1 year completed at S. I. T. E. today… Long road ahead. Always a joy to deal with students who have the passion to learn. As people have asked me that when there are so many teachers and schools teaching Sitar, how do you plan to take this forward?
So, firstly, it’s not about my competing with anyone in terms how much better I can teach. If I believe, I’ve been fortunate to have received guidance in a way that continues to enable progress in my own Sitar playing, then it is about this process that one has to undergo, be it thinking, physical effort, feeling a certain emotion all together in a way that is more integrally absorbed by the student.
For this one must think of progress from the word go. As a natural consequence, honesty, sincerity and discipline should follow. It is locked like this as an equation! If one tries to tweak any parameter, one will see how honesty turns towards something dishonest, sincerity towards something less sincere and discipline becomes sidelined by laziness. As these thoughts are pretty simple to grasp, one might try to mask their situation by trying to use their minds to justify these shortcomings leading themselves further into an unnecessary psychological façade.
A large number of people, some even professionally very competent, somehow cannot escape this psychological façade! For example, take a look at Niladri Kumar blocking Soham Munim on Twitter and Soham Munim making sure to SCREEN RECORD the process in blocking back Niladri Kumar(!):
Or for that matter, take a look at a comment thread on facebook (publicly viewable):
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10215029123576068&id=1069366655
Josh Feinberg blocks Soham Munim the moment Soham posts his famous “ultaa-position” sitar video?? So much insecurity?!
And even funnier is when one comes across some ‘friends’ who never speak to us but are always on our social networks. As we’re travelling to a concert and our colleague playing with us updates his social status regarding the gig in the evening, it probably takes these weirdos, all of 1 hour to re-assess their “business interests” and send us a request to like their page while we are in the middle of our gig!
more psychological facades…
So what was Chirag Katti thinking? That by mistake, while scrolling down my notifications, me or my assistant might accidentally click on “like page” so that those organisers following my work will suddenly start following his stuff via algorithm??
So with many such examples around us, one can conclude that this psychological façade is not specific to any particular age. It is a rather deplorable human trait, and it might be instrumental in the fossilisation of one’s genuine character that is otherwise meant to help us progress.
With best wishes for a meaningful progress – in Sitar & in life,
Soham Munim
27th July 2019