Everyone needs to have a birthday party, and in India people celebrate the birthdays of their favourite deities with all pomp and due festivity. We were really upset that we will be missing Ganesh Chaturthi - the elephant god's birthday, which will be celebrated by millions in Mumbai next week, about three days after we come back home. Therefore we were very happy to learn that Krishna Janmashtami, the celebration of Krishna's birthday, was taking place this Sunday, on our first day back in Mumbai.After a long trip up here, including a long cab ride to the Kochi airport, a late-night flight, another long cab ride to downtown Mumbai and a lost wallet (Kim's) at 1 am, the beginning of our Sunday morning did not look very promising. There were all of the annoying phone calls to make after losing your wallet (bank, credit card), all of them long, expensive, international calls that had to be made with a terrible connection on a street corner, plus the added issue of having to worry about our finances on the last leg of our trip, just when we were ready to start shopping in earnest (the rest of the shopping was just a warm-up). The first bright spot of the day presented itself as little spicy wadas, right across from the aforementioned phone booth. Wadas are deep fried little tidbits, normally served with some raw onions and chutney, and after almost a month in Kerala we appreciated the change in taste, and the bright clean flavours of little green chillies hidden inside the wadas were just what we needed in order to get our day going.
But back to Krishna's birthday. In our little alleyway, we saw a bunch of boys stringing up a rope with big clay pots, bananas, apples and other decorations hanging off of it. This was all a part of Dahi Handi, (as the festival is known in Maharashtra) and is one of the most popular activities of this festival, meant to recreate Krishna's childhood pranks of sneaking ghee and milk from the neighbours cupboards. A handi is a clay pot, and it is filled with Krishna's favourite foods:
ghee and milk, often tinted a bizarre shade of fuchsia just for the fun of it. Such clay pots are suspended from ropes hanging between buildings and lamp posts all over the city, in some places as high as 20 meters above street level. Groups of boys (and in the last few years girls as well) called "Govinda Pathaks", or Lord Krishna's troops, form human pyramids attempting to reach the pots, break them with their heads and shower everyone under them with ghee, coconut, coins, pink goo and pottery shards. The groups often train beforehand and compete between them as top who can break the most handis, sometimes a 9-tier human pyramid is even attempted.
The group in our neighbourhood was little more modest, and ended up lowering their
rope halfway through the exercise, which apparently you are allowed to do after three attempts, but it seemed like they gave up a bit too soon. Egged on by a small group of onlookers and one local policeman, they managed to get a guy up there to the rope, and he shattered the pots, showering everyone around with pink water. Needless to say, the whole structure under him collapsed at that point, leaving him dangling precariously from the rope, until they were kind enough to rebuild it for just long enough for him to jump on to the top, causing the whole thing to fall yet again, much to everyone's joy. Miraculously, there were no injuries.
After a refreshing "unlimited food" meal (see our third post if you don't remember what this entails), made even more "special" and unlimited because of the holiday, we decided to find a more culturally refined way to celebrate Janmashtami. Krishna is well known for his flute playing, and we read in the Time Out Mumbai that the world famous bansuri flutist, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurisia and his students would be playing a concert starting at midnight the night before and continuing for the next 24 hours. What more appropriate way for us, two flutists, to celebrate Krishna's birthday! We had missed seeing Hariprasad live in concert (by about a day) three times already, so we were eager to hear him. Imagine our surprise when the concert turned out to be a fairly small event, taking place in his Gurukul (his private school) where there were around forty people- mostly his students and their families- all seated the floor in a large living room, in front of a small
shrine with Krinshna and Radha dressed in silks and decked with flowers.
When we arrived four of the students were playing along with a tabla player. They were taking turns improvising on a Raga, and and occasionally playing together. After about an hour, the Guruji himself appeared, dressed in a suitably yellow silk kurta, and without further ado sat down, was handed a flute and started to play. It was something between a concert and a master class, with him playing a phrase, and some of the students repeating or answering it. Sometimes these were just echos of what the master had played, but sometimes these answers took on a life of their own and developed into small solos. The atmosphere was magical, and we had the feeling that we were a part of a very intimate circle centered around the guruji. He played for around an hour and a half (which seemed to pass in an instant) and eventually just got up and went into the next room, while his students went on improvising elaborations on what he had just played.
Indian music seems to be less formally constructed than Western classical music. The performers are improvising on a Raga, so the length of the piece is entirely up to their discretion. There is also not the clear break that Western music has between when a piece begins and ends. The performers don't stand up or do stage rearrangements, and they usually start the next piece while the audience is still applauding or going in and out of the hall. The Tanpura still holds its endless drone, the tabla player might tune his drums (often in a rhythmical way) and some of the musicians might drink some water, but the music is almost continous, giving a very organic feeling to the whole concert experience. For this concert, which lasted 24 hours, the music really never stopped (or at least it didn't in the 4 hours we were there from around 5- 9 pm). Occasionally a new flute player would change places with someone who had been playing for a while, and even the poor tabla player was finally relieved by a colleague after playing straight for about four hours. At some point a huge pot of food was brought into the next room, and both players and the small audience got to take turns having dinner and paying their respects to the guruji before coming back to play or listen a bit more.
We left the concert tired and happy after having one of the most amazing experiences of our trip, inspired to go home and play our own instruments again, but sad that our trip, which seemed so endless in the beginning, would soon be over.
BARFI: Genevieve wins yet another prize for her answer to last post's barfi. She correctly guessed that the spice those pigeons were eating was fenugreek! Being a fellow flutist, she will hopefully appreciate her new Krishna key chain.
ghee and milk, often tinted a bizarre shade of fuchsia just for the fun of it. Such clay pots are suspended from ropes hanging between buildings and lamp posts all over the city, in some places as high as 20 meters above street level. Groups of boys (and in the last few years girls as well) called "Govinda Pathaks", or Lord Krishna's troops, form human pyramids attempting to reach the pots, break them with their heads and shower everyone under them with ghee, coconut, coins, pink goo and pottery shards. The groups often train beforehand and compete between them as top who can break the most handis, sometimes a 9-tier human pyramid is even attempted.The group in our neighbourhood was little more modest, and ended up lowering their
rope halfway through the exercise, which apparently you are allowed to do after three attempts, but it seemed like they gave up a bit too soon. Egged on by a small group of onlookers and one local policeman, they managed to get a guy up there to the rope, and he shattered the pots, showering everyone around with pink water. Needless to say, the whole structure under him collapsed at that point, leaving him dangling precariously from the rope, until they were kind enough to rebuild it for just long enough for him to jump on to the top, causing the whole thing to fall yet again, much to everyone's joy. Miraculously, there were no injuries.After a refreshing "unlimited food" meal (see our third post if you don't remember what this entails), made even more "special" and unlimited because of the holiday, we decided to find a more culturally refined way to celebrate Janmashtami. Krishna is well known for his flute playing, and we read in the Time Out Mumbai that the world famous bansuri flutist, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurisia and his students would be playing a concert starting at midnight the night before and continuing for the next 24 hours. What more appropriate way for us, two flutists, to celebrate Krishna's birthday! We had missed seeing Hariprasad live in concert (by about a day) three times already, so we were eager to hear him. Imagine our surprise when the concert turned out to be a fairly small event, taking place in his Gurukul (his private school) where there were around forty people- mostly his students and their families- all seated the floor in a large living room, in front of a small
shrine with Krinshna and Radha dressed in silks and decked with flowers.When we arrived four of the students were playing along with a tabla player. They were taking turns improvising on a Raga, and and occasionally playing together. After about an hour, the Guruji himself appeared, dressed in a suitably yellow silk kurta, and without further ado sat down, was handed a flute and started to play. It was something between a concert and a master class, with him playing a phrase, and some of the students repeating or answering it. Sometimes these were just echos of what the master had played, but sometimes these answers took on a life of their own and developed into small solos. The atmosphere was magical, and we had the feeling that we were a part of a very intimate circle centered around the guruji. He played for around an hour and a half (which seemed to pass in an instant) and eventually just got up and went into the next room, while his students went on improvising elaborations on what he had just played.
Indian music seems to be less formally constructed than Western classical music. The performers are improvising on a Raga, so the length of the piece is entirely up to their discretion. There is also not the clear break that Western music has between when a piece begins and ends. The performers don't stand up or do stage rearrangements, and they usually start the next piece while the audience is still applauding or going in and out of the hall. The Tanpura still holds its endless drone, the tabla player might tune his drums (often in a rhythmical way) and some of the musicians might drink some water, but the music is almost continous, giving a very organic feeling to the whole concert experience. For this concert, which lasted 24 hours, the music really never stopped (or at least it didn't in the 4 hours we were there from around 5- 9 pm). Occasionally a new flute player would change places with someone who had been playing for a while, and even the poor tabla player was finally relieved by a colleague after playing straight for about four hours. At some point a huge pot of food was brought into the next room, and both players and the small audience got to take turns having dinner and paying their respects to the guruji before coming back to play or listen a bit more.
We left the concert tired and happy after having one of the most amazing experiences of our trip, inspired to go home and play our own instruments again, but sad that our trip, which seemed so endless in the beginning, would soon be over.
BARFI: Genevieve wins yet another prize for her answer to last post's barfi. She correctly guessed that the spice those pigeons were eating was fenugreek! Being a fellow flutist, she will hopefully appreciate her new Krishna key chain.
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2 comments:
Wow, I can imagine that a concert with the great Indian flutist guru and his students must be totally magical.
Take Indias spirit with you and add lot of spice, colour and music to your life! And, remeber, you can always come back (say, go home), India loves you just as much as you love India.
With lots of love,
dot.
No more mention of the lost wallet, so I assume all was worked out.
Maybe you remember I stayed longer in The Hague when I was on my way to AFrica because somebody took my walleet in Central Station. Much drama for me at the time, although it meant I could stay longer with Elin. In the end, too, it worked out well because I had to take another flight from Nairobi to Bujumbura when my seatmate was a Burundais man whose daughter worked for an NGO based in Montreal. They took me under their wings so to speak and I saw many things I wouldnt have seen otherwise.
Is that karma?
Best wishes
Mary
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