Moonlight and crystal salt radiate whiteness on the desert

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Elegant temple and the exotic maidens

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Shyaamalaam Saralaam Susmitaam Bhuushitaam

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Silent revolutionaries - Sowbhagyalakshmi Srirama Bharati It was May 2017, and that trip to Chennai was not just a routine stopover on the way to Kanchipuram. In April I had won the Justice Telang Fellowship in Indology - with just no more than a love for Alwars and their verses and a deep interest in traditional performing arts I had chosen the topic 'Araiyar Cevai - Millennial Retrospective'. I didn't know where to begin. Someone told me Kalakshetra had archived 'Araiyar Cevai' and I thought I will begin there. That is when a friend told me how she was part of the team that worked on that archiving, archiving works of Srirama Bharati, the man who took Araiyar Cevai from its traditional practitioners and setting to a secular stage. I had heard about his moving, devotion soaked Cevai but just around the time I got to know about him he passed away. Too young and too early - in 2000 when he was just 50. In May ‘17 when I searched for his videos on...
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Loss and discovery

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