Bayanacharya Shri Ghanakanta Bora Muktiyar
THE JOURNEY TO REACH BEYOND“ A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what is a heaven for?” said Robert Browning. Whether one reaches or experiences heaven is debatable or a subjective question. But the eternal quest of man makes him always to look and reach beyond in the voyage of his life. It is more so in the peregrination of an artist adhering to a ritual form belonging to the sanctum. It is true of Adhyapak Ghanakanta Bora, the celebated Sattriya Dance exponent who taking an expedition from an obscure village in Dakshinpat of Majuli, the river island of the Brahmaputra, always has envisioned beyond the peripheral grounds.
Contrary to the time honoured saying that the home is the best seat of learning for a child, child Ghanakanta’s journey started with a dislocation from the familiar surrounding paving owards the making of familiarizing the de-familiar. Lifted from the playful household life at 4, the young child was placed at the monastic order of the Kamalabari Sattra, a premier centre of Vaisnava religious art and learning, and groomed by his foster-father Late Maniram Dutta Muktiyar, imparting on him all what there was, more particularly Dance and Music of the Sattra. And there was no looking back for him in the Sattra or outside. Traveling with his mentor like a shadow, the child earned accolades as a budding artist when he danced outside the Sattra premise. Elevated as the ‘Barbayan’, the highest honour that the Sattra can offer to a practicing percussionist-cum-dancer, he had to take reigns of the teaching and directing the Sattra inmates and he managed the young group of the Kamalabari Sattra. He recreated Ramdani which constitutes the nritta sequences and played with intricate rhythmic patterns with a complex synchronization of the bols. Guru-Ramdani is one of them. The meaning of Ramdani is an ananda as one begins to dance offering his hrid-padma. Being a fortunate one to dance his recreation, I could feel that essence of bathing in the ocean of joy in the entire composition. This number was conceived when he offered Nrityanjali on the occasion of his attainment of the honourable designation Borbayan. The visionary mind after that recreated several beautiful presentations in the format of Nritya, Natya and Nritta sequences contributing a voluminous repertoire of Sattriya Dance. Some of them have been imaged with a collaborative work with his inmates and respected scholars. And the ongoing process is still dominant in his creative mind. The shining brilliance of his dance performances gradually brought him honour and recognition from the cognoscenti paving again to his looking beyond. The devastation that the Kamalabari Sattra was subjected to, due to erosion by the riotous Brahmaputra and its translocation brought him to Guwahati. Dislocation always seems to bring new turns and the exploring mind confronted the same turning points. Instead of joining in the new establishment of the Kamalabari Sattra at Titabor, the talented young monk surveyed new paths moving here and there and finally settled in Guwahati with a job in the newly established State College of Music, Govt, of Assam at Rabindra Bhavan. Perhaps destiny took him to carve new lines in the horizons of Sattriya Dance and Music in a comparatively elitist cultural ambience. His childhood teacher and a very distinguished exponent Late Raseswar Saikia Barabayan, whom he remembers reverentially, inspired and gave him a sense of direction. His scintillating ability both as a teacher and a dancer soon brought him adulations from the intelligentsia and there was no looking back. With his spirited endeavour the dance form gradually began to bloom.
The Sattriya Dance, hitherto not much known or taken with stride outside the Sattra, received a new momentum and glitter with his leadership and involvement. Without compromising the virtuosity and nuance of the Sattra tradition, the aesthetic viewer and dedicated teacher in him brought to the form a sense of communion of traditional fervour and artistic elegance. Even with his firmness in traditional roots he has an openness which contributed to nourishment of the bud into blossom. The history of the art form goes back to 15th and 16th centuries with Srimanta Sankaradeva as the fountain head. But the evaluation of the dance form in the secular arena is a recent development and the form needs a proper care to find its deep entrenchment in the wider proscenium space of Indian Classical Dance and beyond. He tries to meet the contemporary demands of the stage scenario with traditional artistic virtuosity which imprints in the mind of this humble disciple, an idealization of the idea of ingenuity. I often hear Adhyapak speaking about the inbuilt power of the tradition which could answer all modern and post modern questions. And when his disciple asks about the individuation of a human being he gently smiles and says that an individual exists and communicates with a knowledge which is a given and the self owes to that ancient heritage which surpasses myriads of generations. Therein lies the classicality of the tradition. However the self of the individual is independent to explore with his innovative mind the heights of human faculty with a historical sense. This awareness is both abiding and has a prospect of temporality. The gradual appraisal of it makes him true to both the tradition and the contemporary age. His words remind me the famous essay by T.S Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” in which Eliot said :
Tradition is a matter of wider significance…it cannot be inherited and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour…it involves the historical sense which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone…the historical sense involves a perception not only the pastness of the past, but of its presence…this historical sense is sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.
In the same essay he mentions that the progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. Probably such a historical regard endows my Adhyapak a flexibility which can understand both the contemporary urges of art and yet the form and the being flow from the past. He often prescribes the words of the Bhagavad-Gita and accepts it as a repository of all kinds of human dilemmas. An interaction with him each time provides us an undertaking of a spiritual discourse that freshens up our mind and soul.
The visionary artist also stands for me as an ideal Adhyapak. Being one of his humble disciples as I look back, it is a story of building up confidence. I always see him as trying to understand the fundamental strength or weakness among his students. And he always strikes at the root of one’s weaknesses with a healing touch to rebuild and rekindle the confidence. While he inspires the capable ones to forge ahead he at the same time takes utmost care to make his disciple feel humble towards the tradition, and not to develop a sense of pride for an individual’s ability. He believes gentleness and humility as traits of an artist and tries to instill those virtues in his disciple’s mind. I always remember the ways he lessoned me the facets of Purusa and Prakriti and he laboured to make me feel both the essence of male vigour and the feminine grace in the numbers. And my initial understanding which often led me to happiness with a victorious spirit followed a sense of awe at the next steps far more intricate than the former. The victorious spirit becomes docile and I am taught intelligently to move in a calm and spirited effort reposing at the specific features of the numbers and imbibing thereby an understanding of them with their specialties. However the journey of such a learning under him is unending. The loving teacher as he always is, puts his lessons to the convenience of his students. I can particularly refer to my inhibitions as a student of Bharatanatyam. He tried to transform my training in the crystallized and geometric lines of Bharatanatyam to convenient accommodation in the grace and curved postures of Sattriya keeping both the spirit of Tandava and Lasya. Once the inhibitions were over and he found some amount of internalization he gradually put forward intricate aspects. This is how he always looked beyond the immediate. Another marvel in him as a teacher is his openness in reception. While interpreting any text of the great saints in dance, he expects the dancer to think, put his or her own feeling and perception within the norms of the form. He offers the basic meaning of the text and allows the dancer to soar high up with his or her imaginative skill and creative potency and rectifies one if the dancer digresses from the norms of the text. There cannot be a single meaning of a word or dance phraseology. There can be multiple interpretations of a particular word or text. However the interpretations should never hinder exactitude of textual meaning. Further he can easily understand the receptivity of his students absorption of thoughts. Here I can refer back to my first encounter with my Adhyapak. The communication to his place during that time was not favourable and Deta (father), Ma and me had to cover a long walk. The distanced pace exhausted me and finally we reached his place climbing up the steep. With a lamp ( as there was electricity failure) he opened the door and gave a warm welcome. I could hardly recollect the interactions between him and my parents. I was eager to tell him about my desire in learning Krisna Nac, but I could hardly articulate my fascination for Krisna. His words “ Would you like to learn Krisna Nac?” stupefied me. The words sounded magical for me and this magical spell of his, comprehending our hidden mental ratiocinations without any voice of articulation by us charms me even today together with my other inmates.
Going back to his unprejudiced concentration, the indivisible mind extends in seeing a disciple at times as a good teacher and source of information and knowledge. And when this disciple asks about the origin of his openness he remembers his Adhyapak and the Sattra atmosphere which shaped his mind, together with the influences of the philosophy of Bhagavad-Gita and the great saints. They constantly encourage him to practice indiscrimination. The non-discriminatory mind values words of people with least idea of academia and a high intellectual keeping his own receptacle mind under the process of filtration. A fortunate association with Adhyapak always gives ample opportunities to wonder over this mystic. The physical discriminations are marginalized and gradually with this he attends to the responses of true humanity. I still remember his sayings regarding his travelling in the executive class and on some other occasion in a sleeper class compartment of a train, he believes each experience has merged in a single soul promoting only variegated joys of life. He holds the same principle even when he is invited for a performance. Every space in which we perform is sanctified by our dance and hence it transcends into a sacred space where Gods are implored and we as devotees offer our salutations to the Divinity through the testaments of great saints. Any sort of triviality by matters of discrimination would be to dishonour our great tradition and the monumental works of the sages which glorifies our ancient heritage. As proponents of their thoughts we should propagate their ideals rather than getting involved in mundane inhibitions. And his advice extends to people irrespective of the caste and creed, sex and gender. Thus to traverse from the physical reality to a state beyond, is his continous aspiration and he tries to cultivate this transcendence amidst his disciples.
The journey that he began decades back and the long way he traversed is on and endless and he has miles and miles to go. In its pursuance, there has been a gradual metamorphosis of the art form itself. His translocations are often accompanied by gradual movement of the course of art from the ritual and traditional art form to a cultured, polished and sophisticated presentation of the style in a performance arena. Along with the radical moves at the inception by doyens like Maniram Dutta Muktiyar, and legendary exponents like Late Shri Raseswar Saikia, their apostle contributed immensely in taking the Sattriya art from the sacred precincts of the sanctum to the secular environs of the proscenium. The inspiration behind it is his visionary gleam to propagate the ideals of the Mahapurusas in a wider sphere. And the saga continues…let the beacon light that he kindled in this journey with Sattriya Dance shed light on newer grounds to bring glow and glory to this great and enduring tradition.
Contrary to the time honoured saying that the home is the best seat of learning for a child, child Ghanakanta’s journey started with a dislocation from the familiar surrounding paving owards the making of familiarizing the de-familiar. Lifted from the playful household life at 4, the young child was placed at the monastic order of the Kamalabari Sattra, a premier centre of Vaisnava religious art and learning, and groomed by his foster-father Late Maniram Dutta Muktiyar, imparting on him all what there was, more particularly Dance and Music of the Sattra. And there was no looking back for him in the Sattra or outside. Traveling with his mentor like a shadow, the child earned accolades as a budding artist when he danced outside the Sattra premise. Elevated as the ‘Barbayan’, the highest honour that the Sattra can offer to a practicing percussionist-cum-dancer, he had to take reigns of the teaching and directing the Sattra inmates and he managed the young group of the Kamalabari Sattra. He recreated Ramdani which constitutes the nritta sequences and played with intricate rhythmic patterns with a complex synchronization of the bols. Guru-Ramdani is one of them. The meaning of Ramdani is an ananda as one begins to dance offering his hrid-padma. Being a fortunate one to dance his recreation, I could feel that essence of bathing in the ocean of joy in the entire composition. This number was conceived when he offered Nrityanjali on the occasion of his attainment of the honourable designation Borbayan. The visionary mind after that recreated several beautiful presentations in the format of Nritya, Natya and Nritta sequences contributing a voluminous repertoire of Sattriya Dance. Some of them have been imaged with a collaborative work with his inmates and respected scholars. And the ongoing process is still dominant in his creative mind. The shining brilliance of his dance performances gradually brought him honour and recognition from the cognoscenti paving again to his looking beyond. The devastation that the Kamalabari Sattra was subjected to, due to erosion by the riotous Brahmaputra and its translocation brought him to Guwahati. Dislocation always seems to bring new turns and the exploring mind confronted the same turning points. Instead of joining in the new establishment of the Kamalabari Sattra at Titabor, the talented young monk surveyed new paths moving here and there and finally settled in Guwahati with a job in the newly established State College of Music, Govt, of Assam at Rabindra Bhavan. Perhaps destiny took him to carve new lines in the horizons of Sattriya Dance and Music in a comparatively elitist cultural ambience. His childhood teacher and a very distinguished exponent Late Raseswar Saikia Barabayan, whom he remembers reverentially, inspired and gave him a sense of direction. His scintillating ability both as a teacher and a dancer soon brought him adulations from the intelligentsia and there was no looking back. With his spirited endeavour the dance form gradually began to bloom.
The Sattriya Dance, hitherto not much known or taken with stride outside the Sattra, received a new momentum and glitter with his leadership and involvement. Without compromising the virtuosity and nuance of the Sattra tradition, the aesthetic viewer and dedicated teacher in him brought to the form a sense of communion of traditional fervour and artistic elegance. Even with his firmness in traditional roots he has an openness which contributed to nourishment of the bud into blossom. The history of the art form goes back to 15th and 16th centuries with Srimanta Sankaradeva as the fountain head. But the evaluation of the dance form in the secular arena is a recent development and the form needs a proper care to find its deep entrenchment in the wider proscenium space of Indian Classical Dance and beyond. He tries to meet the contemporary demands of the stage scenario with traditional artistic virtuosity which imprints in the mind of this humble disciple, an idealization of the idea of ingenuity. I often hear Adhyapak speaking about the inbuilt power of the tradition which could answer all modern and post modern questions. And when his disciple asks about the individuation of a human being he gently smiles and says that an individual exists and communicates with a knowledge which is a given and the self owes to that ancient heritage which surpasses myriads of generations. Therein lies the classicality of the tradition. However the self of the individual is independent to explore with his innovative mind the heights of human faculty with a historical sense. This awareness is both abiding and has a prospect of temporality. The gradual appraisal of it makes him true to both the tradition and the contemporary age. His words remind me the famous essay by T.S Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” in which Eliot said :
Tradition is a matter of wider significance…it cannot be inherited and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour…it involves the historical sense which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone…the historical sense involves a perception not only the pastness of the past, but of its presence…this historical sense is sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.
In the same essay he mentions that the progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. Probably such a historical regard endows my Adhyapak a flexibility which can understand both the contemporary urges of art and yet the form and the being flow from the past. He often prescribes the words of the Bhagavad-Gita and accepts it as a repository of all kinds of human dilemmas. An interaction with him each time provides us an undertaking of a spiritual discourse that freshens up our mind and soul.
The visionary artist also stands for me as an ideal Adhyapak. Being one of his humble disciples as I look back, it is a story of building up confidence. I always see him as trying to understand the fundamental strength or weakness among his students. And he always strikes at the root of one’s weaknesses with a healing touch to rebuild and rekindle the confidence. While he inspires the capable ones to forge ahead he at the same time takes utmost care to make his disciple feel humble towards the tradition, and not to develop a sense of pride for an individual’s ability. He believes gentleness and humility as traits of an artist and tries to instill those virtues in his disciple’s mind. I always remember the ways he lessoned me the facets of Purusa and Prakriti and he laboured to make me feel both the essence of male vigour and the feminine grace in the numbers. And my initial understanding which often led me to happiness with a victorious spirit followed a sense of awe at the next steps far more intricate than the former. The victorious spirit becomes docile and I am taught intelligently to move in a calm and spirited effort reposing at the specific features of the numbers and imbibing thereby an understanding of them with their specialties. However the journey of such a learning under him is unending. The loving teacher as he always is, puts his lessons to the convenience of his students. I can particularly refer to my inhibitions as a student of Bharatanatyam. He tried to transform my training in the crystallized and geometric lines of Bharatanatyam to convenient accommodation in the grace and curved postures of Sattriya keeping both the spirit of Tandava and Lasya. Once the inhibitions were over and he found some amount of internalization he gradually put forward intricate aspects. This is how he always looked beyond the immediate. Another marvel in him as a teacher is his openness in reception. While interpreting any text of the great saints in dance, he expects the dancer to think, put his or her own feeling and perception within the norms of the form. He offers the basic meaning of the text and allows the dancer to soar high up with his or her imaginative skill and creative potency and rectifies one if the dancer digresses from the norms of the text. There cannot be a single meaning of a word or dance phraseology. There can be multiple interpretations of a particular word or text. However the interpretations should never hinder exactitude of textual meaning. Further he can easily understand the receptivity of his students absorption of thoughts. Here I can refer back to my first encounter with my Adhyapak. The communication to his place during that time was not favourable and Deta (father), Ma and me had to cover a long walk. The distanced pace exhausted me and finally we reached his place climbing up the steep. With a lamp ( as there was electricity failure) he opened the door and gave a warm welcome. I could hardly recollect the interactions between him and my parents. I was eager to tell him about my desire in learning Krisna Nac, but I could hardly articulate my fascination for Krisna. His words “ Would you like to learn Krisna Nac?” stupefied me. The words sounded magical for me and this magical spell of his, comprehending our hidden mental ratiocinations without any voice of articulation by us charms me even today together with my other inmates.
Going back to his unprejudiced concentration, the indivisible mind extends in seeing a disciple at times as a good teacher and source of information and knowledge. And when this disciple asks about the origin of his openness he remembers his Adhyapak and the Sattra atmosphere which shaped his mind, together with the influences of the philosophy of Bhagavad-Gita and the great saints. They constantly encourage him to practice indiscrimination. The non-discriminatory mind values words of people with least idea of academia and a high intellectual keeping his own receptacle mind under the process of filtration. A fortunate association with Adhyapak always gives ample opportunities to wonder over this mystic. The physical discriminations are marginalized and gradually with this he attends to the responses of true humanity. I still remember his sayings regarding his travelling in the executive class and on some other occasion in a sleeper class compartment of a train, he believes each experience has merged in a single soul promoting only variegated joys of life. He holds the same principle even when he is invited for a performance. Every space in which we perform is sanctified by our dance and hence it transcends into a sacred space where Gods are implored and we as devotees offer our salutations to the Divinity through the testaments of great saints. Any sort of triviality by matters of discrimination would be to dishonour our great tradition and the monumental works of the sages which glorifies our ancient heritage. As proponents of their thoughts we should propagate their ideals rather than getting involved in mundane inhibitions. And his advice extends to people irrespective of the caste and creed, sex and gender. Thus to traverse from the physical reality to a state beyond, is his continous aspiration and he tries to cultivate this transcendence amidst his disciples.
The journey that he began decades back and the long way he traversed is on and endless and he has miles and miles to go. In its pursuance, there has been a gradual metamorphosis of the art form itself. His translocations are often accompanied by gradual movement of the course of art from the ritual and traditional art form to a cultured, polished and sophisticated presentation of the style in a performance arena. Along with the radical moves at the inception by doyens like Maniram Dutta Muktiyar, and legendary exponents like Late Shri Raseswar Saikia, their apostle contributed immensely in taking the Sattriya art from the sacred precincts of the sanctum to the secular environs of the proscenium. The inspiration behind it is his visionary gleam to propagate the ideals of the Mahapurusas in a wider sphere. And the saga continues…let the beacon light that he kindled in this journey with Sattriya Dance shed light on newer grounds to bring glow and glory to this great and enduring tradition.
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