*2021. New York*. It was a windy and cold November evening. Times Square was bristling with people. I had a dinner meeting with my friend Suvir and was waiting for him, sitting on a bench. For about 15 minutes I was looking up, craning my neck, not at the glitzy neon billboards but beyond them, right up the very top of the buildings that surrounded the square. “We may not get the permission ….. I remembered her saying, waking me from my reverie.
Dreams die first I told myself.
*2011*. It was in the year 2011 immediately after her famous TED talk, that I first discovered Janet Echelman. (www.echelman.com). I watched her talk with awe as she showed the various floating gigantic sculptural installations she did in various parts of the world. I wrote to her, not at all sure if she would respond to my request – Please can she do an installation with the Indian tricolours that we can take around the world every Independence day and install it in a famous public square in one country at a time ? She said YES. Of course she would, especially for India, as her life changed since that morning at Mahabalipuram beach when she first got the idea for her installation from the fishing nets. We discussed the idea back and forth and I told her that I would revert once I am in a position to raise sponsorship funding for the same.
*2015 Yoga Day* The visual of Janet’s sculptures struck me again. This time I was more specific. I now imagined her installation over the Times Square on the Yoga Day with 1000s of practitioners practising under it and in a way paying homage to the land which gave birth to this global movement. I immediately tried to connect back with her again but somehow my mail did not get a response. So I left it at that.
*2019*. I was in Boston. I tried to reach her one more time. Luckily she was in town, she remembered our conversation from 8 years, was free for a meeting and immediately asked me to come over to her studio. After chatting about her experiences in India and her current projects, she told me that Times Square will not be possible; she earlier tried for another installation and the authorities did not give her the permission. We chatted for some more time and looked at other possibilities like the Highline and agreed to reconnect again.
Somehow my heart was not on this project anymore. The idea of a tricolour installation of Janets sculpture over the Times Square on the Yoga day was so deeply ingrained in me that I just did not feel enthusiastic of trying it elsewhere.
*2022. Yoga Day* Yes Dreams Die. But do Dharmic Dreams also die? That is the question I leave with you. May be not now, but may be in a few years from now the authorities will hear the collective sankalpam of all of us and give permission for such an installation ! I don’t know if I will be around to see this. But I am writing this post today with a request to all of you to visualise my dream and imagine the grand spectacle of Janet’s sculpture over the Times Square, our tricolours flying high in their magnificent splendour, gently swaying to the breeze, with 1000s of Yoga practitioners doing surya namaskars, looking up into the sky at the installation and expressing their reverence and gratitude to Sage Patanjali.
Hari