Three Performances and a Plan

The last week or so has continued to be quiet as we've mostly stayed on campus, but the weekend before last was alumni weekend at IRMA, which brought a lot of graduates and their families to campus, as well as featuring various speeches, seminars, and other activities, including two of the three performances I'm reporting on here. The first, on Saturday night, was a student show -- part talent show with dancing and singing, part satirical skits of student life, and part nostalgic photo shows of various classes past and present. The most wonderful thing about it was the infectious enthusiasm of both performers and packed audience -- it's hard to communicate in words how joyfully boisterous and high-energy it was. The photo above of one of the dance acts only captures a bit of the spirit. In one skit of classroom life, apart from the very familiar types that Bob and I had no trouble identifying despite the Hindi dialogue (the sleepy student with disheveled hair, the flirting couple paying more attention to each other than to the lecture. . . .) there was one student character dressed like Superman with a big red CP on his costume who spent most of the skit with one hand raised high in the air. "Is this about the Communist Party?" I whispered to Bob. He shrugged, not getting it. Only later we found out from a faculty friend that "CP" actually stood for "class participation" -- the extra some professors added onto student grades for excellence in class participation. And thus that constantly upraised arm -- which we had interpreted as some kind of political gesture -- turned out to be about grade grubbing instead.

The second performance, on Sunday night, was a professional group singing and playing traditional Indian music -- not a formal classical concert, but what seemed like music that fell somewhere between folk and pop. While some of the music was good (and some just o.k.), again the real pleasure of it was the enthusiasm of the audience -- people shouting out their favorite numbers for the group to play, people coming in groups up on the stage to dance, people snaking in dancing lines through the audience. It was just tremendously enjoyable to see people enjoying themselves so much.

The final performance was unconnected from alumni weekend, and quite a bit more homey, but very nostalgic for Bob and me, since it brought back memories of many long-ago performance events starring Tova, Rebecca, and Ariel. This time the stars were Vivek and Charu's daughter Barkha and her friend, and Vivek's sister's daughter, who was visiting with her parents, on the drums. A medley of songs and dances, finishing with a musical prayer, was quite captivating, as perhaps the photo suggests.

At the end of this week, after this quiet period of laying low, Bob and I are going to hit the road for Rajasthan, so stay tuned. Between mid-terms, which happen during several days of cancelled classes, and then a break week following them, I have almost two weeks off from teaching, so we are going to visit Vivek's sister and brother-in-law, Vidi and Manish, in Udaipur, and his parents, Ashok and Usha, whom we've gotten to know here (they've been visiting for over a month, since before we arrived) in Jaipur. They are all interesting people in quite different ways -- more to come soon, but now I'm off to bed so I can get up early and write my mid-term exam in the morning.