“Madam, would you like to see my magic balls?”
Before I can even process the statement, decide whether or not I’m being most lewdly propositioned and arrange my face into the appropriate stay-way-from-me scowl, the speaker of these words proffers a goblet, filled to the brim with what look like wet marbles.
“Touch them! See? They are so soft!”
I tentatively dip my hand into the goblet and as my fingers take in the novel sensation of playing with what appear to be solid bubbles, I have to agree. Apparently (because I didn’t actually buy any), these wondrous ‘magic balls’, available in small, transparent polythene packets, expand to about 100 times their size when put in water. They last for up to six months (what happens to them after that, I wonder?) and are available in a variety of colours.
They are also just one of the thoroughly quirky and completely adorable things I spot on my first day at the KGAF.
Last year’s Mosquito Man, an installation by sculptor Jayaram Gopale, appears to have gone forth and multiplied. This year, I can see five of them – shiny anthropomorphic figures that cleverly symbolise the state of the world. One particularly arresting installation has one of the Mosquito Man’s offspring walking a tightrope. It is arresting not because of the physics that would have gone into balancing the structure (although there’s that too), but because with every passing breeze, he wobbles a little on his tightrope, unnerving passers-by who happen to look up and notice him.
At the David Sassoon Library garden where I sit through a book launch, the proceedings are livened up (in my little corner at least) by a creature that is much less welcome than previous years’ mosquitoes, crows or cats – a bee! As I duck, dodge and shoo away in my corner, I realise, to my chagrin, that of course, no one else can see the bee determinedly hovering around me; I’m just the strange girl in the corner who won’t sit still and squeals at regular intervals. Thankfully, the bee eventually moves on (to greener pastures?) and I’m left in peace to take in the launch (which I did not enjoy) and the surroundings (which I always do). As the seats fill up with up with lit-geeks, you can’t help but notice how varied the people who make up the crowd are. An old couple, the gentleman walking in slowly with the help of his cane; his wife, with her hand in the crook of his arm, her silver hair tied back in a bun. There are the youngsters who traipse in, all block prints, jeans and jholas and one intriguing gentleman in very short shorts, a t-shirt, a shawl wrapped around his neck and shiny white sneakers. You know what they say about how everyone has a book inside of them? I wonder how his reads.
Because I’ve lost interest in the launch, I’m free to look around, people-watch and actually take note of the surroundings. As Suniti noticed, the green benches are no longer there. There are a few colourful paper kites hanging from branches and I can’t quite tell if they’re a leftover from Sankranti, part of an installation or just an attempt to liven up the garden a little. Around the bark of a tree, a series of white…somethings catch my eye. They’re vaguely owl-shaped and when I manage to read the sign beneath it, I’m pleased to have my impression confirmed. They are owls, says the sign, back in the trees where they belong. Or something on those lines. And the hope and the simplicity behind the sculpture make me smile.
I head to the NGMA where a session of choreo-poetry (a term I’m hearing for the first time in my three decades of being alive. What will they come up with next, calli-dancing? Choreo-cooking?) titled Let Her Be Born. Four young women alternately take the stage, reciting poems, singing, acting and dancing. The concept behind the performance is interesting – apparently, they are celebrating the works of women artists all over the world – the execution however, fluctuates between very good and just-about-okay. The kathak pieces are very well done, it is easy to tell that these women have been dancing for quite a while, the jazz (modern dance?) pieces are, well, okay. In my head, the dancer very obviously belongs to the Terence Lewis* school of I-think-I-can-dance which appear to firmly believe that pirouettes and angst represent the absolute acme of modern dance. But the performance (the whole thing, not just the jazz piece) does get a standing ovation, so perhaps the prejudices are only mine.
As I walk out of the hall, another roadside curiosity catches my eye. This time it’s neon-coloured, tiny plastic men with hinges for waists. To demonstrate what they do, the vendor tosses one onto a whiteboard where he (the plastic man, not the vendor) sticks for about half a second, and then proceeds to back-flip all the way down. There’s a small crowd gathered around and the vendor, with a half-amused smile, tosses more and more of them on to the whiteboard till there are five of them, all vividly coloured, languidly back-flipping their way down the whiteboard.
As I head to the taxi stand, a tall young man runs up, slightly out of breath.
“Hey, didn’t I see you at the Library Garden?”
“Er, yes, I was there a while back.”
“The bees were quite a bother, no?”
I go home smiling.
*If there are any Terence Lewis fans among the readers, then I’m the queen of England. No, jokes apart, I wouldn’t want to offend anyone but all of us have a right to our opinions; this here is mine. I’ve had very few nice things to say about him ever since I sat through a performance (and I use the word loosely here) by him, many long years ago at the KGAF. The show on its own might have been tolerable, but his post-performance speech boggled the mind. In the most horribly accented Hindi, the man went on and on about how ‘khush’ he was because all the ‘gareeb log jo yahan neeche baithe hai’ (his words, not mine), got a chance to watch all these great performances which they otherwise wouldn’t because they were so expensive! *Such* a charmer, no?
