The Bag of Culture

Somewhat settled, I could now turn my attention to more practical issues. For starters, I had almost nothing to wear. What’s more, I wanted to replace that gym bag with my Bag of Culture, carrying my books, music and scribbling pads.

I bought a gorgeous knee-length light cotton blue kurta with beige pants to go with. I also got baggy burgundy pants with a striped orange shirt. Certainly the piece de resistance was the burgundy, orange and green striped cloth bag with inside pockets to carry around all my stuff: the Bag of Culture. I was set to go with the Backpacker Uniform.

I had previously organized all my music files onto a new MP3 player purchased for the occasion of this trip. Traveling without music is awful. Does anyone remember lugging cassette tapes and walkmans? CDs were only slightly friendlier. Of course I always insisted on taking them in their original cases, which inevitably were crushed. Before packing all my things, I was faced with the better parts of my CD collection being housed in crushed cases, as well as a veritable thigh-high pile of empty CD cases, many in pristine condition, minus their media. They all ended up in the trash before I left.

I got some 500 or so songs on this tiny MP3 contraption. Ever the technical writer, I organized all the files into an intuitive folder structure, but as it turns out, the player ignored it and relied instead on file metadata to categorize the tracks. In plain language, that means that for all intents and purposes, it randomly shuffled all those songs into no meaningful order. At first, this was actually quite neat. It was like listening to the radio where every song was a favorite. But very soon I wanted to play full albums that I had previously enjoyed listening to in the car, the former abode of most of my musical over the last several years. Genres would also be nice, like Trance, Techno, Bollywood Soundtracks, Latin, Arabic pop, and my other pedestrian tastes.

Predictably, Josh-bhai had come to the rescue once again, teaching me how to add metadata to the files through Windows. The player didn’t always pick it up the first time for some reason, but eventually I got it down and even processed files in batches so that now, I can get to the genre, artist, album and even song that I desire within a few seconds. It’s a new paradigm for music enjoyment. And this is only with a tiny 4 GB player. Imagine an iPod where you can put 30,000 tracks. A whole new world! Isn’t technology wonderful?

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I have also been to a number of art galleries: the National Gallery of Modern Art, Jehangir Art Gallery, and yesterday, near the Israeli consulate, a showing of note in the National Center for Performing Arts. The exhibit was called Mosaic is not Prosaic and I had the pleasure of meeting Deepti, the young woman showing it. Two artists caught my attention in particular.

The first was George.K, who had commissioned a series of fiberglass statues of Aravanis, or hijras (transgender males). They were realistic, striking, beautiful, and presented in a very human way. And I quote:

The Aravanis trace their lineage to the Mahabharata. According to the legend, Lord Krishna took a female form to marry Prince Aravan for a single night before Aravan was sacrificed. Every year this event is celebrated as the Koovagam festival, on a full moon night of the Chait month. Thousands of Aravanis dress as brides and marry the deity, Lord Aravan, and consummate the marriage through sex work. The next day they enact the process of widowhood, don white saris and return to their villages, only to shed wearing white after a month of
mourning.

The other was Avishek Sen, who had five markedly sexual nonfigurative paintings. I found them to be an abstract expression of objects of desire; fantasies given form. Many of the themes were drawn from Hindu tradition, such as Lord Krishna dancing on a phallus in the form of a snake, emanating from a male figure with a well developed physique. Krishna had killed a snake demon named Kalia, after which he danced on his head. Perhaps this was an attempt to devulgarize sexual themes. And these themes abounded: snapping vaginas, a multitude of direct phallic symbols and imagery, handsome young men appearing as the apple in languid eyes, partially open mouths. The conclusions were not difficult to draw.

A propos the Israeli consulate, I went there yesterday to cancel my lost passport, of blessed memory. While getting in was rather more vigorous than in the American counterpart, once inside, I was well received by Orna, who helped me fill out the forms to move things along.

Upon finishing, a very distressed youth came in. I recognized him from Colaba. Up until that moment, I hadn’t met any Israelis, and really wanted to speak Hebrew. His name was Itai, from Arad. He had also lost his passport and had gotten it into his head that he had to go home right away.

Instinctively, I went into parental mode and did my best to calm him down. While I had other commitments for the day (more galleries) I got the address of his guest house and made him promise to meet me at Leopold Café at 8PM.

I made it back to Colaba before then and went to look for him. He apparently had looked for me earlier as well. Orna had straightened everything out for him and he even had got permission from Immigration to depart the next day.

He was staying at the guest house where I had met Israelis from the previous movie shoot I had been on five years ago. Up until now, I hadn’t made any progress in finding film work, and not for lack of trying. I inquired with the receptionist for contacts. He produced three. Itai and I had a great conversation, telling each other the whys and wherefores of our trips to India. We went out for a walk and to eat something. And boom! Casting director in front of Leopold Café, finally! I stepped up to the plate. I used my entire Hindi vocabulary on him. I told him I could act and dance and spew back any Hindi lines given. I rattled off all the actors, songs and films I loved. He was suitably impressed. I am not going to be just another extra. I’m going to get speaking parts!

I thanked Itai profusely for the good luck he had brought. I wished him a safe trip home.

If I could characterize my life as a movie any more poignantly than this, I would have broken into song at this point. Tonight there is an all-night shoot. I think I’m going to be a soldier. The real journey begins now. Stay tuned.