Grania: Pots, Pans & Police

Mumbai (or Bombay, I never quite knew what to call it) was a really interesting and exciting place. Being proper Londoners we picked up a Time Out magazine on arrival so that we could get the low-down on what to do in the big city. (We were desperate to escape the awful ‘Lonely Planet syndrome’: if you follow the guide book’s recommendations you will always meet more backpackers than locals!)

Sunday 26th January in India is Independence Day and a national holiday. Thanks to Time Out we discovered that there were quite a few interesting events taking place in Mumbai that weekend. The most interesting one was a music festival called “JanFest”.

Janfest was being held at one of Mumbai’s best public schools, St Xavier’s College, and as we walked into the school I had a flashback to my Methody school days. Now Dan has already given you the line-up of performers, which if you’re into traditional Indian music will mean something to you. I, however, was completely clueless as to what we would be seeing & hearing.

We settled down and the artists were introduced to the audience. Apparently the musicians about to play were at the top of their art form, and the audience was obviously very excited about the prospect. I was slightly surprised, therefore, when a smiley little Buddha emerged onto the stage carrying a rather large cooking pot, followed by his son carrying a plate…. I thought this was a musical evening not a cook-in! They sat down, the lights dimmed and instead of throwing in some chopped coriander they began to play…

It was amazing. The father & son combo improvised for over an hour with only a pot and a plate. It is impossible to describe the music the Buddha and his son produced but it was really good, and incredibly impressive considering what they were using as instruments. It transpires that Mr Pot Man (Shri Thetakudi Harihara Vinayakram – see why I call him Mr Pot Man!) is a leading musician in the field of Carnatic music and has even won a Grammy Award.

The following evening we attended a free, open air concert at the Gateway of India monument. This enormous triumphal arch was built by the British to commemorate the visit of King George V & Queen Mary in 1911, and is next to the famous Taj Hotel, both iconic buildings in Mumbai. It was very atmospheric to gaze up at the Gateway of India, which had been cleared of tourists for the concert and bathed in the colours of the Indian flag (due to it being Independence weekend) with the huge Taj Hotel complex behind.

We got chatting to quite a few people while we waited for the concert to start and due to the location the recent Mumbai terrorist attacks were brought up. The people we talked to were keen to stress that despite the terrible attacks India remains a safe place. They wanted the world to know that visitors should still come to Mumbai, a feeling that I can completely understand coming from Northern Ireland.

After the shock of pot-playing the night before I thought I was safe with the music on tonight’s bill – Qawalli chanting. But this too wasn’t what I thought it was going to be – the chanting men got on the stage and began but they were much more jovial than I thought chanting would be. Unfortunately however all their comments were in Hindi and we could only guess at what they were saying. At several points it was clear that they were talking about the terrorist attacks and the mood amongst the audience became quite emotional. At other times they had the audience giggling away!

Independence Day itself was pretty low key. We took the opportunity to watch Slumdog Millionaire in the city in which it was set, and enjoyed lots of “been there” moments. We were quite glad that we didn’t have a “been there” moment with the Mumbai police… little did we know.

On our trawl thought the Time Out What’s On chapter, we noticed that Simon Sharma was giving a talk on the rise of Barack Obama. We have a soft spot for Simon Sharma as we’d watched one of his TV series in Uganda, and given the Obama hype and hysteria we’d experienced in Uganda we were interested in hearing a serious debate on it.

The talk had been organised by the British Council and was by invitation only, but we phoned them up and asked very nicely if we could be added to the list… being British and all! After a little consideration they agreed and gave us the location and time of the talk. The evening’s  entertainment thus taken care of we decided to spend the afternoon on Elephanta Island, which is a small island just off Mumbai’s coast containing some spectacular rock temples.

We left from the jetty behind the Gateway of India (which had returned to its normal tourist-covered self) and then travelled for an hour across the bay to Elephanta. It was nice to get back to the ancient history after all the recent history of Mumbai, and we spent several hours wandering about the island looking at the amazing carvings of Hindu gods.

We spent longer than expected on the island, and by the time we arrived back at the Gateway of India there was no time to return to our hotel before the talk. Instead, we headed straight to the British Council building. So we began to walk to where we thought the building was, past the tourists and the grand old buildings. Fifteen minutes later we arrived at the specified location but there was no British Council building.

With only a few minutes left until the talk was due to begin, we dashed around the surrounding streets, but still no British Council… what to do?

We decided to ask someone where it was. Outside a police station at the end of a street, several policemen were sitting down talking. Slightly hot and bothered, and rather casually dressed, we asked an important-looking man in uniform whether he knew where the British Council was.

The usual thing happened – completely blank look – then the policeman beckoned some underlings over and spoke to them. Soon we had a large collection of policemen around us, with lots of discussions taking place but no answer being found. All the while the start time of the talk was getting closer and closer. After a few minutes, Dan had had enough and asked “Do you know or not as we have an important social event to attend that is starting soon?”

Everyone stopped talking. The important-looking man we had originally spoken to looked us up and down. No doubt he was working out that if we could go to a big “social event”at the British Council dressed as casually as we were we must be REALLY important. He barked out a few orders and before we knew it a large police car pulled up. He instructed the driver to take us as quickly as possible to the British Council building. We piled in and with that off we went!

We were escorted right to the front door of the building, and after thanking our police rescuer we ducked quickly inside before he realised we weren’t important at all!

The talk was really interesting and as always it’s great to see someone from the telly in real life. The evening of surprises wasn’t over yet though. At the end of the talk, as the High Commissioner thanked Professor Sharma for coming, he ended by saying “And now we’ll move next door for the drinks reception”. So after a police escort we were now being served very expensive imported French wine, tasting a range of deluxe nibbles from the silver tray-carrying waiters and making appropriate small talk with members of the diplomatic service (who like the police were intrigued to find out who these casually-dressed people were!)

A most random evening I think it can be said.