Indian Impressions - First Installment

I'm gradually transcribing a selection of the stuff I wrote in my notebook while we were in India. 

With very little knowledge, one tries hard to understand what one experiences, to fit it into what one does know.

February 10, 2015

Mumbai.

The very name resonates. A vast city. Twenty-million people, all of them out in the street at the same time – or so it appears: selling and buying. The traffic noise is oppressive: constant honking, like birds jockeying for position in the branches of a tree, here I am!

We ran into India's cumbersome bureaucracy upon arrival. I applied for our visas on line and apparently reversed the last 2 digits of Judith's passport number. It took two hours and a phone call to Delhi, and a dozen or more officials, to figure out how to let her in. So we got to the hotel at 12:30 instead of 10:30. After lunch in a very ordinary local restaurant, not catering to tourists, we walked down the main avenue of the Fort neighborhood: Dadabhai Naoroji Road (which people call DN Road), past dozens and dozens of people selling good from tables or blankets spread on the sidewalk. What kind of a living can they make like that?

On the drive in from the airport I was thrilled by the commotion in the street, but as we drove past dilapidated apartment blocks with laundry drying on the railings, I wondered, who lives there? How? Do they have toilets, showers, adequate electricity?

There was an art fair in the Kalaghoda neighborhood, just down the road, and we happened on a free cooking demonstration in the Westside Department Store. Suddenly we were out of the noise, dirt, hustle, and in a totally Western setting, except for women in saris and a surplus of salespeople and guards: wages are low, people are plentiful. The cooking demonstration was in delightful Indian English, with words like “capsicum.”

Later on I wrote a kind of poem about it:

Capsicum, with so little information.

Before the cooking demonstration

In the clean Mumbai department store

In the Indian English it took getting used to

I didn't know what a capsicum was

Pleasant to sit in air-conditioning

Among well-behaved, wealthy people,

And taste samples

Away from streets teeming with the poor

Who always want to sell you something

The word “capsicum” keeps slipping from my mind

Making me suspect incipient dementia

Two charming women who own a trendy restaurant

In a part of Mumbai we never got to

(I wouldn't mind living in Mumbai for a couple of months,

Trying to get a handle on the city)

Cooked and spoke encouraging words

To plump women in silk saris

Who apparently were afraid to cook

They probably have servants in the kitchen

Help is cheap in Mumbai

I got bored with the cookery

And I hate department stores

Privileged tourist that I was,

I walked through the guarded entrance

Unimpeded. Would they let someone in

Who didn't look as if he could afford to buy?

I lingered in the street and bought

A short bansuri from a peddler

*

I can't place the people I see. What caste are they? Are they Hindus? What ethnic group do they belong to? What language are they speaking?

Since many of them speak English well, we could tell each other who we are, if we had enough information and curiosity to ask and answer the right questions.

February 12

After a day in Mumbai:

Too much stimulation.

Too much noise.

Too many smells.

Too many people, too much traffic, too much to look at.

Now we're in Ahmedabad (they pronounce it “Amdabad”) after an uncomfortable overnight train ride. I shared a compartment with three Indian gentlemen and had an open and enjoyable conversation in English, though two of them kept slipping into Gujurati, no help to me or to the Kannada speaker from Bangalore, a fat Muslim engineer.

All three of the men agreed that corruption is the worst problem India faces.

How long would you have to live her to know what to expect when you step out into the street? On the way to the textile museum in Ahmedabad we passed two elephants. Our guide in the textile museum was a severe little woman with a strapped on loudspeaker who rushed us through and treated us like elementary school pupils. I suspect she didn't know English all that well, so she went through her memorized spiel without giving us leeway for questions.

At dinner I told our guide, Durga, a dignified, intelligent woman, whose English is better than perfect, that everyone in India seemed eccentric to me – an impertinent thing to say after only a couple of days in the country – and she took it as a compliment.

It's tempting to look at India as a tangle of problems so severe and snarled that they can never be solved, or to look at India as a creative jumble of improvised and uncoordinated efforts to deal with life as it comes. To the outsider it appears that people accept things as they are (an observation that comes from reading and films more than from the little I've experienced). But under the acquiescence there is intense, energetic striving, immediately visible.

*

We visited Gandhi's ashram. I had not been aware of the severity of his asceticism or of the intense religiosity of his movement. I imagine Britain would have liberated India after World War II whether or not Gandhi had been so influential, because the war depleted her so thoroughly. But that doesn't detract from Gandhi's spiritual stature or from his vision for the nation.

The ashram was full of tourists, almost all of them Indian.

*

On Friday night we went to services at the Magen Abraham synagogue in Ahmedabad.

Until that morning we had no idea there were any Jews there, but our Muslim guide on a tour of the disintegrating old city told us about it when he heard we were from Israel. The large, unsplendid synagogue is directly across the street from a Parsi fire temple, and we were told that nearby are a mosque, a Hindu temple, and a church – a uniquely situated Jewish house of worship. When the synagogue was built in 1934, the community must have been prosperous and hopeful. Now about forty families are left.

*

Our tour is focused on textile arts: weaving, dying, printing, embroidery, and quilting – traditional handicrafts that must find a way to survive in a modernizing society (one weaver told us proudly that his son was studying electrical engineering).

The Privilege of Being an Amateur

Yesterday (March 24, 2015), the Har-El concert band, conducted by Eitan Avitsur, accompanied a performance of the The Visit, the well-known play by Duerrenmatt, in Hebrew, as part of the Jerusalem Festival of the Arts. Everyone put in a lot of work, especially all the actors and the people involved with the production.
The music was composed by Orna Magen, the director of the music center where the Har-El orchestra rehearses, and arranged for our band by Eitan.
The orchestra worked hard to learn and rehearse it with the actors and get everything synchronized. The music wasn't challenging, but it was appropriate for the production, it sounded good, and it added a lot to the play.
The actors were in the theater, rehearsing, from around noon, and most of us musicians got there at 3:30. Setting us up on the side of the stage took a lot of time, and then we had a full run of the production, and it was pretty disastrous. The lighting person kept forgetting to keep the light on over us, so that we could see the music, we missed some cues, the actors muffed and swallowed some lines. It seemed to me we would need another three or four rehearsals to get the production ready for performance, but I don't think I could have taken any more. By the time the run was finished, I stiff from sitting so long and bored with the whole project.
But after a half hour break, the audience started filling the Rebecca Crown Hall, a fine venue, and I was getting excited. When you actually perform for a live audience, even if you're playing a rather obscure part, as I do, on the baritone saxophone (I could play instruments with more melodic parts - flute, clarinet, or alto saxophone, but I'm public spirited, and the band needs low voices), you feel as if every note counts. You play with attention and intention.
I'm not sure whether professional orchestral musicians, who perform often, muster the same feeling of excitement as we amateurs, who only perform once in a while. The results of professionals are obviously more polished, more accurate, and more musical, but they may not have the enthusiasm that amateurs have - and that goes for the actors as well.
There were a lot of flaws in the performance. Some of the actors bellowed their lines instead of speaking them in natural human voices, and they obviously weren't half as good looking as professional actors. But they did a creditable job, and the play came across.
It's centered around a figure who is sacrificed, so that the rich Old Woman who revisits her birthplace can take revenge on the man who wronged her. Initially inclined to protect him, the townspeople are seduced by the Old Woman's money and turn against him, eventually killing him. It's an allegory about a scapegoat that doesn't pretend to be realistic, not a bad sort of play for actors who may not be accomplished enough to appear natural on stage.
I made my wife attend it with a friend of ours, and I was afraid she would hate it, but she and our friend both enjoyed themselves. So did I.

Mixed Feelings - as Usual

Last night the concert band, in which I play baritone saxophone, performed outdoors under the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. We played two hour-long concerts, and we attracted a fairly big audience. It was kind of fun, but also kind of a bother. The Jerusalem Municipality, which sponsored the event, didn't even think of providing us with water to drink, and I had to park in an expensive parking garage.
More complaints: The lighting was poor, it was hard to read the music, and, since we were outdoors, it was hard to hear ourselves, though there were microphones and loudspeakers. But at least it wasn't windy.
Generally I enjoy playing in the band (otherwise I'd quit). Even though the baritone saxophone parts are usually boring, I hear and play the music from the bottom up, and that's interesting.
At the concert, we didn't exactly play my favorite kind of music (to put it mildly): some "Israeli" music ("To the Life of this People"), some "Jewish" music (a medley from "Fiddler on the Roof"), some light classics, and even Simon and Garfunkel songs. The arrangements are more sophisticated than the material itself.
I wouldn't have gone out of my way to attend our concert, but there is a place for kitschy, accessible music, and it beats a lot of other loud, thumping noises that pass for music in the public arena.
Later this month we're going to be accompanying a musical comedy, and that will be a lot more interesting in every way.

Flute Thoughts

Instead of bringing my European, metal flute to India, I bought an Indian flute, a bansuri in Mumbai. I ordered the bansuri from Anand Dhotre, who is listed as one of the best makers in India. He came to the hotel where I was staying in Mumbai with two flutes, so I could choose the one I liked best. Since I could barely get a decent sound out of either of them, I picked the one that looked nicest. While we were in India, I took out the bansuri from time to time and struggled to produce a decent sound and cover the finger holes, which are far apart and quite large. I'm not sure just how I'll use the instrument. Just producing a deep, full tone on it gives me great satisfaction.
Typical (of me, and probably of most acquisitive men), I now own a large number of flutes. In addition to the high quality bamboo flute made by Anand, I bought a simple one from a

peddler on the street in Mumbai. I also have the Chinese-style flute I bought as a souvenir in Vietnam, which was the instrument that persuaded me I could learn to play the flute. And I haven't parted with the beginner's Armstrong flute that I bought when I decided to take the instrument seriously, although I've replaced it with a better one, a Di Zhao step-up flute.
I try to start every day with an hour or more of flute playing, after which my lips are rather tired. It's a kind of meditation, a way of preparing myself for the day, checking in on myself.
It's kind of strange that recently I have been concentrating on two instruments that I never thought of playing when I was younger: flute and baritone saxophone.
Every instrument is a voice. Some people can do so much with one voice, like fine violinists, that they aren't tempted to develop others. But I was never able to commit myself to a single voice, and if I were forced to choose one, I would be hard put to decide which instrument to abandon.
Not only is every instrument a voice, it is also a key to musical experience. Baritone saxopone led me to years of playing with a big band, to saxophone quartets, and now to a concert band. I don't know what door the flute is a key to.