The year 2020 began as usual with festivities connected with the New Year. In Chennai, the cultural capital of India, the December- January Margazhi Mahotsavam was slowly coming to a close with most sabhas boasting of more than two months of non-stop programmes featuring thousands of artists from all over the world. February heralded the festival of Sivaratri when dancers congregated at the thousands of Siva temples to participate in dance festivals celebrating the Lord of Dance, Siva-Nataraja. March saw the commencement of the annual and board exams for students and a general lull in cultural activities. It was a bolt from the blue for the fraternity of artists world over when the deadly Corona virus struck and literally stunned people into a shocked silence and inactivity in the form of the “lockdown”. Realisation about the enormity of the situation dawned slowly with everyone trying to come to terms with the novel challenges in day to day life.

Members of the artistic fraternity were preparing themselves for the various tours abroad for performances, arangetrams, workshops and other assignments for extended periods of over five to six months. How would the lockdown affect their livelihood? The first reaction was one of shock, disbelief, and dejection, which got slowly transformed into acceptance of the current situation and drawing up of plans to deal with the crisis.

Steps were required to resurrect the largely unorganised sector of culture comprising mainly of professional and non-professional artists from various classical dance and music styles, as well as the thousands of folk artists and traditional arts & crafts persons who were rendered jobless.

The Association of Bharatanatyam Artistes of India (ABHAI) has, over the years, been playing a proactive role in artists’ welfare. This time too it soon swung into action. The organisation’s president, Roja Kannan, shares how ABHAI implemented its plans.

“We had to take some hardcore decisions on how to deal with the crisis that artists were facing because of the pandemic and how to find intermediary and immediate solutions to their day to day problems. An emergency committee meeting was convened online and thus was born the initiative called ‘Abhai—Artistes for Artistes Welfare Fund’.

An appeal for funds was framed by means of a video which was produced by Abhai, wherein all the committee members performed, and I appealed for funds at the end. The songs were carefully chosen, keeping in mind the gravity of the situation, and the need to gain strength from one another in a spirit of mutual give and take. We put together lyrics of poet Sahir Ludhianvi which speaks of equality and equanimity, verses from Ramalinga Adigalar’s Jeeva Karunyam which talks of compassion towards everything on Earth—the flora, fauna, the hungry, the poor and the sick, and finally verses from Maitreem bhajata which talks of universal peace and harmony. Each committee member recorded his/her portion from home and with some in-house editing skills we launched the appeal-video on Tamil New Year’s Day on 14 April. The video was shared through all our social media platforms, as well as the Abhai WhatsApp groups comprising nearly 3000 members, in the spirit of self reliance or ‘atmanirbhar’.

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