How far might you travel to see a performance?

October 17, 2010

A couple of month’s back I made contact with the director of a socially-based theatre company located in Orissa.  Through e-mail, we discussed the possibility of me visiting his group and facility.  On Oct. 12 I started that journey.

Now, it would be easy to start talking about the extreme generosity of this man and his wife and company to a complete stranger, but I have touched on the generosity here before.  It could be simple to discuss the way in which I was embraced by all and given a fascinating introduction to Orissa, Bhubaneswar (the capital) and a highly successful theatre company setting precedences in the North.  However, I wish to take you—my reader—on a journey I finished just hours ago.

My Orissan contact put me in contact with another theatre group, one dedicated to work with and for children, located outside of Kolkata.  Through a series of arrangements, we decided I would take a two day side trip to visit this second, recommended, theatre group.  They, unlike the Orissa group, would be putting on a performance on the final night of Durga Puja so I could then see them in full, colorful action.  So my journey to see a play began.

I boarded a night train, sleeping my way to Kolkata in a Second A/C sleeper.  At 5 am I arrived in Kolkata, to then wait for about an hour or so in the ‘Upper Class’ waiting room, sitting there as other passengers used the restroom to take post-arrival showers.  The Upper Class waiting room became like a gymnasium locker room.  Two young men then met me in the lobby and we took at walk to an adjoining station.  No train available there, we then walked to the Howrah Bridge and caught a local bus which was already in movement by the time it was my turn to board (my first time for that), which whizzed us over the oh-so-famous Ganga River.  We passed many local trams.  I had no idea there were San Francisco-like trams (not trolleys, trams) in Kolkata. Departing the bus, we walked through the jam-packed streets of Kolkata, full of the tiniest shops and a range of sleeping bodies sprawled all over the pavement, to a second train station, where we got tickets for a local train (my first time on one of those) to a village called Shantipur.  30 minutes later—after watching hundreds of people spill out of other trains, many with large bundles balanced on their heads— we were on our way.  Within two stops, the train was crammed full of people and I was tightly squashed against the window.  Thank goodness, since I got a breeze.  We passed many trains, one which had a man sitting near the door with his leashed monkeys. Two hours later, after many people rearranging their seating and packing the cabin even tighter, we squished our way through the crowd to the exit.  We stopped in a town called Rangapat or something like that.  At this station, we caught two pedal rickshaws (my first time on one of those).  Nice change from the metros to have the ‘noise pollution’ be small tooting horns rather than blasting car and truck horns. 15 minutes passed before we stepped down at a road crossing and waited for a local bus.  When it arrived, it was quite full, so the next 25 minutes was spent standing in the bus, trying not to fall every time the bus driver slammed on the breaks.  Just before our stop we had to move to the doorway.  We literally squirmed our way through the sandwiched people.  There were a couple of moments when both my feet were off the ground, held aloft by the sheer tightness of the bodies.  The physical intimacy of my short acrobatic journey made me feel like I was about to be slapped or threatened with a lawsuit.  After we departed the bus, we caught another set of pedal rickshaws until we came to Shantipur.  There I was greeted by the entire theatre group who gave me a handful of local flowers and popped sweets into my mouth.

The afternoon consisted of a short tour of this village, lunch and a trip to the director’s home.  We then headed off for the performance on motorbike.  Down a series of increasingly smaller roads and pathways, we came to a Durga Puja temporary shrine where the performance was held.

It was a lovely, yet once again tightly packed evening as hundreds of people gathered for the late night performance.  When finished, we started to motorbike out of there, but with a punctured tire we needed to summon other transportation.  That proved to be a pedal rickshaw that is more like a flat bed cargo carrier (first time on one of those).  We returned to the director’s house for dinner and then, without a motorbike available, I ended the evening around 12 midnight, riding a bicycle (first time on one of those in India) down the dark streets of a village I had been in for all of 12 hours.

A transportation menagerie of nearly twenty-four hours to see a one hour performance and… it was worth it.