Enjoying the flow

It is already Monday night here I am just getting around to starting my weekly blog entry.  What a terrific week of wonderful experience I have had.  I looked at my iPod calendar to survey my weeks activities and found that last Monday, a week back, seems like the distant past.  I grabbed an early breakfast at the school cafeteria, caught a ride into Pune with a school jeep and got dropped of at the train station.     I got to the station about an hour early so enjoyed people watching while waiting for my train to arrive.  In India trains go almost everywhere, are very cheap and are almost always full.  I got a second class ticket, non air-conditioned car which cost me around $4.00 for the 4 hour trip.  Much of the landscape was dry plains, but we did go through a stretch of mountains, where I say monkeys running around and in the trees.

Mumbai is a huge city and in getting to the train station the tracks passed through some miles of extreme urban poverty.  Many of the urban poor are rural people who have moved to the city in search of new opportunity.  All along the tracks right-of-way, amidst the squalor, were miles of perfectly tended vegetable gardens.  These gardens are cared for by the people who live in the slums just above the tracks.  This right-of-way is “public” land owned by the railroad. It appears people have taken it upon themselves to carefully clean up all the rubble and garbage along the tracks and turn this no mans land into places of beauty and production.   These same people seem to live in conditions of great disorder.  My observation of these extraordinary gardens causes me to wonder if this is not always the case.  I have not yet walked through these slum areas along the tracks, so I don’t know how living spaces are kept up inside, but from the outside it is hard to imagine greater poverty and poor living conditions.  At some time during my travel I am going to take time to visit such an area and find out more.   At any rate the gardens displayed an aspect of resilience and creative works that was quite beautiful.

Out on the street I finally found a auto-rickshaw they knew how to get me to the American Center.  I arrived just in time for my 2:30 pm appointment, but didn’t get upstairs to visit the American Consul for at least 20 minutes because of the extremely tight security at the building.  (You may remember that a little over a year ago a group of crazy political extremists went walking through a high-end area of Mumbai killing hundreds of people at random.)  After finally meeting the American Consul and her Indian Cultural Affairs Specialist, we had a good meeting.  I played them some music and we talked about future performance possibilities.  It is likely that I will be flying back to Mumbai in early April to perform and concert and give a workshop.  More on all that if it is firmed up.  They will also be contacting other posts to see if they want to have me perform.  By the time I got out of there is was 5:00 pm and I went to find a hotel.  I ended up staying in as old historic of part of Mumbai at the place recommended in my Lonely Planet guide-book.  I now know that hotels in India are quite expensive, especially in places like Mumbai and Delhi.  The place I stayed at was on the funky end, but the room and sheets were clean, and it still cost me $20 a night.  Food, if you eat at the right places is quite cheap and good.  Transportation is more than reasonable, but lodging is high.

After checking in and cleaning up a bit I hit the streets to find a place to eat, see some sites in the area and find a place to get my nails repaired.  My nails have grown out since arriving in India so it was absolutely necessary to get them repaired before my upcoming concert.  So I headed over to the Taj, which is the most expensive and elegant hotel in Mumbai.  The Taj Hotel was the epicenter of the terrorist attack I described above, so security was quite tight, but nothing compared to security at the American Center.  Inside and outside it is 5 star all the way.  At the reception desk they told me where to find the nail salon and I headed directly there.  It was already around 7:30 pm and they were about to close up for the night, but I made an appointment for 11:30 am the next morning, which was the first time slot available.  In a place like this, I don’t think most people ask what something costs, because money is not an issue.  I did ask and was told that the starting price was 1800 rupees ($40 us).  I mentioned that I only needed 4 nails worked and they said talk to the nail guy at my appointment.  In Las Vegas I get what I need done for $7.50.  Well the next morning I showed up and ended up paying the $40.  At least the guy did a good job and I had to have it done.  I have to get my nails fixed around every 6 weeks, so next time I need them done I will start checking around sooner.

I then walked straight back to my hotel, checked out and headed to the train station to catch my 2:00 pm train back to Pune.  I had some good Indian fast food at the train station, took a few fotos as I wandered around and then boarded my train where I had a reserved seat.  Now before I tell you about the following incident please note a few of the following facts.  1. Mumbai has over 16 million residents.  2. Trains run in and out of Mumbai by at least a hundred times a day.  3.  Mumbai is on constant terrorist alert.  4.  The government and army probably have a huge secret police force.

So on entering the train I go to my reserved seat.  My compartment seating area is not full, so around a half-hour after the train pulls out,  I pull out my guitar and start practicing.  There is one guy sitting at the bench seat opposite and 2 guys across the aisle.  After a while, the guy across from me says “I saw you yesterday at the American Center”.  I am very surprised, he is a serious type of fellow, and tells me he was a guard out front.  He is not in uniform on the train.  He says he is going home to visit his family a few stops up and that he commutes back and forth to work.  He is kind of vague about how often he does this.  It could be his lack of fluent English.  He asks me what kind of visa I have.  I tell him I am a tourist traveling around and that I play music.  More people start coming looking for seats so I put my guitar away.  After a while I drift off to sleep and when I wake up a few minutes later he is gone.  As I got reflecting on it later, I thought about the amazing coincidence of it all.  I also thought that maybe it was not a chance meeting. Maybe someone was just checking up on me.  A few days after this, on Saturday night, while I was performing my concert in Pune, a terrorist bomb went off about a mile away, at a popular hang out for foreigners and Indians.  Many people were killed and injured.  It is easy to understand why security folks may want to check out anything that seems even slightly unusual.  What a strange and sick place the world is, and what a beautiful and glorious place it is at the same time.

Off the train and back in Pune I had a long wait at the train station for my UWC driver to pick me up.  Somewhere along the long day I picked up some fellow travelers in the form of fleas.  After five days my numerous bites have finally stopped itching and the swelling has gone down.  I feel that this was my first initiation ritual to extended Indian travel.  I expect there will be other similar trials along the way.  Arriving back at my UWC room around 10:00 pm I immediately showered and soaked all my clothes in soapy hot water.  Mumbai is very hot and sticky compared to here in the hills, so it felt very good to clean up, but mostly I wanted to make sure I got rid of every one of those rascally flees.

On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I took it fairly easy, doing a little teaching, lots of practice and some hanging out.  A fine fellow, Neil had showed up on campus while I was gone.  Ben had arranged for him to come to do drama workshops with the drama students.  Over recent days we have had a good time discussing life and our pursuits.  He lives in Japan, has a Japanese wife, and spends quite a bit of time traveling around India and other places in Asia doing drama related projects.  He writes short stories and gave me a packet of 8 to read.  They are well written, entertaining and generally have an unusual twist at the end which tend to grab me.  Meeting writers these days is of special interest to me as I entering that form of expression more deeply myself.

Speaking of writing, this past Wednesday I was approached by Karen, the biology teacher who I met when first arriving on campus.  She was organizing a birthday party for Darwin’s 201st birthday.  She asked me if I could do a song about Darwin or evolution.  I said I didn’t know one but would write a song to sing at the Friday afternoon party, which I did.  Here are the results.

Evolutionary Blues

CHORUS

I’ve got those evolutionary blues

Let’s move to things fresh and true

We can evolve into something new

Some people say man’s evolved over time

We have a history of fear and crime

War and greed, hate and pain

Conditioned thoughts bring more of the same

CHORUS

We kill each other for our beliefs

We say having more things will make us free

Yet planet destruction is the path were on

If this is evolution then it’s gone wrong

CHORUS

It’s thought that evolutions long and slow

Yet natural selection can have a speedy flow

Mankind must evolve in this crazy time

We can change with a shift of mind

I’ve got those evolutionary blues

Let’s move to things fresh and true

We can evolve into something new

On Saturday morning a caught a jeep into Pune with one of the teachers and a family of 5 who were visiting their son who is a UWC student here at MUWCI.  (They are from Malaysia so I learned a little more about that place.  Others have recently mentioned the place in conversations.  I need to do some research but sounds as if may be an interesting place to visit some day.)

I was dropped in downtown Pune at a well know coffee shop and waited around for a while for Jehangir and Binaifer to pick me up.  They took me to lunch at the restaurant connected to the Pune Race Track.  A place out of the old colonial days that displays a calm yet faded elegance.  The place was full of diners but I was the only non-Indian in the place.  We had a wonderful Indian meal which they ordered.  The lunch was the beginning of two days of kind, thoughtful and generous treatment during my time in Pune for my Saturday evening concert and Sunday afternoon teaching workshop.  After lunch they dropped me at my lodging which was an apartment owned by one of the Pune Music Society board members that is used for their visiting business clients.  It was a comfortable place off the main street with a courtyard area below full of trees, birds and drifting city sounds.  The next morning I sat for some time on the balcony playing my guitar while overlooking this scene.

At 4:00 pm on Saturday I was picked up and taken to the Mazda Hall where my concert would be taking place that evening.  The hall is part of a 120 year old school that is still functioning.   Colonial architecture on a self-contained campus in the heart of Pune.  I tried out the acoustics and got set up on stage where I got the best sound.  I then spent around 2 hours warming up.  At 6:30 pm they opened the doors and by 7:00 the house was full.  By the time I finished my first 2 selections, and the late comers were seated, there were over 300 people in the audience.  It was a mixed crowd of young and old.  From my first note to my last I was enjoying myself, playing well and drawing the audience more and more deeply into the music.  At the end, after an encore of “Never Too Late” I was presented with an amazing garland of flowers.  (See the photo)  I met audience members back stage and then went out to eat with Jehanger, Binaifer, Ben, Sindu, Neil, Arnaud and Shakuntala.

The next day I had a light breakfast at the apartment, prepared by Ravi, who has managed the apartment for over 20 years.  At noon Arnaud picked me up and we went to lunch at a great vegetarian restaurant.  Arnaud is a 66-year-old Frenchmen, married to Shakuntala from India.  He has lived in Pune for over 20 years and recently sold his engineering business.  He plays music, mostly Bach and has a 4 manual digital organ in his home.  He imported it from Holland and told me it is the best made.  I will be going to their home for dinner and organ music this coming Wednesday evening before catching my overnight bus to the beach at Ganpatipule.  I am really looking forward to hearing him play.

My workshop/master class started at 2:00 pm Sunday.  I worked with around 15-20 students.  There were around 30 people observing me teach each student, some waiting for their turn to perform.  Over the years I have taught this type of event on many occasions and find myself very comfortable working in the setting.  All the students were Indian from ages 9 to around 30, with most being younger.  Many were relative beginners but I had a few who were quite experienced having played for many years.  It seems there are limited opportunities in India for advanced instruction in guitar so my class was greatly appreciated.  After 4 straight hours of working with one student after another we finally finished at 6 :00 pm.  Jehanger, Binaifer and I headed out to dinner at another excellent vegetarian restaurant.  We then walked back to the hall and my UWC jeep was waiting for me to take me back to campus.

It was a full week of people and events.  It is now already Tuesday and the next few weeks should be very interesting and busy.  I am in the process of lining up a whole series of performance gigs, some this month and others in early March when I leave the UWC for good.  Tomorrow  evening I leave for the beach and will be spending 4 full days hanging out under coconut trees, swinging in my hammock, swimming, playing music and who knows what else.  Mmmmm … I am very ready for that.

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