Emma Performs in Kerala

How it all began
It all started really on the first day we arrived at Natanakairali. I begrudgingly admit that I was given fair warning. Venuji had said that the condition for studying there as a foreigner was to give a presentation of some kind, a small performance "very casual" he assured me. Ok, I say with great apprehension. It seems a fair enough exchange but I was completely unprepared to give any kind of performance. But after that first mention the subject is left aside and I foolishly decide not to worry about it too much. Every once in a while though, Venuji will drop it back into a conversation in my presence "Yes it was a good show, next will be Emma." Since he had gotten it in is head that I do mime I decide that the 20 movements I learned at the Lecoq school in Paris would be the most appropriate, most interesting to Venuji. I offer the suggestion and he seems fine with it "yes, yes, anything you want" I explain that it is just an exercise, that I do not have the means here for a full performance of any kind "no problem, it is just to show something." Ok, so I am relieved. 20 movements, no problem, I know them well I'll just practice once a day every day between now and the show. But wait, now he wants a picture and a short biography to send to the press. The PRESS?! Woah, woah, woah. Of course! He is insistent, this is serious. I explain that the 20 movements are just 10 minutes, very short, more of a demonstration than a performance. At last he understands but is not dissuaded- I must simply perform more. The show will be next week. I tap my resources, searcing what I know for what I can put together in a short time and present to an audience curious to see my culture, what I do, whre I come from, how it is different from and similar to theirs. We agree I will perform a monologue from Shakespeare, the 20 movements, and also a solo dance (which I will prepare in the next week). Suddenly my days are stuffed. In all my previously spare time (of whihc I admittedly had quite a bit) I now work on my upcoming showing.
Unwarranted Fame
Two days before the show my picture appears in the major malayalam newspaper (I've saved the clipping but don't know the details of what the announcement says). That same day one of my Mohiniyattam classmates has invited me back to her house to taste some of the succulent mangoes in her yard. Her mother is very kind, asking what I do, where I'm from. Then Sandra, my classmate decides the best way to show her mother who I am is to bring her the newspaper turned to the page with my picture. There is suddenly a new light in her eyes when she looks at me. Then her father arrives and before he is even in the door the mother is showing him the paper, looking between me and it and I hear them say several times "american, american." I stand by bashfully. Oh my goodness, this is really not what it appears. I am just me, I swear, I am only here to learn and to eat mangoes with your daughter, I am not anyone famous or important. Still, he insists on driving me to my afternoon errands and returning me by car to Natanakairali. His kindness is sincere but I am still embarassed by the newspaper.
Don't the floors look fresh?
So it is at last the day of the show. I have been told there has been a lot of response to the announcement, that many people are planning to come, including 3 actors from Trivandrum which is 6 hours away. No pressure.
So I am going to spend the day in preparation. I go to the performance pavilion to rehearse and am met by an unusual surprise. In the center of the floor where the chairs will be set for the audience there is a heaping pile of fresh cow dung...
Hm. I cannot imagine what it is doing there. And of all the days for it to serve its purpose (whatever that may be) this seems an odd one to choose. Still, I have grown quite used to going with the flow and I make no exception today. I begin to rehearse surrounded by the distinct barn smell. Then one of the servant women comes in with a hand broom and a bucket of water and, under my Teacher's initial directions and to my great wonder, begins to carefully spread the pile out over the floor, meticulously coating every inch of it.
Aha. I remain bewildered until lunch when I take a break. I am sitting outside having my meal and talking with Kapila, the daughter of the house and a performer herself when she asks me "Don't the floors look fresh?" Well,I think to myself, that's one way to say it. But I don't think we are imagining the word "fresh" in the same way. She notices my hesitation. "You don't like the smell, do you?" Well, no it's not that, it smells like a barn, which is fine, it's just, um, Why? She explains that it is antibacterial, that all the traditional floors are treated in this way to kill germs. I am loving it but she misinterprets. "You don't like it?" No no it's just unexpected, a little unusual, how do I say this? For me, to clean a floor by spreading shit all over it is just, well, it's just..."crazy" she offers. Yes. Exactly. It's just crazy. But there you go. Now I have a greater appreciation of the straw sitting mats.
The Show
Went very well in the end. There were maybe 20 or more people there. Mostly men, who seem to regularly make up the majority of audiences here, but I was happy to see one of my dance friends (12 year old Parvati) and the cook Suchata and Ammama and a few other women from outside. I filled a full 40 minutes for Venuji and was presented at the end with a brass plate depicting Shiva, god of dance and a copy of Venuji's book on Kuttiyattam. At the end of the show I offered to speak with anyone who had questions about my training or approach to theater. With this news I was quickly brought a chair at the front of the house and everyone stayed for a post-show discussion, accompanied by cookies and bananas. This discussion turned out to be really fascinating and a highlight of my time here. The questions were observant and sincere, provoking me to discover answers I did not know I had.

Ah, but now I am in Delhi and must run to catch a train to Mussorie. But there is more to come on this. Next up a puppet show and a TV appearance, then a performance in a small rural town where I unintentionally get an agent for my next trip to Kerala.
so, to be continued...

Language, Langurs, Luke

This is the sunset from my front porch. I’m in Landour, in the state of Uttarakhand. I’ve been taking Hindi lessons at an altitude of 7,000 feet at the Landour Language School. So, hopefully by the end of my four weeks here I’ll be equipped to talk to most people in Northern India especially those Emma and I will be meeting on our treks. I didn’t think I’d find myself in school after just graduating but here I am racking my brain with three language classes a day. However, I’m finding the joys and difficulties of learning a new language to be quite refreshing.

The Professor
As I stated above I’m staying at a mountain top apartment with views of the Himalayan range and the city of Mussoorie. It was freezing when I first arrived so once the sun went down I went to bed (about 7:30). It’s getting much warmer now. I’m renting from Professor Uniyal (who we call the Professor) and his Ethiopian wife, Emu, who showed me that protecting the compound from the Langurs (tribe of large white monkeys) was necessary to protect springtime plums and a well landscaped complex. The dogs can't reach the Langurs in the trees so Emu throws rocks at them while the Professor shoots at them with his BB gun. Feeling the duty to protect the precious leaves of the plum trees and the flowering plants that the Langurs relish, I was inspired and made a slingshot with my 16 year-old neighbor Luke. We found some Y-shaped sticks and started whittling. Then, following the design that Lelo (my grandfather) taught me I used inner tube, leather, dental floss and rubber hose from the bazaar. So well made is this slingshot that since its construction the Langurs haven’t returned and I haven’t even had to use it yet. (Though I really don't want to hit one of them I just needed an excuse to make a slingshot.)

Tea Time at the School

The Language School is run out of a church and was founded almost a hundred years ago to teach missionaries Hindi. Consequently, many of the students here are Christians. I've gotten quite close to my American neighbors Luke and his father Jeff, who teaches at a Ministry School in West Bengal and deals in gemstones. So, I invited Luke to go on a hike with me to the top of Flag Hill, the tallest mountain I could see in the hazy distance. With some rough directions and weak Hindi we headed for the peak. We cut through rhododendron forests and small villages. We scrambled over limestone cliffs where I searched and found one fossil. I even found a spring time offering of cowdung figurines and harvested grains near the mountaintop.

Luke

Along the way we mostly talked about religion and politics the two subjects not to be brought up at a bar. But we were hiking so it made for some great conversation especially since we disagreed on both these subjects. We covered all the bases: creationism, evolution (I'm a geologist), abortion, taxes, God, equal rights, Hinduism, Christianity. I found it fascinating that two Americans who purportedly come from the same culture had two irreconcilable belief systems; mine based on science and experimentation and his based on faith in God and Jesus Christ. Nonetheless we got along great and the hike was unforgettable as we reached the peak eight hours after leaving the Professor's compound. Our legs were dead on the way back and it was getting dark so we caught a couple shared jeeps for the thirteen kilometer return trip home.

Small occurences

Since Ariel left I have had to work much harder to occupy my time, as I find the members of the household actually holed up inside all day and my primary company is of the household staff who are all wonderful but speak no english. The good news is my desperation has led to some wonderful experiences. So in no particular order I give you a smattering of observations in episode, list and photograph format ending with a short story of which I am for some reason particularly fond. And on a sidenote, I herewith provide my backing to Ariel's last post on Kutiyattam- I have nothing to contradict (though still much to learn).

1. Preparing for a Mohiniyattam performance at the temple to celebrate a makeup artist's 50 yeas contribution to the field, my young classmates fret over their hair and costumes. One by one they are transformed from giggly adolescents to shining young conveyors of the gods' stories. I was aching to take pictures of their preparations but decided better to try and be helpful than to make them more nervous (they didn't want their picture taken until they felt presentable). Backstage before the show they go to Teacher one by one to be blessed by her and give her an offering of leaves, fruit, and rupees. These 2 girls fastening their ankle bells are 2 of the eldest and self-proclaimed "BEST friends."

And this one of a young kathakali performer after finishing his makeup backstage.

2. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am in India. I don't know how I could forget it, but the realization sometimes slips out of its sunken spot. So I stop to note the things around me: purple banana flowers. hard-packed dirt paths. falling-apart asphalt roads , bindis bindis bindis, plastic furniture, communist flags, houses painted absurdly bright colors, green mangoes ripening on the trees, yellow cashew fruit falling with the cashew nut attached as if dripping out the bottom, people bobbling their heads in affirmation and pop songs blasting out of the auto shop across the way, girls in otherwise austere school uniforms wear neon pink bows in their hair, goats and cows wander and rummage along the roadside outside of town, and everywhere I go I am asked "which country? which country?"

3. Modes of transport gets its own section: musical trucks decorated personally by their drivers with bright paints, bells, tassles and figures of the gods. cars that play tunes for the benefit of passers-by whenever they are put into reverse. elephants carrying huge palm fronds in their tusks and a single rider on their backs leaving heaping piles of what they don't use for energy in the road. motorcycles carrying the entire family of four with the women sitting side-saddle. in the same theme, autorickshaws packed with what appears to be the entire second grade class of a school, sitting on the driver's lap and spilling out the sides. bicycles with a wagon attached to the front to wheel around one's goods. and of course the simplest transport of one's own barefeet.

4. Rice is not just rice: As I learned the other day in a primarily gesticular conversation with Sugiata, the house's primary helper. While we have one word for rice (be it in the field, raw, cooked, whatever) malayalam has a different word for each of it's many possible states. Pointing to the raw grains scattered about the kitchen surfaces, she says "ari." I repeat, ok. Then "cooked," (she knows this word) I have understood is "choru." But if it's cooked with water still in it, not drained (much pointing to water, "velum," a strainer, a pot, the rice again) it is called somethign else, and when growing (she points to the field, I mime plants growing, she pulls down a back of unshucked grain from the top shelf) the word is soemthing like "neyli." This is how most of our conversations go. But with them my food vocabulary is the fastest growing bit in my small malayalam repertoire and I am learning to cook some of the local dishes, which so far all contain rice in some form.

5. Some extra pictures:

Me in front of the Hotel where Ariel and I were staying. Dad asked to see a picture of me in a sari so here it is. We went to see a Kathakali show this night. Mostly though I wear a "punjabi dress" which is loose pants and a long tunic shirt with a scarf (worn in any number of modest , figure hiding ways)

To give you an idea of the school, this is one of the 2 main practice/performance spaces. I have Kuttiyatam class here and often practice on my own here in the open air under the palm-leaf roof. In this picture we are watching an old story teller recite the first of 41 days of this story of which he is the sole remaining keeper. Venuji is recording all 41 days to preserve the story. Unfortunately it is all in Malayalam and the gestures are very minimalistic so while he is a fascinating presence I can't really follow any of the action.

6. Athapilly Waterfalls I went for the day to get away and relished every moment. my camera died so I have no pictures of the falls themselves, but I can assure they were majestic from all angles (because I saw them all). The slightly overbearing forest guide pointed out to me the cave to the right of the falls where a swami lived for 2 years until followers started to come to the cave by the hundreds and he decided to leave. I was also shown at the top of the falls how the rock arcs across the falls looking uncannily like an elephant's trunk (the ear and eye also clearly apparent) and told that because of this particular shaping of the rock over so many years people often come here to worship the elephant god, Ganapathi. I was happiest though, away from the , walking up the river alone. There I saw 2 men living quietly by the side of the river as if their sole purpose was to watch their solar panel gather light and occasionally cross the river for visits by way of their bamboo raft. I was also happy to meet a peaceful monkey family who accepted my company as I took some pictures and watched their movements through their home of clustered bamboo trees leaning out over the water. I watched the baby climb carefully down a vine to drink from the river without getting himself wet. And I got very close to one of the adults who patiently let me photograph her. I was very impressed until I stopped to look in my bag and apparently this is when an adult decided I had stayed long enough and with a gentle growl came much closer than my comfort allowed and quickly escorted me to the edge of the territory where I was allowed to continue on again at my own not-being-chased-by-monkey pace.

7. Shaktan Palace and Gardens Another day trip to the only appealing tourist spot I could find in the nearby town of Thrissur. But it turned out to be really quite worth it. I saw ancient stone Buddhas, and realized I had never really known the extent of greek and chinese influence in India from centuries ago. I wandered through the strange romantic gardens. And then I went into town and lazed in a small shop where the old no-english shopkeeper and I squatted side by side playing with the handmade wooden toys as he showed me silently, but for laughter, how they worked. It was delightful.

8. Ammame (grandmother) She sits at the table with her task: a large plate of tiny purple onions to peel. She searches for her waist without looking, to tuck in the end of her white cotton sari. She shakes. She peels the onions. Sugiata puts a bowl of warm milk beside her on the table and goes to get some greens from somewhere in the yard. Old Amma puts some peeled onions in the milk. I am puzzled. When I spread the table cloth she mumbled to me in malayalam and indicated I should first shake it out. The indication was perhaps involuntary but that's the part I understood. Now she thinks I understand malayalam. So she points to her bowl of milk with the onions and tells me what to do with it, but of course I have no idea. Take it away? Get another bowl? Is it to cook? What does one do with peeled onions in warm milk? Finally she gets up herself and starts to leave the outdoor dining platform carrying the onion milk in her shaky hands on her unsure footing. What do I do? Should I stop her? Will she fall? Sugiata comes to the rescue. With a little scolding, she gently escorts Ammame back to her chair and spoons the onions out of the milk. Ammame, safely seated proceeds now to drink the onionless milk with a spoon as she was originally intended to do. All the while gently muttering things I don't understand. Sugiata smiles at me. We made it.