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Unveiling the Inner Artist: InterArts Cabinet of Curiosity

Mihika Mishra

Mihika Mishra is a dancer and actor from Mumbai, India. She is currently studying Film and English at Trinity College in Hartford, CT as a first year student. Her preferred medium of art work is dance. She has over fourteen years of experience in an Indian classical dance form called Kathak, and has been involved in theatre and drama throughout middle and high school. Most of her work is inspired by Indian Mythology, as she strives to spread the lesser known aspects of the Indian culture. Eventually she hopes to become a film director in India (Bollywood)and make movies that could reach out to a Global audience.

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The age of Kali
By Mihika Mishra
The Age of Kali by Scottish writer and historian William Dalrymple (published in 1998) is a collection of essays following his journey through India during the post colonization period. In his book he goes around different States and Cities over a period of a decade and documents how the country was operating with its new liberation, and essentially questions the extent of how Independent India as a country really is. Reading this book brought about so many emotions in me. I learnt so much about India that I had never heard of, but there was something about reading a foreigner write about my country that was unsettling and uncomfortable in lots of ways.

The aspect about the book that fascinating me the most was the title of the book. A “Yuga” in Sanskrit refers to a period or age of time. In Hindu Mythology there are said to be four Yugas - Krita, Treta, Dwapara and Kali. The “Kal Yuga” or “The age of Kali” which is the title of the book is said to be the period we are living in now and is essentially the age of destruction which will eventually cause the world to end. This book talks about the destruction that took place or is still taking place in India in several ways, such as destruction of culture ( seen in the essays about Bombay/Bangalore), or faulty systems of hierarchy/ authority (corruption/ill-treatment of the lower caste (seen in the very first chapter- The age of Kali).

As someone who was born and Brough up in the city of Mumbai, Dalrymple’s humorous tone, almost mocking the city had my blood boiling. This particular chapter which talks about Bombay (Two Bombay portraits), focusses on cultural shift in conservativeness and in general the modernization of culture seen throughout Mumbai. Dalyrmple’s use of a Humorous tone to highlight the changes happening in Mumbai both socially and economically, gives the audience an abstract idea of what the future of India would look like as we progress and develop into a modern country. However, there’s something about his tome that seemed as though he was mocking our efforts to be like the western country. The target audience/demographic of this book is obviously a western audience. There’s a sense of supremacy the western reader would feel when they see how countries around the world like India are trying so hard to be like them. It’s almost like he’s trying to insinuate that we’re going from being physically colonized by the British to now being culturally colonized by western counties.

Like I said before, reading this book gave me a very unsettling feeling. Perhaps it’s because I’m in college now, and in most classes am known as the “Indian Girl”. I disagreed with a lot of things Dalrymple had to say about the country, and somehow I feel like ti is now my responsibility to show people the beauty of my country.