Robert Emmet Meagher at CIMA Gallery. Picture by Pabitra Das

The New World looks at the Old with awe and wonder. And, sometimes, incomprehension.

Confounded, no doubt, by some ways of life and traditions that refuse to die in spite of cataclysms that changed the course of history.

Robert Emmet Meagher, currently professor of humanities at Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts, and an authority on Greek drama, gave a lecture on his current engagement with Indian folk dance traditions, particularly Chhau, exploring Attic drama through indigenous forms.

Meagher was invited by CIMA Gallery to speak on his experiment with Aeschylus? Seven Against Thebes, using Chhau and the dance of the Santhals to resuscitate a tradition that died more than 2,000 years ago.

He was against using the word fusion, because it suggested an artificial combination. He preferred using the term gene therapy, where a regeneration of lost cells is encouraged through gene transfer into an ailing organism.

He spoke on the chorus in Greek drama and how modern productions feel unsure of how to handle something that became more of an appendage, now that the rituals with which the chorus was associated are lost in antiquity.

He went on to trace parallels between the Greek drama and the Indian epic traditions, as manifested in the Mahabharata, which, he said, were ?so revelatory of each other.? Yet there was a ?resistance? to admitting these cultural influences beyond Alexander?s times.

To anybody who has flipped through Robert Graves? compilation of classical myths and The Golden Bough, such cross-cultural readings may not come as a surprise.

Meagher went on to describe how he tried to bring back to life Seven Against Thebes by incorporating Purulia traditions. Chhau masks were modified to resemble helmeted heads. The end product closely resembled the androids and alpha males so popular among toy manufacturers. The Santhal girls looked enervated.

Mainak Bhaumik?s documentary on Chhau, produced by CIMA, proved anew that this form is literally alive and kicking. The singer in the background score had a voice that was a bridge across centuries.