How an arts festival in a fishing village in Chennai opened up a conversation on inclusion

In its abstraction, space is boundless. But our needs and fantasies have bound it into multiple frames of different shapes. Built into these frames are our socio-political compulsions. We have come to define social spaces into two categories, private and public. Instinctively, we understand the former as privately owned, inner-family/friend constructs and the latter as spaces to which everyone has access and a right to use. But deeper enquiry breaks this binary down. As individuals, we maneuver the ‘private’ into personal, exclusive, fiefdoms placing some outside the prized circle. Public spaces are manipulated surreptitiously, where race, caste, gender, class, occupation and economics plot a private clubby-ness. It is within these constricted spaces that we practice and ‘enjoy’our chosen freedoms and rights.

It is therefore inevitable that our cities, towns and villages should become multiple ghettos that intersect only to facilitate commercial activity. What does this lead to? We don’t really get to ‘know’ people, we only know ourselves. Cultures therefore remain insular, inbred and flourish within these structures with rare undetected slippings of one into the other. Modern modes of transmission and sharing, be it television or the Internet, cannot remove these closed frameworks.

It is in this context that the Urur-Olcott Kuppam Vizha is an important intervention. I began imagining this possibility first from the point of view of dismantling classical music’s suffocating social interiors and letting the art breathe in the larger society. I was also hoping that by placing other art forms that do not belong to the privileged by the side of the privileged, on an equal footing, I could engage the classical in an aesthetic dialogue. Soon I realised that this initiative was becoming a conversation about more than an inter-art leveling.

T M Krishna performing at the Urur-Olcott Kuppam festival

Urur-Olcott Kuppam is a fishing village in the heart of Chennai. It hugs the coast very close to one of Chennai’s famous beaches, the Elliot’s beach. The kuppam is considered the dirty backyard of Besant Nagar, an upper-middle class and upper caste residential suburb. Very few walkers who head up and down this stretch of sands know that just beyond its northern end lies an old fishing village, by name Urur-Olcott kuppam. They just about have a hazy sense of there being ‘out there’ a slum, a ‘danger-zone’ of brash, ‘uncultured’  miscreants who ‘must be into hooch and hash’ . To the fisherfolk the car-driving, be-jewelled people outside their village are the selfishly powerful, who ‘don’t care a damn’ about their lives.

How can an art festival change any of this? Urur-Olcott Kuppam Vizha, a festival of multiple art forms catering to the numerous cultural groups that inhabit the city of Chennai turned the sands in front of the Ellaiamman Koil in Urur-Olcott Kuppam into a cradle of diverse people. The upper caste, economically empowered, fisherfolk, Dalits and those who occupy the middle regions of social hierarchy came together to experience art. The un-demarcated open skies and beach sands are gifts from nature that dissolve private-public sectarianism. Artistically, the aficionados of Carnatic music came in touch with forms such as paraiattam and kattaikuttu without any barriers, while the fisherfolk were able to listen in close quarters to the inaccessible classical. 

Without a conscious intention, people who until then would rarely recognize each others’ existence smiled, laughed and clapped in a shared appreciation. The loud whistles merged with the classical ‘aha’, liberating bellows wafted over the gentle applause. We had brought people to an intersection that allowed for sub-conscious pause and reflection. The people of the kuppam too realised that those on the other side were just ‘normal‘ people with fears and limitations of their own. In this rubbing of shoulders a possibility emerged, a chance that people could listen to one another’s song.

The local children performing at the festival

Little did we know that an art festival would bring to the fore more questions. Beach cleaning is ‘in’ today, but whose beach do we clean? Only that which lies on our side, the one that matters to the face of the city. The corporators and private agencies don’t consider it worth their while to clean the kuppam and its beach. “Not enough tonnage”, it is explained. And that does not matter to us, for no one who matters goes in there, anyway!

In yet another experiment in the year 2014, we put out a call for cleaning the performance area and the beach in and beyond the kuppam’s bylanes. Scores from different parts of Chennai joined us. Another breakthrough we thought. But let me be honest, that was not the whole story. Very few from the kuppam, whose doorsteps we were cleaning, joined us.  A few walked by as we picked up their dirt, but saw no necessity to participate. Sheer apathy, arrogance one may have thought! But this is not all that simple. Here is a community that is not treated as being part of the metropolis. They need to fight for even the basic needs of life, acutely aware that society at large is ready to road roller it in the name of ‘smart’-citification. And in our cleaning overdrive let us not forget, that which is strewn around has been the norm for years. The city has never cared. Now all of a sudden we expect them to respond to our ‘clean-up visit’ Isn’t this hypocritical?

Aware of this slippery slope we began a conversation with the elders and the women of the village and we saw a distinct change in attitude. It was interesting to witness a loud, uncompromising argument between two women during the clean up this year.  When a few women were picking up heaps of plastic, a kuppam resident threw rubbish, catapulting it on to the very place that these women were cleaning. An altercation followed but the result was fascinating. The accuser and accused got-together in the cleaning. This was a tiny step but an essential one.

The festival sees people from all sections of society

The Chennai floods channelised yet another crossing. West Mambalam, a predominately middle-class Brahmin area that buzzes with Carnatic music throughout the year, was one of the worst hit suburbs. Pursuing the thought that the festival must respond to the devastation caused by the deluge, we invited members of Sri Ram Samaj, a citadel of Brahmin orthodoxy in West Mambalam to partner and honour the fisherfolk who had helped, spontaneously and definingly, in the rescue efforts. We also suggested that the honour should be in the form of temple respects. The cultural events for the evening were to include Carnatic concert and Villupattu (an art form usually appreciated by those beyond the Brahmin fold) by the children of the Urur-Olcott kuppam. People like me, who pride ourselves on being progressive, believe that with the deeply conservative there is very little room for movement. When we approached the authorities in Sri Ram Samaj, we expected resistance with the best-case scenario being a grudging acceptance. What we witnessed was an open expression of love, gratitude and so much grace in receiving and felicitating the fisherfolk. The affection with which two groups that occupy diametrically opposite social addresses came together was nothing less than overwhelming. This was a historic meeting of people and art forms and a learning for us, self-righteous liberals. Urur-Olcott is today a metaphor for a conversation, one that the arts enable but do not limit. In many ways, the Urur-Olcott initiative has found its own pathways and we as participants have moved along watching ourselves and others respond. The Vizha is not a fixed constant; it changes in its nature, conscious of the complexities involved in any socio-cultural engagement. If and when we lose this integrity, it will be time to shut shop. 

The writer is a Carnatic vocalist, author of ‘A Southern Music: The Karnatik Story’, public speaker and writer on human choices, dilemmas and concerns.