The first 72: Return to India!

July 10, 2012

I am not quite sure, as I write this, when I will actually have the chance to post it. However, the first 72 hours in India already reaffirmed what entices me back.  After about two days of traveling from Honolulu to Kolkata, I arrived in the town of Shantipur (where I will be staying during this trip) at about 5 am on Thursday.  Dropped off at a local hotel which I stayed in the last time I visited this town, I had the chance to take a rest and get a shower.  At 10 am I was picked up again. Shantipur is a small town compared to my previous experiences, so we quickly arrived at Rangepeeth’s office/theatre.  Rangapeeth is the theatre company I am to work with.  By 11 am I was working with the acting company on a play we will devise together.  At lunch I was reintroduced to Indian cuisine—my first full meal in India—and reminded of my lack of ability to deal with the spiciness.  Or maybe it was because I lack the constitution to eat in the brutally hot summer weather here.  In any case, we were back into rehearsal within the hour, concluding around mid-afternoon. Despite the fact that we were to have a 4 hour break, I could not get back to my hotel because the monsoon rains whipped up at that moment and my transportation was merely a motorbike.  We waited nearly an hour and a half.  Upon returning to my hotel, I feel asleep immediately and woke only in time to head back to the steaming rehearsal hall.  For two plus hours we rehearsed…and I forgot the heat and the exhaustion in the glory of working with a voracious cast of performers dedicated to the work of Rangapeeth.  Language is a challenge, but not an obstacle.  A late dinner in the dim corner of the reception hall of my hotel followed, and finally a chance to unpack a bit before tumbling into the glory of an actual bed with the prospect of several hours of sleep.  Until, of course, I awoke far too early in the morning, as my body hasn’t decided it is in India yet. Morning consisted of planning, as I was to join the Rangapeeth company at a school.  If the town is rural, the school seemed backwoods, we traveled so far to get to it.  Which is a point to remember in the coming narrative of this 72 hours. As that day was a holiday, the room was not yet open, so the Rangapeeth company sat about waiting to find the man with the key (a seemingly global issue, this man with the key who isn’t present when needed).  Then the room needed to be cleaned. Finally we started.  I demonstrated with a group of 10-14 year olds some basic drama strategies as my primary focus will be training the company in integrating drama into the classroom.  The company then had the students rehearse a play they will perform later this month.  An amazing gathering of 30 students, 10 company members, two musicians and technical support squeezed into this little classroom.  Despite the oppressive heat, the joy of the students proved infectious.  For me, however, I had to get out of there quickly as I was leaving that afternoon.  Yes, barely thirty hours into my stay and the company head, Biswajit, and I were off.  Except for the fact that I was on motorbike again and the rains decided on that moment.  It was beautifully encapsulated by the driver who said, ‘I have one rain coat but there are two men!’  I let him wear it as we sped through a mightily confusing twist of endless back roads (pathways?) and I quickly turned into a soaked sponge. Although I thought I was dressed for the coming trip, I was forced to peel off my clothing and redress for the trip. In less than an hour we hoped a pedal ricksaw to get to the local train station. Two and a half hours on the increasingly crowded local train to return to Kolkata to catch a local bus across that overwhelming city to a second train station. We board a local sleeper (no AC!), and began what would be a 12 hour train ride to a university town on the western edge of Orissa state—almost the exact reverse of a trip I took two years ago that first introduced me in a brief two day stay to Rangapeeth, which has lead directly to this present trip to India. We arrived in the town of Sambalpur to join in on a theatre festival celebrating Oriya Literature (the local language).  We had time for a brief shower and then joined a seminar that was entirely in Hindi and Oriya.  Since a friend of mine was leading it, he introduced Biswajit and I as we entered. It was a great joy to reconnect with Subodh, the man responsible for me having these great adventures in North-East India.  Being busy with the festival, he left us to eat and return to our room for a sleep.  Eating, by the way, is a shared event by the small community of festival invitees.  A long, thin cloth is laid on the ground and we are served out of large buckets of food. Biswajit and I slept, then wandered the campus to a local internet café.  20 minutes into surfing, the power cut.  As there was a performance that evening, there was some scrambling around by the festival presenters to set up a generator to run the stage and house lights. Maybe sometime later I will talk of the seat-of-your-pants affair this kind of event can feel like, yet highly respected and honored. Before the performance started, Subodh introduced several important fellows to the stage, which surprisingly included Biswajit and I, who were asked to clang the cymbals to announce the play.  Less than two hours later, at the conclusion of the performance, a brief seminar was held in which members of the audience could share their opinions, thoughts and ruminations about the play, the performance, Oriya literature and Rabindranith Tagore (the writer).  Once again, Subodh called me up to speak to the audience about my experience, despite the fact that I of course do not understand the language of the play.  Suffice it to say that I did well enough that the audience applauded my points and a couple of students came up to me after to get my autograph.  As it was late, Biswajit and I needed to say our good-byes to several people as we were leaving the next morning…yes, you read that right.  We stayed but a single afternoon and evening.  In the morning a car took us to the train and we repeated the trip, but this time on an AC train car.  15 hours later we were back in Shantipur. Now technically that is more than 72 hours, but the 72 ended about the time we boarded the return train.  Can you imagine? The equivalent of a Honolulu-NYC round trip journey to stay for only 20 hours.