Ars Gratia

Sometimes past midnight, I like to step out onto the balcony of my 10th floor apartment and stare at the sleeping sentinel that is Cochin. Tonight is one of those nights.

One part of me just likes to observe the stillness of the infinite night that seems to have lulled this ancient city into inaction; the other part of me quietly revels in mundane Ansel Adam-like snapshots of the night  - a row of autos napping outside a sodium-lit street; the simulated fluttery panic of drying trouser legs in the night breeze; the surreal mists of the distant refinery drifting about, searching for a place they can call home; the occasional glimmer among indigo waves as ships seek respite from the depths of darkness.

At such times, one feels compelled to let the mind wander on its own accord, sweeping through childhood memories, existential dilemmas, imagining grandchildren, wondering why Million Dollar Baby had to end thataways, why Erich Segal had to kill her, why do men kill whales, why our next generation will not probably see a magnificent live tiger…or why one wrote the blog that one did. It also helps that when one wants to sound unearthly and philosophical – in sync with the god-like feeling that a 10th floor view at midnight can inspire - one starts saying “one” more often that “I”.

It is this that brings me to recant some of what I wrote about martial arts in my previous post – as an immediate penance, let me affirm that there are obvious and serious benefits that practicing Martial Arts can bring about:

Health
Unless you are a diehard aerobics practitioner or have your own personal trainer, it is very unlikely that you are doing enough exercise to justify the tonnes of Lays, Pepsi and Black Forest  that you inflict on your stomach (Speak for yourself, you say?- I hear you!).

An hour and a half of martial arts can take care of this – normally any martial arts class starts with warm up exercises which would include stretching, pushups, jogging etc. Next in line would be slightly more rigorous muscle group exercises like crunches or squats or swinging your limbs. Now comes the more serious business of specific punches, blocks and kicks – variations on upper/ lower/ middle/ left/ right themes…and then katas – these are sequences of punches, kicks, blocks which usually involve movement.  Next would be sparring with an opponent and then the warm-down.

At the end of this, your joints creak and the muscle pain kicks in after the endorphins wear off – but it is such an exquisite pain – the pain of realizing the limits that you can push your body to perform – the pain of growing new muscles – the pain of putting in 2 hours of effort and having reached that ledge on a mountain face where you can take a glance at the rising sun & then move on to the next narrow toehold…now that’s a tad too poetic, so to get back to where we were – yeah, you definitely do get healthier if you start practicing tae-kwon-do or karate or kalari. You choose.

Confidence
No, its not the adrenalin rush of that last para that’s talking – its me – really! For a species that claims to have evolved enough to start measuring EQ, there’s still a considerable amount of respect reserved for brute physical/ muscular power among us peoples. And that’s where yours truly ancient Japanese/ Chinese/ Indian practices can kick in – like the much blamed Drill Sergeant of generations of army cadets, the Arts (ahem!) whet your body and mind into a fine fighting weapon – like the respective presidents of both India & Pakistan would like to claim, the possession of power (nuclear or otherwise) has a far superior effect than its actual exercise. That you go through a regime of self defence exercises and therefore have a finely honed body and mind can be at times extremely exhilarating, but mostly bring out that quiet sense of self-assurance that “situations” can be “handled”. I remember imitating “Clark” after reading Tom Clancy - scanning the environment constantly for any deviants/ anomalies – human or otherwise; assessing threats and adjusting oneself to handle a situation should one arise. While this gives a few initial fake rushes of blood to the head, over a period of time, this habit gives a clear sense of confidence to a practitioner arising out of superior knowledge leading to control in the event of exigencies (my GMAT vocab prep, how it shows!).

Focus/ Concentration
Surprising but true – when you are in the dojo floor against an opponent, you are in a parallel universe where nothing else matters. To succeed in this case, to get in a punch, to  force a block or to snap a kick, your mind has to handle more than 10 different vectors of thought – the terrain, your position, what blow should be used, from which direction, what is the fall back option, when should one attack and what should this blow achieve (for e.g., make your opponent retreat/ immobilize him/ create an opening for a more powerful blow/ block a potential offensive blow while you get into position etc). At the onset, all this is total chaos meets sheer survival instinct – you just need to last there for 5 minutes vs. a taller, fiercer opponent without going down – and so one does all that is required to fill the 5 minutes – including kicking up dust, hugging your opponent in sudden gushes of affection, prancing (dignified running ;-) around the ring while your pal tracks you like a wolf circling around a lamb. But over a period of mind, if one is interested enough, you can bring about the power of focus to the arena – for e.g do a quick check of height/weight/SWOT of the opponent beforehand, deciding when one needs the adrenalin rush and what the mind need to conjure up to deliver the rush of hormones, checking out which side the light is and therefore which angles are likely to be blinding etc. Once the fight is underway, you can even do better – there is the classical argument about what reveals more about your opponent – his body or his eyes – I have heard enough cases arguing for either. Then there is the special arsenal that one builds up and uses – a specially devised series of punches/ locks or throws that one practices and gains reflexive expertise to execute in half-a-second. All these do not appear on enrollment or do not develop in a week’s time – sometimes one earns a broken nose or a twisted ankle or a kick in the balls for the wisdom to be driven home – but what you gain out of such lessons and what you start doing to avoid these is of immeasurable use – inside and outside the ring.

Fine Arts 101-Ars gratia, vita brevis
If despite my New Year resolutions, am quoting Latin, then gentle reader, it must be good Latin – in this case “Art is Long, Life is short”. It is no accident that these are called
Martial “Arts”.
As much as they are self –defense techniques, as much as they are physical exercises, “Martial Arts” are also an indulgence in a world of art no less exquisite than the sight of a Van Gogh or a Henry Moore…I would go on to add that it is precisely because of their inherent quality of possessing life and the impossibility of exact repetition (If I was Murakami, I would have called it Monoganashii – the beauty of that which is fleeting- but me, am just your everyday burnt-out martial artist ;-), that they qualify for a far more appreciative and concentrated approach as compared to, say that used to evaluate everyday paintings or literature. (Ah! The danger of being carried away by verbal convolutions disguised as arguments on aesthetics…tch tch).

Martial Arts are obviously so much closer to the performing arts such as music, dance or drama – but because of their very unpredictability, they bring a sense of spontaneity that needs to be discerned keenly to be appreciated in its entirety. Regular performing arts demand that you appreciate their subtleties at some levels like
1. Understanding/ appreciating the context of the performed piece
2. Understanding/ appreciating the very personal grace or glory that the artiste brings to the piece by sheer force of his/ her unique personality.
3. Understanding the subtler nuances – those subtle shifts in tempo, mood or direction, those points of fulcrum around which such performances rest.

But watching a combat performance by martial artists on the other hand requires your understanding not only on the above but also demands that you tread on different mental planes apart from the levels mentioned above (NO, this isn’t supposed to evoke the image of a critic stretched out in all directions multidimensional space – if it does, you are doing something wrong with your mind – go back to your Ishiguro and try again later) - One, to appreciate what has driven the artist to make any move; Two, the execution of the action (the actual artistry as seen in other arts) and Three, the evaluation of alternatives to that particular move and the results that they might have delivered.

This of course would be impossible for a regular bystander to appreciate - all one sees is two figures approaching each other, a series of indecipherable blows and pummeling that results in either the two separating to fight again or one of the artists biting dust. But for one who has been in the heart of combat, such a fight (how vulgar of me, such a performance!) is much more than mere grappling around – it is at once a revelation of how two minds work, seeking in milliseconds to draw the knowledge of countless practice sessions and the seamless flow of thought into action and intuitive counteraction.

I would love to go on – about the beauty of a 1000 layered katana, the deep perambulations that the Five Rings of Musashi can evoke, about how the stilled mind becomes that single thought which flows into the edge of your hand that launches itself into the universe at your opponent…but…but apparently these subtleties are lost on the high-flying mosquitoes of Cochin; a well-coordinated attack is on its way and I am afraid I must retreat into the Mortein-enveloped confines of my room and seek somnambulistic respite.

And Bolero, which was playing, is winding its way to a crashing crescendo – signaling the waning of my waxing…so here ends a night-induced defense of the very special Arts that I swore to live by.

Someday I shall smite again…until then, watch your Jet Li and read your Musashi.

Good night, gods of the darkness.