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Paramita Saha

@artsontop

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You crave chaos. You're happiest when the world is in an uproar. You thrive on madness. Even when your magic is at its best when it's the catalyst to confusion. ~ A.G. Howard

Difficult days are important days. Those are the days you do the work. The work of figuring, choosing, forgiving, reflecting, imagining and sometimes deciding. Difficult days are teachers. They are flagstones and lighthouses.

I don't wish for them. But I commit to make the most of each one of them. By being fully present, by suffering without regret and hate, by acknowledging my own stupidities and promising to do better.

Thank you to those who hold me on the difficult days. You know who you are.

Cheers to who we are becoming!

Happy pujos people. See you on the other side.

#paromuses by @artsontop

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3 days ago

Defend joy like a trench
defend it from scandal and routine
from misery and misers
from truancies passing
and permanent

defend joy as a principle
defend it from bewilderments and bad dreams
from the neutral and the neutron
from sweet infamies
and grave diagnoses

defend joy like a flag
defend it from lightning and melancholy
from the fools and the frauds
from rhetoric and ruptures of the heart
from the endemic and the academic.

Mario Benedetti

Performing together, preparing for performance together, going through the small catastrophes and small recoveries of the stage together is a miracle. And God knows we need miracles.

Thank you all of you for being my miracle. And for doing this together. That is our resistance. We will survive. 👊

#paromuses #paroloves #paroandfriends by @artsontop

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4 days ago

Aansh boti in the hands of the mother. The politics of oil. The theatrics of our kitchens playing out to empty chairs. World leaders in a tug of war over power that oil grants them. The architecture of temples eating into mosques. Intricately sewn fish artworks hang overhead. Rice congealed into blocks merging with colonial flooring.

Art doing what it is supposed to do. Durga Puja doing what it is supposed to do. Kolkata doing what it does. Ask questions. Never settle.

Thank you @pradip.art. We don't want decor, lights and drone shows anymore. We want to be reminded of what is disappearing: the freedom to express who we are and what we need for an ordinary content life.

#paromuses by @artsontop

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6 days ago

Tutto passa ~ Everything passes.

Small mercies. Yet every moment must be lived, every instant felt and caressed with curiosity.

10 days of Oct.

Meanwhile: The capital is a battlefield. A government is saving itself from its own citizens. A Durga pujo that doesn't feel like one. Wonders never cease.

#paromuses by @artsontop

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7 days ago

Some one said courage is what love looks like when tested by the simple everyday necessities of being alive.

More power to the courageous. More strength to those seeking courage. More reflection to those confused. More doubt to those on the other side.

May the power of debipokkho bring the change that we need. It's been a long time coming. And this long time has cost us dearly.

Shots of the Crowd by @radhakrishnan.sreeman now installed at @tokaroun.

#paromuses by @artsontop

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8 days ago

They say dust to dust but probably we are just going back to water, in the breaking and washing of waves. As the waters rise, where else could we possibly be headed.

We took this ocean to the river last evening. Artsforward was delighted to bring the Maitri-grant winning The Ocean Between Us, a cross-cultural interdisciplinary collaborative movement theatre piece by Indian artist Diya Naidu and Australian artist Nadia Milford to Kolkata. The work uses the metaphor of the Indian Ocean, separating the collaborators, to explore how what divides us can also connect us. Geopolitics to climate change, hard questions, harder answers through agile movement and playful text.

Thank you to the Australian Consulates-General of Bangalore and Kolkata for the support.

Cannot thank The Barge Company enough for their efforts in making this performance happen. Having this safe space on our beautiful river for art and performance is a gift.

Thank you @theredbarikolkata and @baribakesbytheredbari for your generous and delicious helpings of bakes and tea for our guests.

Thank you to the tech teams, thank you Ahana and all the beautiful dancers for the support.

From the pouring evening rain, to the gentle rocking of the boat to the sounds of crashing waves, water was all-pervading last evening.

We are grateful.

Photos by the incredible Sommouli.

#water #performance #art by @artsontop

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8 days ago

More on this incredible evening of The Ocean Between Us later.

For now I am reminded of James Baldwin’s immortal assertion that "A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven... The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides."

Thank you to everyone who made this evening possible.

Thank you @diyanise and @nadia__milford for this deep, difficult yet playful work that exposes the questions that the answers hide.

#paroandfriends #paromuses by @artsontop

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9 days ago

Some days I want it all to just end. It's just too much, I am so done etc. Other days I find myself just starting out, baby steps, with not a clue about the next.

Either way life still needs to get done. What a gift and chore at the same time!

Both get better in a saree though sometimes.

In other news, saree season is here.

#paromuses by @artsontop

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10 days ago

The third is the extraordinary, the intuitive, the imaginative, the aware, the spiritual and the awakened.

Probably it's just what opens when we are paying attention, when we are intentional, when we care and when we are committed.

The eyes on us may be painted. But we are cued right into the third for this season.

Wish us luck!!!

#paroandfriends by @artsontop

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11 days ago

Versions of myself in Oct over the last decade. Google photos is a bloody goldmine for better or for worse.

I don't remember myself very well from all these versions. But they are all intense and excited people doing happy things even if not in happy states of mind. The photos are also across countries. Strange how I seem to have travelled a lot in October over the last decade. A market in Melaka, a happy fan at Shakespeare's Globe, at Jatra cafe in Dhaka, in front of the beautiful Swiss waters of Lugano.

@brightorangecola. October missing!!! ♥️

#paromuses #october by @artsontop

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14 days ago

I am good at giving away or so I thought. It's a strange rite of passage. It's not loss. It's more a kind of severance, a wilful and intentional one. Something that we arrive at. And something that we do with a smile, a joke, an awkward giggle. How do we feel after that? It feels good mostly I think. A kind of relief also tinged with a certain emptiness.

Owning something is also like that perhaps. Just because something belongs to you, you don't own it. Owning takes time, sometimes seasons. Something that fits into repetitions and revisitations. Something that you return to. Or something that returns to you. Like a pair of earrings that I have lost several times but which have always reappeared miraculously from somewhere.
Something that settles on your skin. Or your desk or your bedside. Leaves a mark.

Do we get to own people? Does that ever happen? What rites of passage does that take, if at all!

#paromuses by @artsontop

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16 days ago

Sometimes, most often not, there are photographs. But mostly there are just feelings to remember a moment that has passed. How deeply that moment touched us and held us! Sometimes that is all we remember of a person, a place. Art and performance move us like that, by making us feel wonder, feel indignant, feel hopeful, feel joy.

It's been a beautiful month. One of travel, love, rigour, movement, food, meeting the sea and some rest and rejuvenation at the end of it. Almost perfect. But things are crashing around us. Ideals, values, institutions, ethics, respect, all the good things that we believed in when we were growing up, all crashing and fast disappearing. Everything taken over by a rapacious greed that seems to have no end or explanation.

Starting October a little tired. Show me how good it gets.

#paromuses by @artsontop

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17 days ago