by Christine Hearn
Photography by Sabrina Martini

Varanasi was a shock for nine students of SFU's first field school in the contemporary arts and culture of India. The city is situated on the sacred Ganges River, and as a holy Hindu site it is a place where many of the devout come to die. Bodies burn on the funeral ghats and other bodies float in the river.

Field school leader Patricia Gruben of the School for the Contemporary Arts says people warned her against going to Varanasi first, saying it would be too difficult for the students. "I wanted to start there because in order to understand Indian culture there needs to be a continuum," she explains. "In India, modernism grew out of a sense of national identity — particularly in dance where contemporary dance is a reflection of traditional styles."

In retrospect going to Varanasi at the beginning was a good decision. "The students said afterward that it was the right place to start because when we got to the much more modern Delhi they understood where things stemmed from," Gruben says.

The nine students were an eclectic group — six from SFU, two from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, and one from the University of Victoria. The mix included students of theatre, music, art and cultural studies, sociology, and political science. They became very close to each other during their? eight weeks in India during which they studied music, dance, visual art, theatre, and film under the auspices of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Whistling Woods Institute for Film, Television, and Media Arts (WWI).

After Varanasi the students spent a month in Delhi for lectures from JNU faculty and top Indian performers. "They designed a beautiful poster to publicize the program, so people from the whole campus came to hear the lectures and performances, and there were debates and discussions involving our students and their students," says Gruben. "Our presence on their campus had a very positive effect because they scheduled things for us and then opened them up to everyone."

Next came Mumbai and the flash and glitter of Bollywood, where the students attended lectures at WWI and immersed themselves in Indian film. They met Bollywood actors, producers, and directors and gained an insight into that fast-growing Indian film industry.

Gruben says the field school was life changing for most of the students, as it was for her. She says that while it was a shock for the students to see the level of poverty, it was illuminating to realize how much in common they had with many of the students in India. New and continuing field schools are scheduled for India in 2008 and after. One is a School for International Studies program on the development of Contemporary India that will be offered in partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (ITM). Another is a program through the School for Interactive Arts and Technology in the technology and culture of India. This will be hosted jointly by the ITM and the TATA Consultancy Services Executive Training Centre. These are in addition to the annual Global Education Field School at Punjab University in Chandigarh, currently in its third year of operation. aq

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