The forthcoming festival, Tattva, will bring together people from all walks of life and give them an opportunity to shed their inhibitions and learn some new creative form. Shrabasti Mallik reports
Some meditate, some dance, some paint and some sing to spare a few moments in a day for their own selves. What if you get to indulge in everything that you want to do with like-minded peopleIJ It sounds like a blessing. At Zorba The Buddha, you will be spoilt for choice as the forthcoming three-day festival, Tattva, will bring together art, theatre, pottery, music and other creative forms.
Beginning from March 6, the festival will have artistes and people from all walks of life participating in various workshops. “The entry is free and whoever joins the festival pays a nominal amount for accommodation and food. But people who come in are not allowed to leave until the end. They live like one happy family, cook together, eat together and there is a lot of sharing of knowledge,” says Ashwin Bharti, director, Zorba the Buddha, who will be hosting Tattva for the fourth time. The uniqueness of the festival lies in the fact that there are no set rules, no set itinerary and no management team. Everybody who is participating is a co-creator and collectively they are responsible for taking forward the programmes. “If anyone feels that they have some talent and they want to pass it on, they are free to hold workshops on their own,” adds Bharti. Not only that, anybody who is participating is free to volunteer for different activities like hospitality, security, managing kitchen, organising workshops and even teaching. Who takes charge of what is decided in the morning meeting which is held after breakfast.
Pottery classes, meditation, martial arts, musical concerts will be a part of the festival. The festival is for self exploration, where people get to paint their body, run around, indulge in activities and creative workshops of their choice and explore other artistic avenues, too. “It is a creative exploration of the human mind and is very much like de-masking ourselves. Tattva means truth or real and here people try to find their real selves, away from the expectations of the world,” Bharti says.
The highlight of the festival will be the closing ceremony where people will gather around to burn everything that they do not need in life — negative feelings, bad memories and sometimes even materialistic things that have lost meaning. “The ceremony is also symbolic of the fact that we need to put behind all that is bad and negative and look forward to brighter days,” the director says.
With every passing year the flavour of the festival has changed. Bharti feels that it is because of the diversity of the crowd. “Every year people come from all walks of life — some come for the love of art, some come to relax and enjoy the weekend while some come to learn something,” Bharti informs. It was, however Bharti’s conscious decision to begin the festival on the occasion of Holi because it preceded the weekend. “People are in a holiday mood during Holi and it is just before the weekend. It’s the perfect time to start the festival,” says Bharti.