Adri­an Boodan

A group of po­ets and a vis­it­ing vo­cal group led by Vidya Shah gave ex­cel­lent per­for­mances at the Di­vali Na­gar site, Ch­agua­nas, and at the Dat­ta­treya Yo­ga Cen­tre, Cara­pichia­ma, on Au­gust 24. The con­tin­gent was in­tro­duced to the me­dia ear­li­er that day by Madan Mo­han Shar­ma, the di­rec­tor of the Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Co­op­er­a­tion (MG­ICC), at the MG­ICC's Ca­roni head­quar­ters. Shar­ma said the artistes' ap­pear­ance in T&T was part of the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion's month-long cel­e­bra­tion of the Fes­ti­vals of In­dia, a pro­gramme to cel­e­brate the 62nd In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary of In­dia and pay trib­ute to T&T's in­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions.

Clas­si­cal In­di­an vo­cal­ist Vidya Shah told the Guardian that she comes from the Tamil Naidu re­gion of south In­dia and sings clas­si­cal In­di­an mu­sic. Shah said she per­forms both the south­ern and north­ern In­di­an styles of clas­si­cal mu­sic and not­ed that her work is more in de­mand in North In­dia. She said her mu­sic ex­press­es spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Shah was ini­tial­ly trained in Car­nat­ic mu­sic and lat­er re­ceived guid­ance in Hin­dus­tani clas­si­cal mu­sic from Shub­ha Mud­gal.

She stud­ied the mu­si­cal styles of thum­ri, dadra and ghaz­al gaya­ki and has al­so com­posed and record­ed for sev­er­al projects. Shah has to her cred­it re­leas­es with in­ter­na­tion­al and In­di­an la­bels. Amongst her oth­er projects are:

�2 Har Mann Mein Aman for the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for women;

�2 Ham se Za­meen Aur Aas­man for the Min­istry of Youth Af­fairs, Gov­ern­ment of In­dia.

She said she was very much im­pressed with T&T and the lev­el and de­vel­op­ment of In­di­an cul­ture she wit­nessed. Af­ter per­form­ing in To­ba­go on Au­gust 27, Shah and her mu­si­cians de­part­ed for New York.

The Po­ets

The po­ets in­clud­ed Pawan Dix­it, Bhu­ve­nesh­war Prasad Dix­it, Vish­nu Sax­e­na and Pree­ta Va­j­pay­ee. The lat­ter is a fa­mous po­et and Ghaz­al writer whose ghaz­als have been pub­lished in the print me­dia and on­line. Va­j­pay­ee said her ghaz­a­las are writ­ten in the Ur­du lan­guage and are based on her life ex­pe­ri­ences. A ghaz­al may be best un­der­stood as a po­et­ic ex­pres­sion of both the pain of loss or sep­a­ra­tion and the beau­ty of love in spite of that pain.

Va­j­pay­ee has par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al Kavi Sam­me­lans (po­et­ry con­fer­ences), Mushairas, and Ghoshtis in In­dia, Pak­istan and the Unit­ed King­dom. Pawan Dix­it is a teacher by pro­fes­sion but has made his name as a Hin­di po­et. He has re­cit­ed his works on In­di­an TV and ra­dio as well as read to au­di­ences in the Unit­ed States, Eu­rope and Oman. Prasad Dix­it has al­so dis­tin­guished him­self as a po­et and Ghaz­al singer and has re­cit­ed his works in more than 1,000 Kavi Sam­me­lans. Dix­it is the re­cip­i­ent of 12 In­di­an awards and was ho­n­oured for his lit­er­ary works to pro­mote and prop­a­gate Hin­di lit­er­a­ture.