PERFORMING ARTS 117 turn has internalised this dichotomy of the 'virtuous housewife" and the 'unsheltered' woman3 (who perforce has to work and earn to feed her family); that she considers herself better than, different from the 'baijis' of yesterday. Finally, such an attitude that condemns the 'baiji'4 cannot be separated from an attitude that sees all performing women as 'on display* and therefore not respectable. Another point of view sees the problem—as in other discipline also—as one of lack of opportunity and lack of visibility The feeling that women do not get a chance led to a festival devoted to women musicians5—a musical delight no doubt, a genuine attempt to bring on to the concert platform talented women who would otherwise have languished in small towns buried under the trivia of domestic chores and chafing at the lack of time, space and opportunity to prove themselves. The festival brought together a number of such talented women; it put paid to the myths that women cannot perform certain styles or instruments (the festival featured Ashgari Begum, singer of dhrupad, and several women playing sarangi, shehnai and tabia among other instruments; moreover, all accompanists were women) and it was inspired by a tremendous desire to prove that women can be as good musicians as men. These are important issues and concerns and can go a long way to changing the image and situation of women artistes. But however genuine the concern, the 'bringing out* approach tackles only the surface and does not go to the root of the problem. Visibility alone means nothing; in any case, such festivals would have to be repeated regularly to have even a small impact. Another approach appears 10 be the 'evaluation women's contribution' type, where paens of praise are sung to the great women composers and artistes-among them Meera and Andal. This is supposed to show how Indian cultural traditions have always accorded a place of respect for women.6 While it is essential to evaluate women's contribution, this too becomes rather meaningless unless such an exercise is in the context of social and political conditions of the time. Programmes inspired by this approach have also tended to look at 'the many facets of woman'7. Such programmes treat the audience to a 'modem' version (with commentaries and other such concessions to 'npn-arf) of the three hundred and eight four possible varieties of nayikas8—meir.many moods and emotions-all depicted with the originality and depth of a Mills and Boon novelette and all seeing woman in relation to a man, expressing socially 'approved' emotions as society expects they are to be expressed9. These static masks do not depict anything even remotely approximating the many facets of real women but rather, confine themselves to that mythic and mystified category 'Woman'. Such depictions far from joining hands with the women's movement strike it a grevious blow by reinforcing the 'feminine mystique' and perpetrating and reinforcing traditional stereotypes. While the horrendous visuals of mass media are terrifying for their total hold over so many people, these images are no less pernicious because they purport to be classical culture and therefore better than the lowbrow mish-mash of a thousand bad films.