Tonight walking along the river bank I saw a pair of large white feathery mounds, with very long necks that kinked up curiously as I stepped from gravel to grass to try to avoid waking them. The heads on the end took turns periscoping up from their featherbeds and blinking back down again, and I realized they belonged to a pair of wise swan mates-for-life. Their sleepy unity rounded off one of the loveliest twilights I have seen yet, with the supermoon prolonging dusk and the waterbirds taking full advantage of the extended rambling possibilities.
I had just spent the previous hour sitting in the back of an old church listening to a speaker who restored my faith in the future of humanity. The evening service had included a sermon delivered by the local curate, a friend of a friend and one of the least pretentious people I've ever met (he once caused a saleslady in the Polish airport minor consternation upon his buying 5 copies of a lady's magazine, while in full dress robes, because the title mimicked a very rude word in English and it tickled him so much he wanted extra copies for his friends). Basically, his brief speech simply and clearly presented, as his own personal view of religion, that he did not share the view of those who ('formerly') believed in divine punishment upon the sins of mankind, and so interpreted natural disasters, such as the recent earthquake. For me at least, it was incredibly touching and refreshing to at last hear the spirit of religion be privileged over its mutable letter.
That spirit was also in full swing at the Holi festival I attended yesterday at a local temple, together with some other students from my university's Indian society. Holi is the Indian festival of color http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4805490.stm but it has taken me until this year in England to be able to celebrate it. We reached the temple after a long bus journey, punctuated by a running commentary of jokes on topics ranging from the Indian political system to the difficulties of trying to translate our most noticeable cultural aberrations. Once there, dressed in our least messable clothes, we ran into the courtyard, and were first swiped once on each cheek and the forehead and then liberally pelted with, powders in: hot pink, sea green, powder pink, gentian violet, banana yellow, fire engine red, and, when those ran out, literally flour white.
In between giving back as good as we got in the color wars, which also involved squirting and then getting doused with hue-enhancing water, we joined the crowd in giving ourselves over to the spring-welcoming dance, conducted to the pulse being enthusiastically throbbed out on several plastic drums to loud chants of "Holi Hai!!" (it's Holi!!) Once we were properly be-rainbowed, we gathered around the traditional bonfire, lit to symbolically the burn the demons; it sure dispelled mine. This music video I discovered today just about encapsulates the feeling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsFha77l3RY
As the sun set we changed back into street clothes and, with further jokes about IST and how our buses back at home were never late (as there were no bus timings at all), we boarded while trying to discreetly conceal the more visible multicolored parts of our anatomy (ears especially, and my hair in particular with the extent to which the streaks of color showed against its lighter color, being least conducive to respectability). And, in between transportation hiccups caused by a) rude cabbie b) disappearing cabbie c) directionally challenged cabbie d) directionally challenged me e) mathematically challenged websites f) chronologically challenged trains, I managed to make my way to see an Indian version of "Hamlet, the Clown Prince."
Seriously, I hadn't thought the theme would work with a tragedy, but if you have ever seen the Fool in Lear, you can imagine how good this version was, which has already swept the Indian national theater awards. In a patois of English and gibberish, amidst all their bumbling and fooling, the six-member clown troupe somehow presented the most searingly accurate representation of the play's soul I have ever experienced. http://bollyspice.com/view.php/5945-rajat-kapoor-s-hamlet-the-clown-prince.html , http://www.hackneyempire.co.uk/?lid=2176 And I wasn't the only one who thought so -- they fittingly got a standing ovation at the end, which, apparently, is not unusual either.
Speaking of patois, I heard my first ever real sample on the way on the train. Two ladies sat down opposite me, and after apologizing for knocking the meal that wasn't mine off the train table, they clarified that they were church choir directors from Jamaica, and were actually apologizing to the dethroned turkey. This prefaced their setting off on a litany of turkey jokes, interspersed with telling stories of sunshine and Marley, singing and jiving to a live IPhone soundtrack, and complimenting me on my liveliness! They were even better than the street dancers that I had seen earlier that morning in live competition, as I passed through the mall from which it was being televised (I say passed through, but my train actually halted at the chocolate stop...:) )
My feet too, once stilled, are dancing again today...Holi hai, and how colorful the world is.
I had just spent the previous hour sitting in the back of an old church listening to a speaker who restored my faith in the future of humanity. The evening service had included a sermon delivered by the local curate, a friend of a friend and one of the least pretentious people I've ever met (he once caused a saleslady in the Polish airport minor consternation upon his buying 5 copies of a lady's magazine, while in full dress robes, because the title mimicked a very rude word in English and it tickled him so much he wanted extra copies for his friends). Basically, his brief speech simply and clearly presented, as his own personal view of religion, that he did not share the view of those who ('formerly') believed in divine punishment upon the sins of mankind, and so interpreted natural disasters, such as the recent earthquake. For me at least, it was incredibly touching and refreshing to at last hear the spirit of religion be privileged over its mutable letter.
That spirit was also in full swing at the Holi festival I attended yesterday at a local temple, together with some other students from my university's Indian society. Holi is the Indian festival of color http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4805490.stm but it has taken me until this year in England to be able to celebrate it. We reached the temple after a long bus journey, punctuated by a running commentary of jokes on topics ranging from the Indian political system to the difficulties of trying to translate our most noticeable cultural aberrations. Once there, dressed in our least messable clothes, we ran into the courtyard, and were first swiped once on each cheek and the forehead and then liberally pelted with, powders in: hot pink, sea green, powder pink, gentian violet, banana yellow, fire engine red, and, when those ran out, literally flour white.
In between giving back as good as we got in the color wars, which also involved squirting and then getting doused with hue-enhancing water, we joined the crowd in giving ourselves over to the spring-welcoming dance, conducted to the pulse being enthusiastically throbbed out on several plastic drums to loud chants of "Holi Hai!!" (it's Holi!!) Once we were properly be-rainbowed, we gathered around the traditional bonfire, lit to symbolically the burn the demons; it sure dispelled mine. This music video I discovered today just about encapsulates the feeling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsFha77l3RY
As the sun set we changed back into street clothes and, with further jokes about IST and how our buses back at home were never late (as there were no bus timings at all), we boarded while trying to discreetly conceal the more visible multicolored parts of our anatomy (ears especially, and my hair in particular with the extent to which the streaks of color showed against its lighter color, being least conducive to respectability). And, in between transportation hiccups caused by a) rude cabbie b) disappearing cabbie c) directionally challenged cabbie d) directionally challenged me e) mathematically challenged websites f) chronologically challenged trains, I managed to make my way to see an Indian version of "Hamlet, the Clown Prince."
Seriously, I hadn't thought the theme would work with a tragedy, but if you have ever seen the Fool in Lear, you can imagine how good this version was, which has already swept the Indian national theater awards. In a patois of English and gibberish, amidst all their bumbling and fooling, the six-member clown troupe somehow presented the most searingly accurate representation of the play's soul I have ever experienced. http://bollyspice.com/view.php/5945-rajat-kapoor-s-hamlet-the-clown-prince.html , http://www.hackneyempire.co.uk/?lid=2176 And I wasn't the only one who thought so -- they fittingly got a standing ovation at the end, which, apparently, is not unusual either.
Speaking of patois, I heard my first ever real sample on the way on the train. Two ladies sat down opposite me, and after apologizing for knocking the meal that wasn't mine off the train table, they clarified that they were church choir directors from Jamaica, and were actually apologizing to the dethroned turkey. This prefaced their setting off on a litany of turkey jokes, interspersed with telling stories of sunshine and Marley, singing and jiving to a live IPhone soundtrack, and complimenting me on my liveliness! They were even better than the street dancers that I had seen earlier that morning in live competition, as I passed through the mall from which it was being televised (I say passed through, but my train actually halted at the chocolate stop...:) )
My feet too, once stilled, are dancing again today...Holi hai, and how colorful the world is.
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