on nagaland 2..(the convention)

day1:We woke up to realize that we were in heaven(don't be so happy.. we were not actually dead) .We were amidst lush green mountains with clouds lazily resting on their peaks , with a cool breeze gushing all around us.Ah,to think we would be here for 1 whole week!..after enjoying a bath of chilled water, we went to the inauguration. The people of Nagaland and the north-eastern part of our great land,looking absolutely stunning in their costumes,stood outside to greet us.Special mention should be given to some especially pretty Naga and Assamese dresses(and to the people wearing them:). the inauguration was pretty sordid affair punctuated with the chief guest, Hon(?) Mani Shankar Ayiar not sparing even Spic conventions for scoring some political points until the people from the north-east took over, enthralling us with colorful and highly co-ordinated performances.Kudos to them!
After having a lunch of rice and dal,which was to become our staple,sorry, our only food for the rest of the time there, we went to hear the Carnatic violin of the Mysore Brothers.The concert was pretty good with the brothers giving fine, even if little racily structured, music. I bunked the next one in order to see more of Nagaland and went out to meet some Naga scout kids. I sat talking to the guys about insurgents and Nagaland and blah blah blah, couldn't talk much to the girls tho,.Dunno why,Nagaland girls seem to like to blush at the drop of a hat whenever you go near them . At night,after much contemplation,not that there was much choice everything else was either canceled or filled up i went to learn Assamese folk.



day2: on learning that i had been picked for tribal dance, i think each person was chosen according to his characteristics , i ditched Assamese folk in the desire of learning some tribal jigs. as a continuation of my intensive jinx even this got canceled. I shouldn't complain as we jumped from 1 intensive to another, learning kathak and and dhrupad in a matter of two hours(We became all rounders u know;) ).
Raghu Rai's lec-dem in the afternoon was quite interesting,though that doesn't explain why i dozed off halfway through and right through the next concert. i was woken by the josh-filled rendering of Assamese folk by our Guru. Manipuri dance by the disciples of Suryamukhi Devi followed. an old lady with an injured leg, not even able to walk properly, apologized to us for not being able to dance. It was highly touching to see her passion for dance and her humility . Her disciples showed us the Ras Lila which was followed by the dhol-dance(my name for it) where the dancers demonstrated unconjured of ways to hit drums complete with acrobatics and gymnastics.
the day ended with the movie Jalsagar by Satyajit ray, which we (we as in me and my junior chaitanya..our head had more important work to attend to..) watched in the company of newly made friends from nsit, Delhi.


day3: The day started with yoga and shramdan. Driven by the desire to be of some use , i decided to clean up the auditorium. Then after giving much thought about which intensive to join, i joined Assamese folk. Thanks to Shalaka from Mumbai i was able to make some sense of what was going on(she was again to be my savior later...).
We were having about to have lunch when we came to know that we were in charge of green room for the day.We were lucky as we had Pt.chaurasia that day. finishing our lunch at top-notch speed we rushed to the green room glad to be of some help after all.
the puppetry lecture by Dadi Pudumjee was followed by Hariprasad Chaurasia's concert.not wanting to miss it i sat rite on the stage. the Madhuvanti raag was rendered beautifully by the maestro. after the concert was done, i went down,still in the trance of the music,when there came Logik bearing upon me with fury,admonishing me for having neglected my duty and sent me off to get tea.
I went to dinner, after which a Charlie Chaplin movie beckoned me(my other friends didn't want to see any movie after such a wonderful experience by Rajan and Sajan mishra ,which i missed while performing my duties).Angry at them, i watched the movie in the company of my fellow shramdanis(ahem!), soma ,ankit ,sanketh and a few others, from the morning shramdan.


day4: The fourth day dawned with me coming to know that some of my Naga friends had left to resume their studies.with a little sadness inside i proceeded to the Assamese folk music intensive .the atmosphere in the class was highly jovial and lifted up my spirits. Some women , who had,i think ,completely missed the whole point of the intensives, assumed for themselves the roles of of our guruji,and set about dominating, and organizing the arduous task of 'preparing us for our performance'. Barring this minor irritation, the class was fun-filled and also a wonderful experience.

After having lunch we proceeded the auditorium for a talk from the renowned painter Anjolie Ela Menon.Her paintings were excellent until the point where i dozed off again(1-2 had become my napping time you see) by the time i woke up the stage was set for the Mohan Veena concert of pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt(who else?).on hearing Panditjee telling us to experience music rather than just hear the swaras, raagas and stuff,i thought "why not?". Dunno it was my imagination or something, the piece was actually telling a story involving an island, a damsel,a river and a search for roots(!)(if anybody wants to hear the story ,they can mail me;)).Dazed by this imagination or experience or whatever you may call it,i went for a long walk boring a poor girl with my story, who to shut me up more than anything else gave me packet of kurkure.(which was in the list of banned substances by the way and had to be smuggled from the hostels). On returning an extremely cute voice of a Naga folk singer filled our ears. The rise and the fall notes issuing from her was extremely sweet to the ears.Following this was a Ashwini Bhide Deshpande concert which i again missed but according to Abhishek was excellent(i think you can notice that in his report).
that night we went to the screening of Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai"(of which Sholay was a carbon copy). after 1 hour of wonderful cinema , the screening was stopped due to technical difficulties.After a hot cup of tea in the nearby canteen, which was also in the list of banned substances, me along with some friends(my fellow shramdanis and their friends again) had a session of ' cultural exchange' with all of us telling each other their states film songs. i readily obliged teaching them the evergreen melodies of Upendra leaving me with a feeling of guilt of demeaning Kannada culture in front of a national audience;). We were having gr8 fun when the head(not ours,of Spic Macay) shooed us away and sent us off to sleep.


day5: at breakfast i noticed many girls with their hair washed and some were totally dressed up.Wondering what the matter was i moved on to the final session of the intensives. It was when i saw our beloved 'organizers' totally dressed up , did i realize that the students of the intensives were to give a performance that day, and everyone were properly decked up for the event. after some time , a bunch of school kids from kohima joined us.we got two kids for each of us to teach. who would have i would ever in my life, teach Assamese songs to Nagaland kids?.
we saw people from different intensives,who had no idea of anything they were doing a week ago, perform dances,draw phad paintings,build puppets. it was nice to know can learn so fast in a such a short period of time, if one has proper guidance.
the next four hours was to be set aside for resting ,in anticipation of the "golden bird" which was to come soaring to us at that night. though ,goaded by our head to get on to the bed , none of us could sleep a wink,golden bird or not.


the Overnite: a cool breeze was gushing over the campus of nagaland university as we walked into the auditorium at 9 in the night. the overnite began with the Sattriya performance ofShri Ganakhanta Bora. My lack of knowledge of the art form combined with the comfortable blankets of Lakshay and Nupur put me right off to sleep for most parts of the concert. i woke up to see Ustad Farimuddin Dagar sitting draped in a sweater , shawl, and a cap telling us about his stomach ache and how he may not be able to sing properly. I really don't know what came over him as within 10 minutes he was sitting there sweater-muffler-monkey cap removed,stomach ache forgotten ,going at full swing at 2 in the night. Such was the fire and the desire for music he had that from that moment i was too ashamed to sleep.
Bombay Jayashree was up next for a Carnatic vocal concert followed by Kudiyattam performance by Smt Kapila Venu. we sat there spellbound seeing her transform into Kamsa,Putana,Krishna,Yashoda,Vasudeva ,Devaki one after the other with complete ease weaving a story of Krishna killing Putana with only her eyes speaking to us. The climax where in one graceful moment she as Putana swooned to her death was truly mesmerizing. By that time we were absolutely convinced nothing could beat this when the next one began.
A hundred year old man ,with no fingers and legs was sitting in front of us at 5 in the morning. He started singing and behold his face lost his aged look and he was a child again. his hold on the ragas,his pitch variations, and above all his total dedication to his music held us astounded. a thought came up"what drives a hundred year old man who is almost physically crippled to come to a remote corner of India and sing for two hours in the wee hours of morning?".His love towards music,his determination?.i don't know im still searching for an answer. all i felt was that how small ,insignificant im in front of this great master.

day6: on the last day of the convention we were taken to a cemetery where we saw graves of people as young as 17 give their lives for their country during the second world war. As this had no consequence in our lives, we were happily clicking pics in order to immortalize our journey. After touring the Naga museum which was open especially for us (we were actually treated like some VIPs there)we went to back to the university. after farewells and ids and promises to meet in Kerala next time it was time for us leave the wonderful place called Nagaland.