Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Q-Tips and Folk Music

For some reason my most recent post, on being overcharged, is below the post about Monica's conversation with the blogger. So if you would like to hear about being overcharged by the Dabloos you must scroll down.

After my immersion in the Dabloos I feel less inclined to get to know our new houseboat family, but Michele has done better and really, since we have just gone away for four days and come back, I am feeling very grateful to see their familiar, kind faces. The family includes a grandmother, the eldest, who sits most of the day as she has poor circulation and weakness due apparently to diabetes. She has a wandering eye and I've seen her face show these few expressions: enthusiasm (at seeing us, since we are so nice), blankness, and weariness. Sometimes she props herself at the houseboat window, which I think has no glass, and looks out. The window is just a a few feet from the floor and a few feet from the door, which opens to the wide, very long porch. The porch has a clothesline, a patio table for guests to dine at, and plenty of space for people to sit and hang out.

Abdul, the grandmother's son, is a very cleancut man of about 40. He is accommodating and perhaps understandably officious, frequently appealing to Allah in his wish that we will have a GOOD time and tell others about the boat.

There's Auntie--Abdul's sister?--thin and unassuming, sweet and interested in us. She wears her headscarf tied in the back in what is probably the least self-conscious and most efficient way to tie it (since it never falls off or has to be repositioned). Her son is Maharaja, an extremely cute, tiny 2-year-old who has the face of a slightly devious 40-year-ld. He speaks a little but never to us, and his muteness adds to the sense that he's hiding something. Like the other kids I've met here he is very compact and easily thrown over the shoulder. Alma is Abdul's wife; she is larger and sturdier than Auntie, her face rounder and wiser, jolly and warm.

I apologize that these descriptions get so pastoral; it would take too much time to edit that out. But I did want to say that my description of the Dabloos was particularly romantic in part because I didn't want to say anything negative about them in a public space. You can see I've given up that goal. Abdul's family is easier to speak of because they all seem so purely decent and genuine.

There are two beautiful daughters whom, for the lack of a common language, we can only hug and do charades with. As usual we get to know the young, hearty, charismatic sons best as they speak English and are assigned most of the tasks to assist the tourists. The sons are given nicknames that are easy for tourists to pronounce, so Javed is David and the other--I forget his real name--is Raj. They really are decent, incredibly hardworking and helpful and not leering (which makes them stand out in a crowd). They take us to and from the shore in shikaras and give tourist advice and do not always want to sell us something, as their otherwise helpful father does.

Except for the grandmother, the whole family is strong and fit from all the physical labor they do.

Something that makes me very happy is the sight of muscular people doing small tasks. Thus was I really lucky when Michele offered me half of her new supply of Q-tips (in Indian English "cotton buds" and in Urdu something else completely). I was carrying them in my fist when Michele decided to go tease Javed about something. I followed her in and for fun started offering Q-tips like flowers to each of the family members, starting with the grandmother. She eagerly took one, as did the two sons, and when the mother saw I was offering them she came after me to get one. Then I offered one to the auntie, and she accepted. As each person received her Q-tip, she put it in her ear and started to clean steadily. We then sat down at the communal patio table with David to talk about our upcoming trip to Pahalgam, a mountain village. As he gave us instructions and fielded our questions, he dug vigorously but gracefully into his ear with his cottonbud.

This experience was so funny to me that I was really happy to hear Michele describe it as the highlight of her week.

The next day we went to Pahalgam and stayed four days, went on one long hike and one shorter one, stayed in a really nice large cheap cabin, the Brown Palace, whose walls inside and out are covered with bark (like many places there). It is a very large, three storey place that has a sitting/dining room with a small fireplace, and two other dining rooms. There are many personal photos and nice pieces of wood and plants scattered everywhere; a 300-foot strand of ivy runs around the inside of the reception room, and in the sitting room a strip of soil is planted into the floor along one wall and dotted with plants. The rushing Lidder river is right outside the cabin and covers all outdoor sounds with its own.

Even with the unbearable poverty, and in large part because of its cheapness, Pahalgam was one of the most soothing places I've ever been. Just being there made me want to write a lot. I wish I could go back and stay 5 months. During our stay a huge group of twenty-somethings--mostly Israelis, one Australian, many of whom had just met--came from Dharamsala for a 7-day stay at the cabin. Their stay included all meals, a 2-day trek, a pony ride, and other things you are supposed to do when in Pahalgam. On their second night the cabin staff hired musicians to come and play for the group. The staff said this was the first time since '89 that they'd had music in the place, and that for several years before '89 the Brown Palace had been known for its lively full moon parties. (Feeling mistrustful after the Dabloos, I was dubious about this moving story but started to believe it after asking around.)

The musicians sat in a circle and played very beautiful Kashmiri folk music that against all odds I'm going to try to describe. It was very rhythmic, with the tempo changing frequently and unexpectedly, often to very fast or to very slow. Frequently one soloist would sing--a man or a woman--with a keening, sort of crying voice, then everyone would join in, not in harmony but singing the same notes in perfect pitch. The man's voice was pure and steady as a reed instrument but with an almost Bruce-Springsteenish rasp or hoarseness. They must have played for three hours or so, from 10pm to 1am. It was really so beautiful. The male soloist played a harmonium; also there was a drum--a nood--and a stringed instrument--a rabab or a sarangi?

The woman soloist--the only woman--was maybe forty-five or fifty with dark heavy eyebrows and a confident, unself-conscious face. She wore a bright pink rayon dupatta and paler pink floral salwar, and for most of the show stood up and danced in circles, stamping her feet evenly to jingle her ankle bells and twisting her arms and wrists somewhat as in Balinese dance, but with much less structure, and a little as in belly dancing (her hands twisting then opening upwards, fingers spread like flowers). She pulled people up to dance with her and Michele danced twice. She also passed her scarf so people would put money in; she then carried the scarf back to the circle of musicians, opened it up and shook it out so the money would fall out and they would see what they had gleaned. Some of the guests were not comfortable with this and argued about whether their discomfort was "cultural".

When I asked what the subject of the music was, one of the staff, a really nice man of about 30, managed to make a facial expression that indicated infinity and said "the universe, the nature of the gods, and the love." "Everything?" I asked. "Everything," he said surely and looked at me, his face joyfully conveying how successfully the music conveyed the absolute. I was really sad not to have my recorder with me but Michele or I may buy some Kashmiri folk music while we're here, or else in the states--where the recordings, :(, will be better.

I am either going to Dharamsala for a few days and then Delhi, or straight to Delhi and then Bangalore, where I'll start research on setting up the art classes I'm supposed to give.
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