“Where have all the FLOWERS GONE long time passing?”

Clyde D’ Mello

Udeya Vir Singh through his performance reminisces the old green spaces and urges the audience to take a step back and think about environmental issues and the cause-effect analysis. Clyde D’Mello elucidates.

To a major extent development in a city means the cutting of the green belt, I remember watching many advertisements on the BBC (the only international news channel other than the now Al Jazeera among local channels) while in the Kingdom of Bahrain the promotion of anti- deforestation was quite efficient. There would be a man in a kayak sitting on top of a ledge waiting for a flash flood and saying that he is prepared for the worst if all the trees were cut down and then asks the question “Are you ready? I am!” I have been in Bangalore for the past twelve years, I have seen flyovers and roads constructed by cutting down a major chunk of the green belt on the road and all of this is done for the idea of development. One can say that the development in a city or planning of a settlement is the destruction of an ecosystem to create a new ecosystem of concrete. A recent performance by Udeya Vir Singh called “Mara Dinda Yenu?” (Translated as “What is from the tree?”) Explains on how deforestation of any type has affected us. Udeay’s dressing is symbolic to that of a tree with a crown of dried leaves literally to represent THE crown of an actual tree, he wears a lungi and a vest showing a villager in its hands and on his neck are bags and a garland of fruits respectively.

As he arrives in Basvangudi, Bangalore opposite the most prominent feature of globalised development – A Mc Donalds , he grabs the attention of the public by striding across the footpath. He sits down and begins to meditate like a Rishi Muni in front of a tree, to represent the tree more like a shaman. He gets up and starts to sing like a village crier to a public in front of him “MARA DINDA YENU?, MARA DINDA YENU?, MARA DINDA HUVU!, MARA DINDA KADU!, KADALLI YENU?” (What is from the tree, what is from the tree? From the tree comes the flower, from the tree comes the forest, what is in the forest?) And the public responds KADALLI MARA! (In the forest there are tees) – Udeya asks BUT WHERE IS THE FOREST. In addition, the public goes blank. It’s like they don’t know what to say, for some reason their silence speaks louder at this moment, like they are aware of what is the present condition of the world forests and how have man’s needs and the idea of development taken a toll on the earth and its ecosystem. Some do answer back that you can get everything in the forest but for everything to exist the forest has to exist.