Garba and how it should be played!

It took me three years and a new country to discover how Garba is really played. A quick ywhacky illustration to show what I mean.

Forgive me

It is that time of the year again. It is Pajushan (Paryushan or Das Lakshana). An annual Jain festival. In fact the biggest most auspicious festival for Jains. But it is unlike any other auspicious festival celebrated in our times.

There are no firecrackers. No elaborate meals. No new clothes. No gifts. No loud music. No dancing on the streets. It stands out like a black sheep in the family of world festivals.

Just like all Jain core beliefs that are different and out of the ordinary, so is this festival. It is probably the only festival that celebrates the simplicity of life by keeping things extremely ordinary during the eight to ten days it lasts for.

Here is why I love this time of the year:

1. Renewal

It is time to renew ourselves. Forget the past. Clean the slate. And revive our spirit. After the brunt of worldly pleasures it bears over the year, it needs a break!

2. Gratitude

Walking barefoot gives us a sense of belonging and oneness with nature and surroundings. We feel a sense of responsibility for the earth we live on and it is a great reminder of one life's truths - that small things in life make a big difference! And that we should be thankful for all life has to offer us.

3. Reflection

No television. No music. No unwanted entertainment. We've got the rest of the year for all that and all other material pleasures. For these eight days are all about the simple life. This gives us ample time to reflect on everything around us. Reflect about us. Rethink where life is heading. What our purpose is. What went ahead as planned and what didn't. What mistakes were committed and what great deeds achieved. It is a whole lot of me-time and I love it! 

4. Fasting

Fasting and eating before sunset has such a profound effect on the body it gives us a new lease of life! Our body is a machine and it needs a break from all the wear and tear it goes through on a daily basis. There is a more profound reason for fasting and giving up material pleasures, which is experiencing self restrain and being aware, more aware, by depriving yourself of life's pleasures. But for me the best part about giving up late night snacks and junk food and maintaining a strict Jain diet is that the body feels fresh and light! Lots of water, lentils, grains and pulses and sleeping early works like magic for our mind, body and soul.

5. Meditation

The last day culminates with a three hour prayer session and is a great way to experience the joys of meditating. Helps us take more control of our thoughts and channelise our energy in the right direction. The peace and calm accompanied by chants that are hundreds of thousands of years old are a firebrand combination and the best routine for mind-gymming.

6. Rituals

The mystical rituals, decorating idols with flowers and saffron, bathing them in milk, to the gong of bells, and songs of yore, at the break of dawn, with stories from the past, and powerful characters - these are the kind of things most wonderful fairytales are made of! The best part is, this festival allows us to be a part of them.

7. Forgiveness

It is time to forgive and to ask for forgiveness. Time to crush that ego-mountain that has built up over the year and act selfless. To realise that life is equal for all, single celled organisms to multicellular humans like us. To accept that over the course of our life we have caused some harm, unknowingly and knowingly, by our actions and thought, and that we must take a moment to remember all that we can and ask for forgiveness. This act of asking for forgiveness keeps me grounded and when forgiven it rids you of all the baggage one's carried along. So here I say it...

Michchhāmi Dukkaḍaṃ

O:)

London Christmas decorations at night - Fom Nike to Zara

Every year during Christmas in Mumbai, a ritual practiced by one of my dear friends Ainee was to collect all her friends in one car and drive around Mumbai city to those spots which boasted of some of the best Christmas decorations in the city. From Marine Plaza and Taj in south Mumbai to Damian's three floored furniture showroom in the suburbs (okay, Bandra is not exactly a suburb but I wanted to give an idea of the length and breadth we covered!)

It has been two years since I came to London and my promise to Ainee to send her pictures of the decorations on display in the city of cities - London, is yet to be fulfilled. So this year I am planning to go on a evening walk down Oxford Street, Regents Street, Carnaby Street, China Town, Marylebone High Street and any other street which has decorations gallore. 

If you wish to join in and take in the delights that Selfridges, Harrods, Hamleys, Liberty, Covent Garden and Southbank have to offer, please click here and confirm here.

The walk will begin from University of Westminster's Regents Street campus at 8pm on 11th December 2012.

Don't forget to carry only your camera, with spare batteries as we will be doing a lot of walking and you don't want to get bogged with the weight of any unnecessary possessions on you. Do layer up in warm clothes and wear good walk-able shoes. Strictly no heels allowed.

Globe to Globe Festival - Theatre through my eyes

Being a culture leech, I suck (or at least try to) every bit of information I possibly can about any hapennings around me related to the arts - painting, drama, music et al. No surprises there, that I know about the Globe to Globe (G2G) Festival taking place at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre near London's Bankside this British summer. G2G is a precursor to the heavyweight arriving in July-August-September called London2012 (the codeword for all things Olympic and Paralympic this year). It constitutes an important piece in the myriad kaleidoscopic Cultural Olympiad put together to raise our cheer quotient (C.Q.) before London2012 arrives in UK. Interestingly, the orignial Olympic games started as a series of art related contests; sport was added much later to the event schedule. Happy to know that the legacy continues and that we still take this festival to be a boiling caudron (melting pot is just so passé in our Potter-age) of culture. 

Having attended 11 shows (1 show in-spirit) I can confirm that G2G is a befitting cultural celebration from end April to the beginning of June. It deserves not five stars but many constellations (is there a collective noun for this collective noun?) for its sheer scale and titanic (FYI - Titanic celebrated it's sinking-centenary this year) proportion!

I was under the impression that the festival had many shows for each play. Luckily, on a press tour for Indian Compass in April I struck gold when I realized that only 2 to 3 shows of each production were scheduled (haw!). Having missed out on the Hindi production of the Twelfth Night due to my passiveness I was not at all ready to bear the pain of missing out on any upcoming shows that I wanted to see.

G2G is staging all 37 of Shakespeare's plays in 37 different languages - a great tagline to market the festival. But the obsessive geek that I also am I want to set the record straight. That count is discounting the fact that the festival started of with Isango Ensemble singing Venus and Adonis in IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, SoSotho, Setswana, Afrikaans and South African English; if you take that into ac'count', the total goes up to 38 plays in 44 languages/dialects (counting Hip Hop and Music as distinct languages).

I devised a strategy to hand-pick shows which would tickle my senses and leave me greedy for more excellent theatre. This was done due to two main reasons - lack of funding to see all 38 plays and lack of time. Tickets ranged from £5 to £35 and there were afternoon and evening shows. 

My budget permitted only £5 groundling (standing and watching the show in the yard) tickets and most evening shows thanks to my full-time day job (yes, it clearly doesn't pay well enough to buy me £35 tickets nor does it allow 3 hour lunch breaks for me to watch afternoon shows!)

I visited the website and read through every play and glanced through every picture. From this content analysis I matched those plays which met all or at least two of my criteria -

1. Is there some element of folk music (including musical instruments)?

2. Are there immaculate costumes and accessories (masks, make-up and the works)?

3. Is it in a language that I can speak or could easily grasp (anything related to Marwari, Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, Assamese, Maori, Persian, English, Marathi, Bangla, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish)?

4. Do I already know the play?

This generated a list of 11 plays from the 38 on offer. I do feel a bit-blah that this mini-research was done after 7 plays were already over. Thus, it was more like selecting 11 from the remaning 31 shows. Add to this the fact that during my selection-process some shows were already fully-booked so even though the Chinese and Hip-Hop play passed my scrutiny-test, I could not make it for the shows due to lack of yard-space! More blah-ness to me...

But on the happy-ness, this was my G2G selection:

1. Midsummer Night's Dream in Korean

2. Julius Caesar in Italian

3. Cymbeline in Juba Arabic 

4. The Tempest in Bangla

5. Henry VI Part III in Macedonian

6. As You Like It in Georgian

7. Romeo and Juliet in Brazilian Portuguese

8. All's Well That Ends Well in Gujarati

9. Taming Of The Shrew in Urdu

10. Henry VIII in Castillian Spanish

11. Comedy of Errors in Dari Persian

A lot has been already spoken about about G2G and there are reviews gallore, and I hope to add onto that volume of words with my experience and observations of the festival.

This was the start to me teleporting this summer. With the tickets in place and passion for theatre filling my heart I set out to see the world from one end to the other, one stage to another - from Globe To Globe! Buckle up...

Culture-leechingly,

Yash

P.S. - Next blogbuster coming soon - Front row standing (re)view of Midsummer Night's Dream