As time passes, we are drifting away from the realities of our land and its relationship with various cultural expressions of its people.

The overlay of various cultures and the changes that it brought have changed the cultural landscape, but not to the extent of making it totally alien. It has been a slow process that coagulated every time forming a new whole and integrating the various strands into a new paradigm till the current times. The fast changing environment based on the technological facilitation and rush of ideas and trends has created a new normal where a mélange of cultural information has been thrust upon us, with nothing concrete.

The spring is upon us. Not very long ago a number of festivities celebrated the changing seasons of the northern Indian environment. Various ragas were sung were based on the seasons – the two most celebrated being bahar (spring) and sawan (the monsoon). For spring, various tonal structures are based on the ushering in of regeneration and growth. Melodies were composed on these tonal structures known as ragas. The stretch of phagan, chet and baisakh was welcomed by the singing or playing of these ragas.

There have been forms also that were based on these tonal structures, like Hori Dhammar. Holi, too, is a festival of colours, usually marked to celebrate the madness of rebirth that is supposed to be unleashed upon us by spring. Similarly, basant, was celebrated by many means, including flying colourful kites for an entire day of splash, frolic and fun.

Unfortunately, basant, which was one of the major festivals of Lahore and Kasur, has been killed by the strictures passed against it in the name of public security. Behind this lies a prejudice; the idea that it violates the puritanical cultural norms that we have been engineering for decades. Lahore and Kasur were really the homes of this festival, as indeed was the rest of the subcontinent. Alas, despite all the good intentions, the conservative view has prevailed and not much has changed.

The Nature or the Environment had not become antagonistic, or had not become meaningless or needed a push for improvement. It was a cosy relationship with Nature that was cherished and needed to be built upon.

Basant ragas, as indeed the bahar ragas, are supposed to be sung in these months. This only reasserts the relationship between humans and Nature, integrating the two unlike some other societies where the organic link has been severed or rendered too weak to be of any meaningful intellectual or cultural significance. It is a throwback to the times when the Nature or the environment had not become antagonistic, or had not become meaningless or needed a push for improvement. It was a cosy relationship with Nature that was cherished and needed to be built upon.

These obviously are cultural constructs that by establishing the relationship between humans and Nature have made it a source of inspiration for creativity. This metaphoric expression is the home that we have built to create an atmosphere of being related in an organically determined nexus, which, unfortunately, the modern world has taken a delight in rejecting. In an age where the thrust has been on redesigning Nature, it is a step beyond the lust for conquest. The alienation and being outsiders have been the formal answer to the arts of the contemporary times.

The view that these ragas ought to be sung in the season or indeed other ragas sung at various pahars of the 24 hour cycle is sometimes taken literally by the lay audience. They thus start questioning the scientific relationship between the singing of a raga and the onset of rain. The reaction consists often of disbelief and derision.

The artistic quest for unity and an essential bonding are an aesthetic response to the human condition. It is by creating unities that the journey becomes meaningful and bearable. The relationship between the notes is another field of quest and discovery that may be at an early stage in its progress. The two are often confused.

It has been primarily through our distancing from the core of our cultural norms that we now relate to a song through its lyrics and remember it as such and have little or no idea that the lyrics are pearls to be strung together in the tonal structure of the raga. Instead of identifying the raga and be sensitive to the tonal structures, the focus is now on an easy passage through the literal reading of the poetical elements.

This trend had always existed but has been emphasised by the film song and the relationship of the aesthetic and the scientific made simplistic by screening the relationship between blooming flowers, onrush of rain and the lighting of the lamp through a proper intoning of the surs in a raga.

The author is a   culture critic based in Lahore