you. Sound is broken, too. The church bells, like so many of us, are encased in a stone tower, alone, and they have fallen silent. Their joyful, confident peal no longer echoes across the green landscape to inspire the poet. Even the water rushes quietly.

I stop and wonder which deity now reigns here? For whom do I play the raga?

Rain clouds part to reveal the sun and the fresh blue sky. I tilt my face up. This is the same light that bathes us all, encouraging flowers to blossom. Perhaps it is time to create something new; something that you cannot touch. No music plays in the underworld, but it plays in my heart.
I let the pitcher drift away and wrap the dancing bells around my ankles.

When I dance, the bells that shimmer and sound around my ankles conjure the past and evoke our future.

These are the rhythms that move with me. The tune is not a monotonous drone that echoes in perpetuity. No. The bells absorb and transform the intangible experiences of life as the world and I dance together and change one another.

The new tune is the expression of a wondrous alchemy that reverberates through my senses. It embodies the merging, entwining of my inheritance with the excitement of movement and the potential for change. What a joy to experience transformation and anticipate a new future, a time that is still unwritten and has yet to unfold.

It is the sound of constant creation, destruction and renewal once more. The blessedly endless cycle that drives us into the future. Into experiences that mere words cannot encapsulate.

Through the bells that I bring to life through my dance, I care for you. Do you care for me?