Mangalore Airport - 9W 434

Right.

So remember how I said its a good idea to take a train to Ninasam because it gives you the overnight time to switch gears, cultures, and slowly go into a mode where you're ready to spend 25 days in a village, eating vegetarian food (differently cut squash mostly), and living at that general pace of life?

Well. For some reason I've decided that in order to go back to civilization and urbanity, the only way to do that is fast injection. Therefore, the 4 and a half hour drive to Mangalore airport (thank god it was in Gods own vehicular gift to India - the ambassador - which is basically two 3 seater sofa's on wheels with great suspension. I got to sleep or semi-sleep across the back one from 3.30 am till 8am. Now, I'm here at Mangalore airport, (first time out of heggodu in 3 weeks) with all sorts of cosmopolitain looking people, advertising hoardings, announcments, people, people, and more people (first time in three weeks). There's a machine here that wraps bags in plastic, in front of the row of cushioned chairs (first time in 3 weeks) and it seems like such an INSANELY profligate waste that I'm actually feeling offended by it, and look rather rudely at each person.

Its also the first time in three weeks that more than 3 people in the immediate vicinity speak english (But I want to speak my 5 words of Kannada!! WHY ARE YOU SPEAKING TO ME IN ENGLISH!!!!???!!!)

There's a shop in the airport selling books, there's a shop in the airport offerring me nice dress shirts to buy. What am I going to do with those? Oh, and row upon row upon row of soft drinks. Sprite, Coke, Red Bull (I know I've heard of these before).

Whats going to happen to me when I hit Bombay? I suppose this won't last too long. It better not, given that I've created a compay that insists that one can have an intense level of theatre practice INSPITE of being in bombay. A center of advanced stage capitalism running wild. (No, I'm not a commie - and any of you who decide to lable me lefty or whatever it is you did the last time I did one of these sojurns - you're not listening, and you're prejudging and this time I will smack you silly if you even try to put me in a conceptual box of ANY kind). But its interesting to see what people actually NEED to get by, or to get by and live enriching lives. Suddenly, everything that is being sold in this airport has an element that seems totally unneccesary and unproductive. Ah.. i'm not going to do this, everytime I do, I get told I'm ranting, and they all laugh and wait for me to reacclimatize to city life which is invariably - what happens. But I'd like to keep some of this perspective with me this time, and not loose it. I don't think I can preach it, but it'd be silly for all my friends to not try it out, at least once. (no, not direct a play in a village, but something similar.

I mean, the village of heggodu is one of the most cosmopolitain thinking villages I've ever seen, all because it has a theatre and cultural center that brings excellence - and sometimes not so much excellence - from all over the place. Where else do you see an amazing Japanese actress - highly trained in the suzuki method, come in, and enthrall an audience of kannada speaking arecanut farmers, with a play that was devised around a malayalam temple festival and the elephants that are involved?). What we really NEED rather than what we all are made to WANT.

On the way down here I kept dreaming of various changes I should think of making to the play, and one of the things that keeps hitting me, is this play - can never be done in English. Ever. Nothing of what it says would remain in that translation. I've been thinking of solutions to this, but so far none have come, and everyone that presents itself simply oversimplifies the issues in the play too much. Irony? A play about the hegemony of sanskrit, never being able to be done in the new sanskrit?

I think this play is going to be screaming new layers at me for a long while. So you can expect this blog to go on for a little while longer.

Will post pictures and video as soon as I can get back to better technology infrastructure in Bombay. (Yes, yes, I know. I know, but that doesn't vindicate you from thinking about what I've said.)