‘a scene from where you live’ is a scene missing because it is an inter-caste-action.
While such interactions happen everwhere, an unspoken and mundane taboo prohibits the transfer of inter-caste experiences to (cultural) artifacts (like images,or scenes).
Like an unknown law which operates behind a known law, the taboo is unspoken and mundane to maintain the seriousness of the spoken and sacred taboo of inter-caste marriage. When with modernity and urbanisation, the traditional land-wise inter-caste segration fails, it is such mundane and unspoken norms which sustain caste-system.
While it is obvious that an ornament maker would interact with a performer adorned with ornaments, the idea of this obvious scene remains missing from the same musuems that archive the same ornaments, figure of the dancer, and other works of oppressed-caste people as cultural artifacts.
Reality is, in a very obvious way, a collaboration of workers. Inter-caste segrations of workers and work dissociates us from reality.
While such interactions happen everwhere, an unspoken and mundane taboo prohibits the transfer of inter-caste experiences to (cultural) artifacts (like images,or scenes).
Like an unknown law which operates behind a known law, the taboo is unspoken and mundane to maintain the seriousness of the spoken and sacred taboo of inter-caste marriage. When with modernity and urbanisation, the traditional land-wise inter-caste segration fails, it is such mundane and unspoken norms which sustain caste-system.
While it is obvious that an ornament maker would interact with a performer adorned with ornaments, the idea of this obvious scene remains missing from the same musuems that archive the same ornaments, figure of the dancer, and other works of oppressed-caste people as cultural artifacts.
Reality is, in a very obvious way, a collaboration of workers. Inter-caste segrations of workers and work dissociates us from reality.
The ornament maker, is an ancestor of mine— the drawing is made from an old memory. I was born and brought up, and live in a ‘backward’ caste area where people from ornament making caste, and performer (dancer-musician) caste, both live.
The photographs in the scenograph document the exact place (my home), where such an ornament making workshop was: It is exactly where a ‘dukaan’ was: the word ‘dukaan’ has come to mean ‘workshop’ and ‘shop’ both— a place of labour is concealed as a place of trade so that a Sudra can pretend to be an upper-caste Vaishya. Where I come from is frozen in the dysfunction of such imitations.
[1]Caste sanctions both Theatre and Artisanal Craft as Sudra work which means that such works are menial and done by non-knowledgeable people.
[2]Caste hegemony taboofies Inter-caste situations, and mingling of Worker Castes in general. One stated hegemonic reason for doing so is to avoid the possibility of Inter-Caste marriages which is an absolute taboo in Caste laws.