Day 8 – A week in India

Today begins the first day of my second week in India.  Since I have some free time I am starting todays blog in the afternoon of day eight.  At this point my life on campus seems to be falling into a more or less regular routine, but after my concert on Friday I am planning to start getting out and about.  Unless something else comes up I plan to do a full Saturday of hiking around the local villages in the area.  Then early next week a trip to Pune the nearest large town to do errands and met my concert organizers

The morning started with my usual exercise and then up the hill for breakfast.  Then some practice over at the music building.  I ran into Ben Clark and he printed out and gave me the first page of an original composition he wrote a few years back.  The guitar is a featured instrument and he would like to have it performed here on campus before I leave.  I think there are 8 or so instruments in the composition so he will need to round-up other players who can do the other parts.  The first page of the guitar part is quite challenging. I have started working out the left hand fingering on some chords with very big stretches.  After lunch I continued my practice at my favorite practice spot near the fine art complex.  Raj Kishor, who is the assistant for all arts related activities was hanging around, and after listening to me practice for a while went and got one of the schools movie cameras and filmed me playing a couple of tunes.  We talked about filming my concert on Friday and he suggested that I talk to Ben about that possibility.  After that a student I had not yet met came by.  He seems the best guitarist I have encountered on campus.  He played something for me and we talked about his taking some lessons and the campus guitar group which I will soon be attending.

Just today I am beginning to really feel a desire for a place of my own were I can retreat during the day for rest, practice, reading or whatever.  In that regard, the latest word is that I will be moving into my new place tomorrow.  We shall see.

After I finish writing this section of my blog I am going to go over to the area where the Kathakali Dance company performing tonight.  It takes the dancers over 4 hours do put on their makeup and costumes.  It was told this dance form is an incredible performance spectacle.  The show starts around 8:00 pm.

blog continued next morning: So I walked over to the multipurpose center to watch the dancer prepare their makeup and costumes.  When I arrived they were in the early stages.  The make up and costumes are incredible. This form of dance comes from the state of Kerala at the tip of southwestern India.  I spent about 3 hours hanging out while the 14 dancers and musicians were getting ready for the show.  I took some photos which I am determined to download today.

While hanging out I spent some time talking with a reporter, K.V. Rajasekharan, from a Pune newspaper who was covering their performance at UWC.  He explained a great deal about Kerala, Indian newspapers and the history of this particular dance group.  The main language in Kerala is Malayalam so few people in that state speak Hindi or Urdu.  He told me that the most common language used between the many different language groups is English.  I had just observed an interview that an Indian UWC student was having with the director of the group, who was also a dancer.  They were doing the interview in English which really surprised me.  The student, from northern India, could not understand Malayalam and the director could not understand Hindi so English was their common language.  The reporter explained that this is very common throughout India and was considered during the independence movement a way to unit the extraordinarily diverse areas of India with a common language.  The newspaper KV works for is published entirely in Malayalam, but distributed throughout India to the millions of Kerala natives who have moved to other parts of India.  The newspaper has branch editions and reporters who report on local events of special interest to the local community of Kerala natives.  There are many newspapers throughout India that do the same thing based on other language groups.

Kerala is the only State in India that has a communist party run government.  The condition of citizens from this area is far different that any other area of India.  There is close to a 100% literacy rate, no extreme poverty, universal medical care and great religious harmony.  It is also an area of extraordinary natural beauty.  I plan to head there after leaving the UWC as well as visiting the southern state of Tamil Nadu, in particular Chennai, which is the center of Carnatic music (south Indian Classical Music).

The performing group is one of the best known Kathakali dance groups.  The current directors father was a major figure in India’s independence movement as well as one of the great dancers in the Kathakali tradition.  The process of applying their extraordinary makeup, masks and costumes was amazing.  Listening to the musicians warming up was great.

Finally the show began.  It was outside at a stepped area was used for seating with the stage set up below.  It was dark outside and the lighting and sound set up was very good.  For this show they were using a modified Julius Cesar by Shakespeare as their script outline.  There is no speaking in this dance/drama except for a few occasional grunts.  The story is told through a stylized pantomime with incredible use of percussion and singing.  It was so powerful even though I did not understand a great deal of the storyline and none of the singing.  But the emotions expressed were very clear and the visual impact was amazing.  I have never heard drumming used like this.  It was so powerful.  What a great opportunity to see this event.  I hope to see more of this art form when I visit Kerala and maybe even visit with members of this company.

Once again I headed down the hill very tired.  I have been assured that I will be moving into my new apartment today around noon.