Sing Sing Sing
I am bliss!
Songs rendered to Shiva by leading Indian classical doyen vocalist L.K. Pandit and Odissi singers.
This collection of songs arise from an award winning exhibition:
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THE CROSSING
LIVING, DYING AND TRANSFORMATION IN BANARAS
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National Gallery, Bangkok, 2006
OK Center for the Arts, Linz, 2002
Asia Society, New York, 2002
National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2002
India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, 2001
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Throughout the world, lakes, forests, mountains, rivers have been seen as ‘power spots’ and concentrations of Nature’s energies. Gradually, mythologies grew around these spots, and the union of myth and place creates a sacred geography. They became pilgrimage centres – Crossing-Points – providing people with the setting to cross over into a world of learning and transformation. Banaras, on the banks of the Ganga, is the crossing-point that the Crossing Project examines.
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Banaras, Kashi, the oldest living city in the world, is described as a microcosm of Indian civilization. The multiple riches of Banaras invoke many different interpretations. The most significant of them is that Banaras is regarded as the greatest of all tirthas, Crossing Place, a ‘transitional zone’ to cosmic reality and a portal of spiritual liberation.
The aura of the divine presence envelopes Kashi much more than any other place. It is said that when Brahma weighed the sky with its Gods against Kashi, Kashi being heavier sank down to earth, and the sky soared above.
The countless myths, symbolic meanings, philosophical interpretations and patterns of collective memory that have accrued around the city have given Banaras a distinctive personality, a city which en-globes the whole of existence. It is a place where life is relished to the fullest, and fear of death is conquered, and where many choose to die to attain spontaneous liberation.
The unique context of its past and its living present makes Kashi the most appropriate subject for exploration for future technology.
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