Acrobats, Pelvic Thrusts, and Other Pieces of Culture

This has been a week full of Indian culture: a play, a concert, a wedding.  The play, on the lawn of the National School of Drama, was called “Old Town.”  I was sold by the impenetrable tagline:  “A Journey to a Time Beyond Time.”  That, and the fact that it was a carnival-themed production with glowing neon backdrops, including a Ferris-wheel manually operated by an acrobat.  And that was about as low-key as it got.  The play was a series of sketches where actors either yelled or sang angrily at each other in Hindi.  One group of actors dressed as marionettes attached to strings, others scrunched up their faces into scary mask-like shapes (apparently a dramatic tradition here), and one woman performed a 20-minute pelvic-thrusting dance that made belly-dancing look like church.  The performance ended with floating lanterns released into the sky, which was pretty amazing.  You never knew what was coming next.  Two lines of the production were in English, but they didn't make the story any clearer: "I can see the darkness from the back of the room.  You are my best friend."   Afterwards we went out for flavored milk and kathi rolls (kind of like an Indian burrito).  I loved the sign at the kathi roll restaurant:  "No racial, religious, regional discrimination, apartheid, or outside food allowed."  All important, I suppose.

The concert, a few nights later, was outside of the massive India Habitat Centre.  I think the event  was to support cleaning up the Yamuna River in Delhi, but the speakers were so vague ("we’re doing great work") that it took us some time to figure out the theme.  They showed several videos before the concert including, most confusingly, music videos of the band (while the band stood on stage and watched quietly).  Eventually the band itself played -- see picture -- music described as a fusion of “Indian folk and classical music with Western influences of reggae, and rock n roll."  The music was bouncy and upbeat, occasionally teetering on the edge of cheesy.    It was fun but so hot and crowded that we had to leave for an air-conditioned bar.  (Of course, the bar kept losing power – but that's to be expected here.)

Lastly, I attended the wedding reception of my co-worker’s son.  It was fairly low-key, as these things go, with less than 100 people in a hotel reception hall.   Everyone greeted the family, took some pictures, and sat in long rows of chairs along the sides of the room.   There were several hallmarks of a traditional Indian wedding: the dresses were amazingly ornate – see picture of bride and groom – and hotel staff served tray after tray of all sorts of hard-to-identify food (most of which I couldn't eat, sadly) and drink, which is how I ended up accidentally sipping buttermilk.