quick note from Panvel (India)

At home in Washington, DC, I barely have time for lots of things -- there's a sense of haste in general; yet I spend an infinite amount of time online. By contrast, since arriving in India -- more especially since arriving at the Dhrupad Gurukul (a small music school, located some 50 km toward Pune along the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, nearest township being Panvel -- whence [at an internet cafe, which has nothing to do with coffee btw] I'm posting this note), there's a general sense of infinite leisure in daily life (notwithstanding that music practice begins promptly at 4 a.m. daily) -- one is forever sitting quietly doing next to nothing (since one cannot really sing 24 hours a day; so there are long pauses -- and leisurely meals, teas, the occasional discourse by the Ustad [mastro-teacher] in Hindi [incomprehensible to me, though occasionally I get a translated paraphrase or at least some sense of the topic! -- such as the somewhat arcane discussion of the 5 jatis [castes / based on 5 elements] into which, in antiquity, the raags and their families were divided). Whereas, as for internet time, whenever I've managed to show up at one of these cubicles, things have always been very rushed. This is really my first time venturing to such a spot on my own. I jogged the 4-5 kilometers from the Gurukul to Panvel (rather than accompanying fellow-students in a rikshaw [3-wheel motorized taxi] amidst other errands in town. Even so, dinner will be served perhaps around 8:30pm -- it's 7:20pm now -- the sense of haste is present mainly when taking recourse to cyberspace, as said.

By way of posting a report-of-sorts, I'll copy here some quick notes I sent yesterday to a firend by email. This is rough & hardly polished; I guess I feel apologetic for not (in my wonted fashion) reading / reswriting / etc. Such things can be done in busy America (where I'm online 20 hours a day, it seems); here, 8 offline days passed before yesterday spending an hour or so online . . .

enough. Simply noting the curious fact. Certainly this is peculiar to my own time here in this little excursion. It would be absurd to generalize to India on the whole. And it should be said, cybercafe time is affordable here.

Here anyway are my un-re-read notes (below). I may manage to get a poem or two up here as well before running out the door and seeing if I can manage (with no Hindi nor Marathi to my credit) to direct a ricsha-wallah toward my rural (but not so hard to locate) destination down the road. It's already growing dark. The moon is waning -- so no moonlight till after mindnight at this point. Which has discouraged my erstwhile-wonted [when moon was closer to full, and so present earlier] evening jogs. But I combined jogging w/ going-to-Panvel today for first time, a happy combination. Indeed I sat and drank two coconuts-worth of coconut-water at a stand on outskirts of Panvel. The differences in physical & mental atmosphere between where I'm normally found, and where I'm lately stationed, are a natural topic of musing. No doubt the value of travel largely involves such occasions for introspection. Strange, a sort of boombox sound comes now from outside -- almost lost amid honking of horns, rather distant, its character not evident enough. Am reluctant to leave off these stray jottings, it seems, but here I'll turn you over, as said, to my own earlier notes.

ciao for now,
d.i.

The Ustad (Fariduddin Dagar) has little English (and I less-than-little Hinidi), so I largely miss out on his occasional discourses. His teaching style is very unhurried. The intro-to-dhrupad/sangeet is anyway a working proposition. In a way, as much as the musical practice, the really slower / sparer pace & quality of life here is a welcome change. The glimpses of common city/village life (Panvel and also Chembur in Mumbai) cannot fail to astonish.

The Dagars have some ambitions for developing the school considerably over the next several years. It's in a rather germinal state. At this "workshop," I'm the only beginner; there are some 5 other students -- though one of them (Ashish), apparently the Ustad's most promising student (some 23 years of age, studying dhrupad for just the past 3 years, but with 12 years of khyal before that) isn't heard receiving lessons in this period. There's one other American (Greg from Seattle) applying dhrupad to the trombone; one middle-aged woman, Mrs. Wagh, who came in by bus from Aurangabad (am told she spends one week each month here), and the two others -- a couple -- live essentially next door. These are Lakhan (12 years studying with Fariduddin) and his German wife known as Yogeshwari -- whose Indian English--plus-Hindi (she learned her English here, clearly) is a cultural curiousity. She has an ayurvedic massaage practice (woman only) -- her sign on the road being the only discernable mark of where to turn in toward the Dagar compound. Her acquaintance with drhupad was via the fine Italian singer Amelia Cuni (who studied in India for a good decade in the 1980s or so) -- whom I met last spring in San Francisco; Amelia had moved to Berlin....

Those are some of the main dramatis personae in what amounts to a very quiet bit of small-scale theatre, in this all-too-brief (2 weeks) dip into "student-life" as locally conceived. I find that the sound of water filling the toilet-side plastic bucket is eloquent about meend, while the sounds of washing soap from under arms (in the water-reduced showing tap) may evoke one form of gamak. Sounds of trucks (ubiquitous even in this conceivedly removed redoubt) and electric fans seem rich with the harmonics -- in fact, jogging late night under moonlight on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway (this has evolved into the best jogging course), after Greg's exposition/practice of raag Bhupali in evening (the Ustad offering a few pointers, sparingly), the truck-horns seemed quite in tune with the raag's notes.

There's anyway my report of a sort.

all best,
David