Pondys random reflections/generalizations: A visit to our Bangla ( possibly Bangladeshi ) maids quarter ( which is a bare concrete box, 10 x14, in garbage dumping area in which a family of 6 lives) for a Bangla style all night kirtan, made me alive to two things. One, that our folk traditions of spirituality, of the sacred, are extraordinarily rich in texture and so layered- music, poetry, philosophy, worship- that they provide the unlettered poor with a cultural and intellectual understanding and insightfulness which is neither primitive nor regressive nor superstitious and yet is firmly rooted in tradition. In its own way it is also extremely sophisticated. Two, that the poor are infinitely more generous, large hearted and intuitively liberal than the middle classes. Our secularist, modernist discourse is often ignorant of folk spirituality and that is its undoing.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 07:06:23 +0000
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