Amazing Art and Our Ancestors: The Song that Stones Sang

First published on September 29, 2019.  Here it is again.  As some of you know I premiered my first film this past weekend.  It was a great experience. I am a very small fish in a massive ocean of media content.  But creation itself is a reward. And yes, we still need viewers.  To feel loved, we must know the gaze of the lover.  We must.  But look around, even if you do not live in your country of the place where you were born.  Look around at the buildings and stones and trees and leaves. Ask them to share their stories.  I am sure, they will sing symphonies!!

All you have to do is listen!

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India has always fascinated me.  Always. As a child, I might have been curious about other countries, but I never wanted to leave India. I wanted to serve it, and see every nook and corner of the country.  Sure everyone can feel this about their country---but India is unique on so many levels. Her linguistic, religious, ethnic and climate diversity is unmatched.  I learnt from someone a few years ago that it has over 15 climate zones. 

We get the maximum rainfall in the world (Cherapunji), we have a massive dessert (Thar) and we have can boast not only of snow capped mountains but the tallest mountain in the world (Mt. Everest).  

And then we have the Kanya Kumari, the tip of the country where you see bodies of water become one. You stand there and except a small piece of land behind you,  all you see is water ahead and around you. ---If you face the tip of India and are guarded by Vivekananda rocks with its massive temple on your back--you stare into the vastness--full of hope.  You get a chance to contemplate your own smallness. Hopefully we return from that experience with a humility. 

It could take lifetimes to see the country.  I had no plans of leaving it.

But then I did. People think I complain too much about leaving it.  But I have been displaced since I left it.

I have made some amazing friends.  Had a truly adventurous life.  So many experiences that I can hardly document them. 

And I so I have often wondered about what if I had never left, would I be any happier?

I will never know.

But when I see these images and they are plenty these days --what with special archaeological finds--I always wonder if I had studied indology, would I be happier.  I have often thought Physics or medicine is something that would have made me happy.


But behind it all I wanted to tell stories.  Always.  And when I look at this image--I think of that one movie--an old one, whose title sums it all--'The song that stones sang' (Geet Gaya Pathron Nein)--its truly the stories that these stones tell.

A connection to the land of your birth is a connection to your ancestors. Something, no matter how much you love other countries, cannot be bought or created.  Or least not in one or two or three generations. 

Art is another form of connecting us to our ancestors.  Art tells me the story of myself.