The Kala Ghoda Art Festival 2010 kicked off this morning (yesterday morning, technically, since its past midnight as I’m writing this).

My favorite time during the entire of this annual event is on day 1 in the morning. Last year I watched the stands being erected, which would later support the several art installations for the course of the festival. The stage had already been set up, presumably the previous night and dancers not in costume but very much in tandem were practicising. The street that forms the Kala Ghoda ‘district’ was empty except for the small knots of people involved in the above activities. And the traffic had not started up as yet.

My first event of the festival was scheduled to be a workshop on ‘Fiction Writing & Getting Published’. On account of a mix-up, further acerbated by my delay, I ended up running up and down the Elphinstone College building before I found the right classroom. I had actually considered forgetting about it and exploring the art installations outside instead but I’m glad I didn’t.Today’s session included various aspects of the craft of writing, an exploratory exercise about the identity of our own works and finally a chat with Amit Varma. The workshop continues tomorrow from 11:00-16:00hrs with the promise of a visit from another mystery guest/published author. The participants have also been asked to bring in one page of their writing tomorrow to read to the group. With about 25-odd participants, that’s going to be a lot of reading and stories and genres and feedback. I’m looking forward to it.Early evening on the first day already saw the crowd thronging in, which is testimony to the festival’s increasing popularity. I managed to grab a spot right next to the panipuri stand at the Bombay Blue/Copper Chimney stall. To my utter delight, the panipuriwala kept on serving me puris, probably because I was their first customer. There’s nothing quite like an all-you-can-eat panipuri fest. :-)Once I was satiated, I drew level with the crowd thronging the stage, just in time to hear Drumcafe, an African band start beating up hysteria. I stayed for all of ten minutes, on account of the unimaginable crowd that suddenly bloomed up all around the stage, on the steps opposite and overflowing onto the road. From my few minute vantage point, I managed to catch a glimpse of a extremely energetic group on stage, furiously keeping up with the wild tempo of their drums.

The only (and I mean ONLY) problem with the Kala Ghoda Art Festival is that there’s so much happening all at the same time that it’s a heartache-a-minute, having to pick out one to focus on.I did manage to spend over an hour walking around but very little on actually looking at the art installations. There just was too much crowd and a number of them, people I knew. I’ll come back during the week to enjoy the street art at a more leisurely pace.The concluding event of my evening was the play, ‘Dance Like A Man’ performed at Horniman Circle. This one I managed to catch from start to end and even if I did have to sit on the grass to do so, it was completely worth it.Tally at the end of day 1: A literary event, music, dance, food, theatre and plenty of colour. That’s quite a day, what say? The black horse awaits me tomorrow.