Bringing the walls down

The new digital normal is not so bad after all

At the start of the pandemic, I received a WhatsApp message from fellow pianist Sharik Hasan asking me to join group called Piano Hang. I did so enthusiastically. It included over a hundred piano artistes, many well-known but a few whom I hadn’t come across before. Soon the group was buzzing with ideas, tips and hang sessions, where other pianists would listen in and encourage one another. We became a collective overnight and buddies too. We began mentoring each other. It was bliss. In my previous columns, I wrote about the marginalisation of the digitally handicapped among the vast art and artisan communities in India. A recent blog post from my dear friends Ambi and Bindu Subramaniam, along with the experience of Sharik’s initiative, led me to examine whether everything about the pandemic was bad for the arts and art education. Collaborations have been on the rise, including global. My early effort, the #JantaCurfewOnlineFestival in March 2020 saw as many as 188 artistes from around 21 countries come together. Two weeks ago, sitar exponent Purbayan Chatterjee and Grammy award winning composer Ricky Kej collaborated on an album that has delighted listeners across boundaries. All of these may have been far more expensive and intractable in the old normal.