Tamil Nadu 2006 |
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Week 3Feb 23 & 24 2006 |
Spent the day at the foundation drafting the chapter. In the evening I finally braved the Hotel Traffic Jam for dinner. They ushered me into the "air conditioned hall" which I tried to keep out of as I knew what to expect. And I was right. Funereally dark inside, so you can barely see the menu, let alone read it, and the a/c set to just above freezing (well, no more than 25°C or so). Mind you, the dim light bulbs are a bit of relief. Apart from open flames, night time India is lit by harsh fluorescent tubes. Everywhere. They are draped over tree branches and in all the temples and in the rooms I live in. They cast a harsh greenish light. Indians look very dark under it. Europeans look like Martians. Incandescent gloom is actually quite a relaxation, if only it wasn't so cold!
Indians like noise. It is very difficult to find somewhere quiet. Most restaurants have a large TV on all the time, but with the sound turned off so that the radio can be turned on full blast. So you have a Bollywood musical on the box, with Boyzone blaring out as the sound track. A curious combination. All vehicles blare their horns all the time, and all motor bikes have loud bleepers which come on when the indicators are turned on. For some reason, every lorry has a sign on the back exhorting motorists to "Sound Horn". Its what they do all the time without encouragement! The lorries also have very moral slogans on the back extolling family planning or advising on attending diabetic clinics. I don't know if they get paid to do so or if it is just a public service.
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I don't know what this was in aid of. A decorated float being pulled down the main road with drummers and bells crashing around it. There was a plastic chair set up like a throne at the back, which I think some unfortunate was set to be displayed in the near future. Probably someone just engaged. All very good natured but highly excited. |
Long interesting day. Went into George Town first, to get my new jacket. Fits perfectly and is extremely light. Not bad, a hand tailored silk jacket for £30. Then had a phone call from my Austrian dancer friend Veronika to say there was a dance performance tonight by two young women, twin sister engineering students, who had been studying classical Indian dancing for seven years and tonight was their first official public performance, their Arangetram. A bit like an apprentice's masterpiece. I got there and it was stunning. Also very, very Indian (we were the only two Europeans in an audience of about 500 I should think.) First there was an hour of the most wonderful music and dance, followed by an hour and a half when all the VIPs in the audience came on stage and gave interminable speeches and handed out prizes all round (every one of them got a silk shawl, the two dancers got three silk shawls, bronze statues of Shiva Nataraja (Lord of the dance, see him here) and lots of boxed presents.) and then finally another half hour of wonderful performance. During all of this, people were coming and going, using their cell phones, cell phones rang all the time. You would have thought it was a train station, not a high quality classical performance. At the end we got to meet all the stars and the dancers Guru. You have to have a Guru to get anywhere here, I must look out for one.
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A large veena. Plucked string instrument. I saw this in the Institute for Traditional Musical Instruments. Interesting collection and a chap strummed several for me, but the display cases are a bit sad and dusty. |
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The photos of the dancing itself are too poor to publish really, because the light was too low, but there is one lower down. This flash photo at the end shows the two dancers and Veronika, my Viennese friend. Their outfits are pure heavy silk and it is all real gold. They wore a completely different costume in the first half. |
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Proof that I'm here! Also that I'm a lot taller than the average southern Indian. |
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This is the best still photo of the dancers in action, but gives little of the reality and of course no music. |
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dancesolo.wmv (290Kb)
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A video experiment. This works best in Internet Explorer
and is a bit unreliable in Firefox. It should load and open
automatically. If it does run OK, when it is finished right click it and
click Play to run it again.
If it doesn't load and run, click the hyper link to open it in a media player. |
