I realized that blogging coherently about the Mumbai-Goa trip is not going down well with me right now. My mind is working like Scrivener does - in bits and pieces, which need to be arranged to form a whole that makes sense. So, I'm going to give you scrambled impressions, in bits and pieces, about the trip.
Here's a brief overview/itinerary because I'm a crazy rule-bound organization whore.
- I left for Mumbai on 16/12/2009. Touched the airport at nearly 3 pm, an hour late due to runway delays etc.
- Stayed with relatives in Mumbai
- Left on the morning of 19th, met up with Kiran, Ro, Krish, Ayaan and Baby T, and then rushed to meet MrS at the airport. I'll add here that Ro dropped me off, and got to say hi to my sleep-deprived, click-happy boyfriend :P.
- Stayed at a hotel near VT - a Hotel New Bengal, absurdly cheap and seriously nice though the staff seems badly clueless. I have fallen head over heels in love with Mumbai's dairy - the yoghurt is fantastic! Oh, and the hotel's restaurant Zaffran deserves good mention. At hardly Rs 250-300 per meal for two, they had such brilliant food that we ate there three times in a row, completely forgetting that other places to eat do exist.
- Left for Goa in a train on the 22nd, and had a gruelling 12-hour journey that left MrS with hundreds of photo ops through the Western Ghats.
- Chilled out in Goa until our return(by air) on 27th.
Notable happenings from Mumbai, Relatives Phase:
1. Asking my granddad ("great-uncle" for you non-Indian peeps) how far we'd travelled after a 20 minute trip, and being told "Oh, 20 km?". That distance would take two hours in Calcutta. I kid you not.
2. Meeting shooting coach
Sanjoy Chakravarty, who is also my grandfather. It was pretty amusing to hear him describe his job as "Oh, I just sit there. They come to me when they want to." I didn't know you could make a shooting range sound like ... meditation camp?
3. Ending up completely exhausted after working AND going out on the 16th and 17th, to hear granddad say "Oh, I thought you were leaving on the 18th, or we would have fixed up a program for you!" I was extremely glad I hadn't enlightened them earlier :P
Meeting Satru-dida was, without a doubt, the highlight of this leg of the trip. "Satrudida" to me was Reba Vidyarthi to the Kathak circuit, was the guru of my only dance guru, is my grandmother's second cousin in ways that I haven't bothered to understand. Dida was "kind" enough to remind me of a highly embarassing, fairly amusing story involving me, my guru and herself, but I'll save that one for people who email me to ask :P.
Memories tumble out everywhere as I think of Dida and the time I - it was
we back then - had at that house in Laxmi Nagar. After an hour of
torture dance class on Sunday morning, Mom would take me to Dida's place. Dadu - Govind
ji as my grandparents called him, and Govindji-dadu as I called him. There would always be some food from Dida, books to talk about with Dadu, and in short, ample consolation for the torture I had been put through before.
Ma, Bhaiya(my maternal granddad) and I had gone to their place the night before she died. I suppose he thought that Satrudida or Govindji-dadu would be able to... console her? knock sense into her brain? I don't know. I don't know if he knew.
I wish Dadu had been alive. Their son, my uncle but someone I invariably think of as "Ashish-dada", has put up a
poignant little writeup in his memory. To me, however, Govindji-dadu will always be the stately figure in the big chair, with dark skin, white hair, white clothes, spectacles and so much interesting knowledge.
It takes effort to pull myself out of 1997 and into the present, but it must be done. I can only hope that some day, this excess of love, sorrow, joy, pain and tears will cease to leave me exhausted and.. dry, incomplete.
As I said, it must be done.
Speaking to Satrudida did two things. It reminded me that I am very, very, very glad to have chosen my own love and goal, and it showed me once again the wonder of people who live completely dedicated to one passion and one cause.
Satrudida has spent her life dedicated to Kathak. I will not go into details of her own tutelage, because these are things I know only from hearsay. What I can and will treasure, instead, is the memory of an old, toothless old lady, animatedly telling me how she devises ways of teaching children dance even when she can no longer walk. I connected with her after all these years, the moment she said that she wanted to teach her students the basics of dance, through one and only one lesson. It reminded me of the professor I revere today, the man who now smiles and says "I have taught you to read. So read!"
Dida made me proud once again by her reaction to my confession that I hated dance, and will always hate dancing. She admitted that I had been forced to dance when I didn't want to do it [Note: AND I was woken up on Sunday mornings. GRRRR], and that was more than enough reason to hate it. I suppose I'll be this zen about people not liking psychoanalysis when I'm 80 years old.
At any rate, we spent some lovely time talking about dance, and the process of teaching. I agreed with her at some points, disagreed at a few, and tried hard to explain to her what psychoanalysis was. I realized then that some memories are worth reviving, and that the bittersweet pain is worth feeling instead of blocking out. I may not see Dida again, but at least I can live on with a clear image of an intent face, mobile eyebrows and graceful hands, trembling ever so slightly as she demonstrated the very first Kathak lessons she gives to beginners.
