THE PATH LESS TAKEN

OVER THE LAST DECADE OR SO, CARNATIC MUSICIAN, AUTHOR AND ACTIVIST T.M. KRISHNA—WHO IS CURATING THE UPCOMING KNMA FESTIVAL—HAS ADDRESSED FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES AROUND CASTE, GENDER AND CLASS

- Deepali Dhingra

Google T. M. Krishna's name and chances are you will come upon terms such as 'rebel', 'rule-breaker' or 'controversy's child' to describe him. However, the Carnatic musician, author and activist has no desire to be boxed into narrow definitions. “Throwing these tags and phrases are just laziness and an inability to engage. I don't see a necessity to respond to any of that and/ or reject or accept them,” he says.

Perhaps it is this refusal to not conform to rigid definitions that compelled him to say yes to becoming the curator of the second edition of the KNMA Festival presented by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. With the focus this time on 'Voices of Diversity'—although Krishna prefers the term 'non-exclusivity'—here was an opportunity to showcase and share life experiences, realities, ideas in abstract ways, through song, through meter and poetry and through movement.