The Familiar from a Very Different Past

The amount of time I spend getting around in cars has been really great in getting a sense of the geography of Mumbai. It has also made me conscious of a few more things that remind me of my childhood in a tropical country. Mumbai is lush with trees and vegetation, most of which I have not seen on a regular basis since leaving Jamaica. I have no idea what the local names are, but it warms my heart to recognize breadfruit trees, poinciana trees, tropical almond trees, bougainvillea bushes, banyan trees, monstera vines, plumeria and so much more. In the USA, I doubt that I could identify one tenth of the temperate flora as compared to the tropical plants whose names have come creeping back to me, upon repeated viewing on my daily walks and car rides.

At least once a week, I try to catch up with Petra in her neighborhood of Bandra, where I do occasionally teach and where a couple of other “Fulbrighters” are residing. One indicator of the trendy affluence of Bandra is the way cut flowers are displayed and sold on the streets. The web of streets between the main thoroughfares are also maintained with urban gardens that frame the colonial architecture from past centuries.

My neighborhood of Andheri West is more industrial, and the pockets of residential developments are not quite as well “groomed” as in Bandra. At the same time, there are larger spaces and roads where the trees have had a chance to spread in all their glory. I have been tempted to buy a flowering plant from the “bicycle vendor”, but I will wait until I return from Delhi where I will be for the next five weeks.

This breadfruit tree is on the campus of a Convent High School where I have been teaching, and I mentioned to one of the students that I grew up eating the fruit in Jamaica, baked and fried. I was surprised that evening when the local teacher asked what she was to do with the fruit when one was offered to her, and I offered her a link online to a recipe on preparing it the way I liked it when paired with very spicy foods. Who knew it would take a Jamaican to introduce a local to the joys of breadfruit.

After only two lessons in Hindi, you might understand my feeling overwhelmed and humbled. This is going to take some discipline and concentration, especially as learning Hindi is extra-curricular to my program mission. I can’t quite imagine developing a good enough “ear” to hear what seems like the subtlest of differentiation between standard and aspirated consonant sounds, and I am relying on the direction of where to place my tongue against my teeth, palate or floor of my mouth to sound out the differences. This said, it is definitely easier to use sounds in the context of how words are pronounced (think of phonetics in learning to read English). As I struggle to “sound” out words, I am slowly recognizing some of the sounds in the Indian accented English that challenge the un-initiated “ear.” When Indian natives speak English, there is more at play than just an accent, there are homophonic syllables that attach to any number of languages like Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and so many more. And the local Hin-glish blends the subtle additions of aspirated consonants and glottal sounds from native languages, into the pronunciation of English words.

Practicing my writing is reminding me of learning Chinese. Each vowel and consonant have 

a “stroke” order when forming the letter, and some of the sounds mentioned above are actually similar to a few sounds in Mandarin (at least to my ear). A really nice thing about learning Hindi is that its written form is pretty much a phonetic map of how the word should sound, and the writing is far more specific and consistent than English about how the individual letters should sound when combined. I just have to keep reminding myself that being a beginner at my age will likely require a lot of patience with myself.

I imagine that some of what I am teaching to the students here may seem as foreign to them as Hindi is to me. So I am taking note of how long it takes me to draw the direct connection between learning my “letters” to understanding their context in “syllables” and ultimately “words.” And then progressing from there. As a dance teacher here, in some cases, I am teaching movement and awareness to students that have been dancing for less than a year, yet they are hoping to quickly gain command of coordination that they cannot know usually takes years. Sometimes that lack of knowledge is exactly what allows them to progress rapidly, but not all of them learn at the same rate or in the same way. Learning Hindi is one way for me to keep perspective on what and how I am teaching.

Last weekend I returned to the National Center for Performing Arts (NCPA) to see a fundraising performance for the flood victims in Kerala, in the largest of their four performance venues, the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre. The opulence of the crystal chandelier and entrance foyer has been carefully preserved, though the décor and architecture does not carry over to the interior of the performance hall. Still, the performance was the main attraction, and it did not disappoint in providing a breadth of Mumbai based performers in various classical Indian dance forms, Odissi, Khathakyoga, Bharatanatyam, Mohiniattam, Manipuri and Bollywood ballroom (Latin derivation of Rumba and Tango). Okay this last one could not really be considered classical Indian dance, but the renown of the Bollywood choreographer and performer was certainly known to the audience while completely lost on me. Printed programs were not readily available, and the evening was hosted by the head of Dance at NCPA, so I tried to keep note of what I was seeing. But at the end of the night, I realized I was never going to clearly recall which form had which distinctive shapes, rhythms, and identifying features. What the evening did clarify for me was that each form would be very distinctive to a trained eye. There is so much that I don’t know, and at the same time, I am here to share what little knowledge I do have about classical ballet and American modern dance forms, and to offer an outsider’s perspective.

My meetings and conversations with dance professionals here have drawn on my varied experiences in arts management, curriculum development, learning styles, entrepreneurship, and gaining feedback about the effects of my teaching on the students in my classes. It is clearly a country with a very different relationship from the USA and Europe to dance as a communal activity and a performing art as a profession. And this blog is not where I want to propose conclusions based on my limited interactions. However, I remember growing up never imagining that there would be a career “profession” for a Jamaican in the “field” of dance. All of the performers and teachers at the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) of Jamaica had other career jobs. They were professors at the University of the West Indies, business accountants, industrial and fashion show producers, telephone operators, et cetera. For now, I will only go so far as to say that “concert” dance in India appears to still be in its infancy, and its profile outside of India seems closely tied to the popularity of Bollywood movies and its entertainment value that rivals the American movie musical genre of the mid-twentieth century.

Navdhara India Dance Theatre (NIDT) are currently in Mexico on a diplomatically supported tour for almost a month. They are touring a live Bollywood show which they graciously invited me to watch in one of their last rehearsals. It is impressive to see how they manage to create a live show that follows a movie-like narrative without the benefit of film-edits. I am reminded of watching recreations of vaudeville shows where the chorus performers constantly spend their off-stage time making costume changes, moving scenery and props, and then burst onto the stage for the next rapid-fire production number. These dancers work HARD and embody the fusion of classical Indian dance derived movement and shapes with the popular songs and rhythms of the genre. Ironically, I am probably as fascinated by the local perspectives on the dance forms I am discovering here, as they are in my perspectives on the ballet and modern dance traditions on which I have built a life for the last forty years.

Getting back to life outside of dance while I am here, there are times where the culture of the country seems in direct contrast to the culture within families and businesses. As I previously mentioned, I was awaiting a FedEx package from the USA, which was finally delivered a week later than first scheduled after clearing customs. Sometimes an explosive outburst seems the only way to get an effective response. Before I received my package, a local friend did a great scene on the phone “blowing up” at FedEx international customer service, all while we were standing with a supervisor in a domestic FedEx distribution center. I’ve noticed that most altercations seem to remain between only two parties, even when an associate might be able to ameliorate the situation. Similarly, when dealing with people begging while walking on the street or sitting stopped in a vehicle, the common strategy is to not acknowledge the beggar’s existence. I have had a couple of occasions when I have aggressively “shooed” a begging child away because they started to physically “paw” at me, but mostly they desist when they receive no reaction.

What is the balance for personal expectations of others when the culture requires a degree of asserting one’s privilege? I’ve watched foreigners and locals challenge the service they receive with impatience and expectations that may not be unreasonable on the surface, but somehow bothers me with the degree of specificity being “demanded”. An example is watching passengers insist that drivers find them exactly where they stand, or diners being upset if a portion served to them is too much or too little. Just because things are a certain way does not mean that I as an individual must act as such, if it goes against my “norm” of conduct. Of course I must then deal with the sometimes frustrating consequences of my choices.

There is no doubt that within a group (and this may be magnified by my somewhat reclusive nature) there is a strong desire for social interaction, sharing lunches communally and gathering after the longest of days if there is a reason to celebrate a birthday or some such, and so on. On the surface this may seem much like you might find in many US dance academies and companies, but there is something decidedly more profound in my experiences here.

I have mentioned that there is security to get into malls and other potential “targets” where large crowds gather. I am slowly getting used to dropping my backpack off my shoulder as I approach a security checkpoint to get my morning coffee. And when I plan to go shopping in a mall, I try to only have a net bag rolled up in my pocket, to carry my intended purchases. Women are okay to have personal bags like a large purse, but if I want to keep my backpack with me, security at the store may choose to seal the large compartment with a zip tie. I could also “check” my bag at certain stores, but that option is not always available. Another subconscious “prep” action I occasionally find myself doing is to loosen the laces or straps on my shoes as I am in the elevator or climbing the last few steps to my, or someone else’s, apartment where I know I will have to remove my shoes before entering.

In the day to day living, it can be easy to forget where in the world I happen to be, that there is an ocean less than a mile away from most of the places where I am staying or working, and that I have a life on the other side of the world that I already know will not be quite the same when I return. At times I can also feel completely “at sea” with no sight of land or “safe harbor”, where panic is assuaged by faith in oneself and the knowledge that so many others in the world survive to see another day. I am not a particularly religious or superstitious type of person, but Mumbai has proven to be a cultural melting-pot where vastly different belief systems exist alongside each other, mostly without animus, and without proselytizing for conversion. So it is hard to not read significance into random “omens”. Last week, in one of my more pensive days, I encountered three single butterflies, one in a studio, another one on the street, and the third in the sanctuary of my residential complex. At no other time since arriving in Mumbai, have I seen any butterflies. Paul Taylor, for me, will always be associated with his framed “hand-caught” butterflies that for so many years were his birthday gifts to dancers and friends. Maybe I am exactly where I am supposed to be.