The Story of our Experiments with London: The Victorian City in Indian Imagination (1870-1900)

Abstract

This paper argues for a hermeneutic shift in interpreting accounts of Victorian London in Indian travelogues written between 1870 and 1900, taking the founding of the Indian National Congress (1885) and the climate of anticolonial agitation as a political fulcrum for a new aesthetic drive in the ways in which the imperial capital was imagined as a new psychogeography by its colonial subjects. Drawing on travelogues by Pothum Ragaviah, Trailokyanath Mukharji, Behramji Malabari, Lala Baijnath, T.B. Pandian and G.P. Pillai, I outline how London was reinvented in the Indian imagination as a typographical experiment in pictograms and audiograms. The urban, domestic and atmospheric phenomena of the metropolis was recreated as archetypes in the colonized mind of the reader back home, as a new model of modernity, a new way of typographic expertise over the imperial capital, and a therapeutic means of overcoming the ongoing traumas of colonization. Pictograms of its intimate domestic quarters and atmospheric nuances or audiograms of its majestic choirs and ambient traffic noise, London's phenomenology was brought alive in the Indian consciousness through these travelogues, which besides playing a literary role also politically empowered the colonized imagination for the wish-fulfilment of an autonomous geography. Seen in the light of the great morphological transformations in places like East Ham, Wembley, Southall or Brick Lane-those parts of present-day London with heavy concentrations of South Asians-late Victorian Indian accounts of the city and their typographical experiments were the early "ethno-scapes" and "kaleido-scapes" for the colonized imagination to inhabit the imperial capital in a psychogeographical capacity, much before South Asian immigrations since the 1950s.

Evaluation of Standing Balance Performance in Indian Classical Dancers

“…The Indian classical dancers in this study had an average of 13 years of training, and this likely resulted in improved standing balance. 2 Indian dance forms involve patterns of graceful trunk shift away from the axis of the spine in static bipedal stance, resulting in displacement of CoP trajectory from central to peripheral, thereby challenging balance. 3 Hence, dancers have to constantly perform within their limits of stability such that the center of gravity (CoG) does not fall outside the base of support.…”

“…1 The Natyashastra (ancient encyclopedic treatise on Indian performing arts) describes seven major Indian classical dance forms: Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Manipuri, Kathakali, Odissi, Kuchipudi, and Mohiniattam. 2 In all of these forms, dynamic postures range from shortening of the body, wherein the knees are bent with flat feet (e.g., Aramandi), to lengthened postures characterized by knee extension and erect spine with shoulder elevation (e.g., Thaat). Graceful transition of the base of support from bipedal to unipedal stance while performing rapid footwork and weight shifts is an exclusive characteristic.…”

“…Graceful transition of the base of support from bipedal to unipedal stance while performing rapid footwork and weight shifts is an exclusive characteristic. 2 The dynamic sequence of the dance is always performed in synchronization with music beats (laya) and sometimes with ghunghroos (bells). Erect posture is emphasized during transitions in dance performance.…”

“…Movement of the torso is graceful, shifting from side to side and turning around the axis of the spine during quick spins (chakkar). 2 Long-term practice of any dance form is likely to be reflected in better postural control, as greater postural stability and muscle strength are known outcomes of dance training. For example, Kilroy et al 3 compared the balance performance of seven professional dancers (dance form not mentioned in the study) with seven age-matched non-dancers in singlelimb stance using a force plate.…”

Dance Movement Therapy and Kathakin India

“…Indian classical dance forms have always been linked to therapeutic values (Chatterjee 2013, Sudhakar 2006, Singh 2006, Raghupathy n.d., Kashyap 2005. Raghupathy, the Bharatnatyam performer, regards "teaching dance as a therapy and as a probable corrective for physical deformities and disabilities in children" as "Bharat Natya is a composite art of rhythm, music, poetry, color, sculpturesque poses, suspension of movement, symmetry, everything in beautiful balance" (105).…”