Flamenco has been juxtaposed with Kathak, the dance form of north India, for over three decades now. The pronounced and intricate footwork that marks both dance forms makes for a convenient point of interaction. Her figure and bodyline are perfect and she tends to capitalise on those alone. So overwhelming are the isolating charms of a perceived global cross-culturalism that they tend to obliterate from view the smaller, presumably cloistered, native scene. The trouble is that the native scene itself is never quite static and has moved on.
Simplistic juxtapositions are no longer the ticket to contemporaneity in India.
Time is perhaps ripe for Richard's intuitive idea of putting culture and tourism to serve development at Maheshwar. However, amateur efforts are neither sustainable nor revolutionary. They are at best, as the public appreciation of the festival by the local populace would have shown, charming but a trifle irrelevant. A bloody crackdown on Naxalites in the south-eastern fringes of Uttar Pradesh proves that only developmental programmes, not guns, can help fight the menace.