India

[plonq]

We decided to round out our Folklorama experience with a trip to India this year.  It was a smaller venue than some of the earlier ones we had attended, and did not have the same long lines and frantic crowds.  As usual we arrived about 20 minutes early, but unlike the other pavilions, they opened the doors and let us in.  The venue for this pavilion was the same one in which we saw the lousy El Salvador pavilion a couple of years back, but that was the only thing the two had in common.    Since we were early, much of the cultural display was still under wraps, so we wandered upstairs and got in line for some food.  We both settled on the Butter Chicken Meal, which consisted of some butter chicken (duh), fragrant, long-grained Basmati rice, salad (plain lettuce leaves), Naan (... or not.  I know a store-bought pita when I see one), and Chole (chick peas in a spicy sauce).  We also ordered some samosa (which unexpectedly came with more chole) and for desert we got some gulab jamun for each of us.  Gulab jamun is basically Indian cottage cheese in a sugar sauce.  If you've never had it, think of a doughnut hole soaked through with honey, sitting in about a centimetre of runny liquid honey.  Sarah gave up on hers after a couple of bites.  I could sympathize because I can remember the first time I tried it.  It is cloyingly sweet - as are most Indian deserts.  I enjoyed it this time though, so maybe I'm developing a taste for the cuisine.  The only part of the meal with which I was unimpressed was the "Naan".

Once we were done eating we made our way toward the stage and managed to secure ourselves some decent aisle seats three rows back from the stage.  The place eventually filled right up before show time, which was nice to see.    I don't know why people often give a miss to pavilions from places like Paraguay and India because in some many ways I think they put on a better spread than the big ones that attract all the tour buses.  Ah well, their loss.  The show opened up with a tabla and sitar duet (pictured at top).  They were very good, and they definitely started things off at an energetic level.  A couple other highlights from the show included the Bollywood Divas (pictured above right), which consisted of three teen girls in bright costumes doing an interpretative dance from a Bollywood musical number.  A lot of it looked very similar to the "Para Para" demo we'd seen at Aikon a couple of weeks ago.  I paid closer attention to the girl in green after atara pointed her out to me, and the show became a bit more interesting.  While the other two dancers were mostly going through the motions, she was really getting into it, and was a whole step up on the other two in terms of energy and enthusiasm.  It makes me wonder if she's the one who choreographed the routine?  A little later in the show they performed the dance of the sticks (aka Dil Se Re) as pictured to the left.  It was a very lively number, performed to an interesting Indian techno-trance score.  The final act of the show (pictured below) was the Bhangra, a dance from some of India's more northern climbs.  The music was a little more traditional than that from the previous dance.  Think of something from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan with a strong drum beat and you will have some idea.  This dance consisted of the group coming out on stage and going totally nuts to the music - and likely burning off five pounds in the process.  It was loud, flamboyant and very good.  Like all of the dancers, their costumes were bright and colourful, though one of them had his bead necklace fall apart in the middle of the routine, making the stage treacherous for the bare-footed dancers.  I think we'd have all understood if they'd stopped the dance at that point to clean the stage, but they didn't miss a beat.

We returned to the cultural display after the show, where atara bought me a bookmark with the word Plonq written in Hindi.  I picked up some curry powder and a little box of saffron.  We hovered over some of the carvings and figurines for a bit before wisely peeling ourselves away.  We have more stuff than we have space for already, and neither of us could figure out where we'd have put them if we had brought them home anyway.



Now that Folklorama is over, I need to vent a complaint that we both shared.  At more than one of the pavilions, they had it set up so that you passed the cultural display on your way to the food and show venue.  The problem is that these pavilions often had long lineups, and if you did not rush straight through to the next room then you could find yourself looking at a long line for food, and a lousy seat for the show.  The problem is that once you wend past the cultural displays, you couldn't go back.  We missed out on more than one interesting-looking display because of this.

Comments

[dronon.livejournal.com]

Something interesting I found out about tabla drumming... the different sounds the drum can make each have a word associated with them. So if two tabla drummers meet, but don't have their drums with them, they can verbally speak the drumbeats to the other person in order to describe it.