A Veena Called Northstar

A melody, a harmony, a rhythm, and a poem. A Veena called Northstar.

A sequence of chapters forms a book, a sequence of classes forms a school day, a sequence of units makes a curriculum, and a sequence of musical notes makes a melody. And when there are underlying notes to this melody, to give it a mood or a structure, it becomes a harmony.

Such is the rhythm of the school. The function of the school, among many other functions, is to create a rhythm in a child's life, which is very easy to see, to observe, to disturb and to derail, but nearly impossible to create. What schools have become now are reverse pyramids of unlimited responsibility with almost no sovereignty. Out of rhythm, out of harmony; but that is a tangent. Let me get to the Veena.

Let's look at this image.

It is a folio from the Rukmini Parinaya series from Kota, Rajasthan, c.1700. The scene depicts a king paying homage to a hermit in his hermitage. On the top left is Lord Vishnu, and on the top right is Goddess Saraswati riding a white bird and holding a Rudra Veena. Let us look at that more closely.

The body of the Veena (the central connecting bridge) is on the left shoulder of Saraswati, while the two resonating gourds (round chambers) are in the front and back. What does the holding of the Veena this way tell us? The left hand, connecting the past with the future? Which bird is this? It looks like some form of Cattle Egret and Little Egret hybrid. An Egret, nonetheless, one of the most commonly found birds in the Indian subcontinent.

For me, education is an aesthetic experience or, more accurately, an aesthetic experience is an educational experience.

And while the 'Veena' may project into the past and the future, it rests firmly in the present, on the uncommon left hand while riding the commonest of birds.