Fear of Potential Consequences

Every time I take a car to South Bombay I see Haji Ali Dargah, and I lucked out with this sunset shot.

It is amazing how, even when I have only myself to blame, I try to rationalize that an outcome could have been different. Admittedly, I did not come to India anticipating that I would return home with everything that I brought with me. Mostly, I tend to assume that things I use regularly will get lost, broken or die of their own accord. So I mostly travel with backup alternatives, like extra reading glasses, ballet shoes and knowing I can use my iPhone for class music, if my 2^nd generation iPod dies.

In this instance however, I may have neglected to collect my iPod and the carry-all in which I keep it, after teaching class yesterday. There is a possibility that I did gather the iPod back into the carry-all pouch and it was later lost from my backpack prior to my returning home. But whatever the case, I did not notice its absence in my bag until I was gathering my stuff for work this morning, and I had a hunch that I would never see it again. But I held out hope that one of the students from class would have noticed my negligence and either turned it into the office or kept it for me. So I did teach class today using my iPhone, and I sincerely hope I do not lose that before I leave India, though my phone may be easier to replace here than my iPod, given that iPods have been discontinued.

Functionally, I was really happy to have a dedicated music player to use for class and rehearsals, and the loss feels more sentimental than practical. I can get another MP3 player, and I can learn to use different software to sort/file my music, or I can get used to using a phone as my music player. Whatever the case, I have tried to buy an MP3 here in Mumbai, and after three different stores had no options to offer, I gave up.

Details from my photo inventory of what I brought to India.

Ironically, it is the other things that were in the carry-all pouch that may be of more use/interest to anyone that might have taken the property, and probably worth more than the iPod itself. There were a pair of Bluetooth earphones, a USA double USB adapter, an international plug adapter for Indian two prong outlets, RCA to mini plug audio cable, mini plug extension cable, and audio to lightning plug adapter. Ironically the USB cable for the old iPod model was at my place where I had charged the unit earlier.

One possible reason why I neglected to gather my iPod after class, was that I was not feeling well with a low-grade fever and severe headache, and I had a meeting to get to after teaching two classes back to back. By the time I got back to my place, I collapsed on my couch and slept until well into the evening, when I got up just long enough to answer text messages and transfer to bed for the night. Fortunately, I am tired today, but I have no fever and the headache was gone by the time I finished teaching. Still, I will give myself another quiet evening to try and gather my energies as I head into a heavy week of teaching and a big presentation at the US Consul General on Tuesday.

This leads me to acknowledging some of the fears of being away from “home” where the familiar seems to offer emotional reassurance. When I first realized I had a fever, I was concerned that I could not consult my own doctor, even though I’ve only known my current doctor for less than a year. If I feel signs of potential injury because of overuse or stress, I address them immediately, so that my fear of needing emergency treatment in India is minimized to the best of my ability. My choice of what and where to eat is often dictated by what I think will provide the least jeopardy from intolerable or contaminated food. These are fears of potential consequences that seem to push me to be more vigilant in both my physical routines and my thought processes in making decisions.

These are some of my favorite foods that I have encountered in Mumbai.

On the other side of losing my iPod, I find it hard to lay blame that someone might have taken advantage of the opportunity I provided through my own negligence. There is no denying that my life has provided me with a privilege well beyond the majority in India, and in my own childhood home in Jamaica. If I lose some material possession, I have the resources to replace it in some way. Growing up, I encountered an odd attitude towards “stealing” where a thief might not take everything, but as much as they might “get away with” in hopes that their “source” might not know, or end up being a competitor. This may be a fiction of my own imagination, but it does work to help me rationalize away my frustrations at losing things. After all, I did leave my portable WiFi in an Uber cab, and it did get returned to me, even though I was prepared to accept the loss.

Getting back to matters of dance, I was invited to see Kathakali – King Lear, revived 30 years since its premiere, and presented at the Royal Opera House Mumbai, co-produced by the Alliance Française Bombay. As an audience member with considerable familiarity with “King Lear” (it was one of the Shakespeare plays in high school required for my GCE “O” levels), and a naïve viewer of Kathakali, the former served to bolster my attention on the latter. I am aware that Indian classical dances often utilizes a kind of mimetic sign-language for storytelling purposes, and it was fully deployed for this production. As a result, there were plenty of passages where the dominance of the Kathakali “sign language” might have been harder to watch had I not been aware of both the story and potential character motivations.

At the same time, the live musicians on stage accompanying the dancers mesmerizing for me, as I started to see the connection between the rhythms of the dancing and their dramatic intent. I also loved the fact that as each dancer came onto the stage, they paid respect to each of the musicians with a touch and nod, before settling into their roles. I have been told that the performers are great dancers, but from my perspective there was a distinct difference between dancers that “breathed” the rhythms through their movement and storytelling, while a couple dancers did not. I have no idea if this is born out of how I have been trained to connect dance as harmony and counterpoint to music, or if I just don’t understand the relationship of the choreography and music for dancers in classical Indian dance.

When in India there seems to be a common practice of taking photos during performances, so I snapped a few as well.

An unusual offering at this performance was a nicely produced program, which has not been commonly available at other performances I have attended, where a Master/Mistress of Ceremony will introduce a program. It certainly saves on printing costs and makes even more sense when most events I have seen play for only one night. As a rule, I tend to not read performance programs before a show, and when I checked it out later, I found that they had included a synopsis for audiences that might not be as familiar with the play. There were a few speeches at the beginning by representatives from both the Royal Opera House Mumbai and the Alliance Française Bombay, which is celebrating its eightieth year in this city, and the general sentiments of the opening speeches were also included in the program. It has been interesting to learn about how much support the Performing Arts receives in joint ventures from diplomatic joint ventures between India and countries like France, Poland, Switzerland, and Germany. I hope that the USA can start to expand its support of the Arts once more, if I am to believe the reports I have gotten about a decline in USA cultural investment here, as it once did when I performed here with Paul Taylor twenty years ago.

There was something familiar and a little discomforting about sitting in the audience of mostly French and Indian society to watch a Kathakali production based on an English playwright by a French team whom lived many years in Kerala from where the form is closely associated. I imagined I was perceived as an outsider that “belongs”, by virtue of my exoticism (both race and accent) and the people with whom I was introduced, yet I actually only knew how to act appropriately and give polite responses. This is just an observation that I think most people have felt in some degree at some point in their life. And an ancient inspiration for the myth of Galatea and Pygmalion which in turn inspired Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins. The opening of this paragraph may be a little confusing, as I tried to explain how my lack of understanding in most of the languages, music, theatre, and dance forms of the event left me feeling distinctly ignorant of the subtler nuances of the evening. And imagined how the statue and the flower girl, might have felt when being presented to “society” with just enough education in my limited existence to “pass”.

As a young adult, I remember speaking with an high school friend who had moved to the USA while I was in England. She pointed out that in Jamaica we knew who we were, and so did everyone else. In the USA no one knew who she was, and didn’t care. In many cultures it is common to ask, when first meeting someone, if it is possible to be connected by family name or well-known personality. However, once I left the island everything about me has always been “other”, and I have grown accustomed to that state of being. Maybe it is why traveling and living amongst the unfamiliar can be unsettlingly comforting for me.