Moving in Sand and Time : February 2016

Thursday, February 18, 2016

MBA in Rural Management @ IIHMR University Jaipur

IIHMR University Jaipur

Pursuing Rural Management Course in this unique passionate institution is worthwhile.

To read more about the rural management course click below

Exploring New Frontiers of MBA Rural Management @ IIHMR

Read More about IIHMR environs:

Post 1: http://rahulghai.blogspot.in/2014/06/rendezvous-with-flying-tree-pies-iihmr.html

Post 2: The Unique Ecology of IIHMR, Click

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Jamali Bai the mesmerizing folk singer from Bikaner city

Got an opportunity to attend one of the first concerts at the pump house in winters of 1998.

a truly memorable concert attended by popular working class people from that corner of the Bikaner city. There were watchmen, pump operators, gatekeepers, construction workers, hawkers, tea stall owners and vagrants of no profession all gathered in the star lit night. The performance was arranged on the top of the water tank of the pumping station. They had all gathered to listen to Jamali Bai and her husband Rahman ji

The regal elan of this subaltern culture is un paralleled in the recent history of the Bikaner city.

Click to Listen

Credits: All credits for the video clip to Shabnam ji and her colleagues at Kabir Project.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Lilting Calls of the Been, Pastoral Music of North West Thar

Been Dhol Ensemble at a marriage, Pugal, Bikaner

Been is an instrument that is rarely played for it is difficult to get deft players of this. The accompanying instrument dhol has is more popular in solo performances

Nazare Khan ji testing his bagpipe, Pugal Bikaner

Nazre Khan Mir, old ustad of the been testing out the instrument in his room in the presence of some elders and listeners

Listen

Sufiyana Qalam of pastoral north west Thar

Jani Rat Rahepo gali karse se

stay over in the night and we would talk
listen to each other and tell tales of times

Ustad Basaye Khan ji, Pugal Bikaner, March 2005

Ustad Basaye Khan, a veteran Mir musician from Pugal Bikaner rendered this song in an immortal way

the traditional context of listening and performing very often used to be the nomadic encampment or the solitary semi permanent dwellings. It was an extremely popular song for especially elders having collected from distant villages during marriages and staying overnight at one place.

Listen

Gerbils: the compulsive diggers

Gerbils, also called sand rats, are rodent-like creatures of the desert. Most desert animals evade the stifling heat by leading a nocturnal life. Gerbils though, thanks to their unique adaptations, are happily diurnal. They are truly compulsive diggers, ready to burrow at a moment’s notice. Existing in large groups, gerbils collaborate to create, modify and actively maintain their living spaces in response to ever changing winds.

Surviving in the heart of the Thar, assiduously digging, ever searching, and ceaselessly communicating, the gerbils are the inspirations for this blog.

The attempt here is to understand the multiple intersections and contestations of culture, meaning ensemble of practices and ways of life of communities, with the discourse and practices of ‘modern development’. In particular the effort is to understand the travails, tribulations of lower levels of society that mostly remain either invisible or are assumed as mute variables to be acted upon and transformed through the dominant discourse of ‘modern development’. Here it needs to be mentioned that the rustic yet life reinvigorating celebrations of these marginal communities are sought to be understood and experienced. The threads of posts that weave together this tapestry of blog seek to understand and narrate experiences of marginal communities in their effort to negotiate their lives in the ever expanding enterprise of modern development in Thar.

These excavations into collective memory of history and everyday lived consciousness seek to resurrect subaltern and rustic experiences buried underneath the dusty layers of Thar, layers that contain within them the prodigal mass of longue duree history of the Thar. It is an effort to make sense of contemporary times marked by rapid escalation of assertions and claims of development by state and private, corporate and non- profit entities.

The boundaries between rural and urban life are increasingly getting blurred. This is evident in the changes that are coming in the morphology of human settlements. Rural urban continuum is ever expanding its boundaries, its gushing hold taking more and more of life under its sway.

New inter-dependencies are being created and age old inter-relationships between town and countryside are waning away and getting reconfigured like possibly never before.

These contemporary changes in Thar have much in common with similar processes in other fragile ecological regions. Gerbils of Thar occasionally get an opportunity to communicate about these bio cultural traditions undergoing such transformations.

In such an dynamic context impregnated with numerous possibilities, the blog strives to collect, reflect and communicate issues relating to well- being of fragile ecology of Thar, improvement in quality of life and livelihoods of communities especially those at the margins. In doing so the effort is to generate a dialogue regarding the importance of their cultural traditions of survival, regeneration and deep veneration of nature.

This blog is intended as a medium for silent meditation, like a mole burrowing deeply, never wanting to abandon its subterranean tunnels, attempting an empathy to surface phenomena.

Resurrecting experiences of change is about deciphering of multiple and intertwined relations between man and biosphere in Thar.

Contact for further communication:

to.rahulghai@gmail.com