(30 Dec ’07)
This time it was the Indian Council for
Cultural Relations’ joint program with their Israeli counterpart. It was named
Namaste Israel. Considering that it was a weekday, and that there was hardly
any notice, the fairly large Tata Theatre at Nariman Point was more than three
fourths full. I went, as always, primarily out of curiosity. My I. C. C. R.
‘contacts’, Renu and Sudarshan were kind enough to inform me by email.
Israel evokes strange sentiments. In
my childhood, I had many Jew friends. Some had undistinguishable surnames like
Mhapgaonkar, Chiplunkar and Dadarkar. Others used their ancestors’ names and
therefore I knew Jesse Moses Levi, Samuel Elijah, Riffka Israel, and so on.
They all spoke Marathi at home and their moms wore sarees, but no kunku. They were a confident people, well-educated
and mild. They mingled well with us, no major religious hang-ups with anyone.
Then, sometime around the early seventies of the last century, a change
happened. Many of them left the country. They had somehow decided that this was
no longer their land…or at least my friend Jenny would always tell me that her
‘native’ place was Israel. Wonder why she migrated to Australia!! Be that as it
may. Later, in films, in books, I admired the grit of the young nation as it
held its own.
Coming to its culture,
I’ve always been fond of the music and the dances in Fiddler on the Roof. Here
I was getting a chance to see some live, authentic stuff and I wasn’t going to
miss that. So I took an hour off earlier from work (you have no idea how hard
it is with my new boss), got into a bus, and managed to reach in the nick of
time (unlike most places in India, the N. C. P. A. shuts its door after the
program begins and is firm about not allowing in latecomers.)
For the next hour, I was treated to
Bollywood. Clothes, songs, gyrations, glitz, total imitation. And it showed.
The real thing is far, far superior. I recalled that the Vietnamese and the
Koreans, too, had at least one Hindi item in their repertoire. Not surprising,
because really, the variety that our film industry produces in music is
amazing. Both the volume and the quality of stuff are quite good. One of the
reasons is that our music has different kinds of beats and rhythms and the
monotony of a bang-tick-bang-tick is less. Also, many of our composers have
blended well classical local music with western orchestras, or shamelessly
plagiarized western tunes and modified them to suit our tastes.
Yes, this troupe did have three
traditional folk dances, and they ended with the inevitable havanagila, and
they coerced people to join them on stage. It was lively, but they could have
presented a full, routine filled dance first. And they should have taken care
of their costumes. Maganlal Dresswala could have provided better
instant-nine-yard-saris that didn’t threaten to fall off the buttocks. I was
hypnotized, waiting for one yellow clad curvy thing to get fully exposed on
stage. Didn’t happen. The pins were obviously an honourable lot. I expected
much more, much better stuff from this country (this doesn’t refer to the
previous sentence but to the program itself).
In
spite of that, I came away satisfied. The two singers ensured that. One was a
wispy woman in a flowing white dress, and brown hair like Makarand Deshpande,
who lived every song that she sang. She had energy, grace, and a voice to die
for. She and her other colleague, in contrast an Amazon like blonde in a black
gown, kept the izzat of Israel. They sang with passion, songs from their
country, in their language, with their tunes, in the clothes they were
comfortable in, and they knew they were good. The audience treated them with
respect, too, for I could hear the comments around me. The novelty of their
performance was appreciated, as was their talent. Kudos to them. I’m definitely
going to buy some CDs to hear some more of Israeli music, the folksy stuff.
I’m so glad I get these
opportunities occasionally, they’re literally like a window to the world. Never
mind if through it I see a little more of Bollywood sometimes.
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