The Gurukul System of Training: An Indigenous Pedagogy

"It all began with a simple yet deep dissatisfaction when I was 20. On the first day of my first job, I spurned the possibility of how my time would be spent. With a clear intuition that I did not want to engage in commercial work whose end was just financial transactions; an inward journey had unknowingly begun. The discomfort, which was actually a yearning for something more than the perceivable life around me, continued. 

This search led me to a Place and a Person which turned and churned my life around. I was all of 23 years of age, with barely any life experiences, but with a gut feeling of what I did not want from my life; when I serendipitously landed at a Gurukul (home of the master) in the midst of a jungle, in a beautiful valley in Maharashtra, India. 

I went there with an intention to train in classical Indian dance. Little did I know that the intent to train in an art form would churn a whirlwind of changes to my life." 

Dancer Miti Desai shares more about her experiences in the Gurukul system of training.

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