So I’m writing this from Chennai after two solid weeks of no travel. It was nice while it lasted. Last week I had a chance to go to a few out of the ordinary events. The first was Fete de Music, world music day for the French (and former colonies). I don’t know why it’s celebrated here, other than there being some motivated French folks. This year they had an outdoor music festival with African and Indian bands. When I arrived there was this band from Congo, who was so much fun. I ended up in the African section where everyone was dancing. It reminded me of Jazz in July for any Amherst folk out there. Except fewer dogs and Frisbees. Oh, and fewer vendors selling hot dogsJ Anyway, it was nice, particularly because if there’s anything rarer here than white people, it’s Africans. Not counting the African American guy that plays ultimate I think I’ve seen Africans 4 times in the last 7 months. So it’s nice to see another culture once in a while.
It’s funny – I remember when I first came to India I was struck by how lacking India was in diversity. I would look around and just see Indians. Now I look around and am shocked by the diversity. Not because there are more non-Indians here now versus 2003 (which is also true) but because I can now recognize the diversity within Indians. It’s almost as if Europe was one country with Sweden and Austria just being states, for instance. Each state has its own identity, food, language, politics, terrain, movie industry etc.
To finish my story, the second event this week was a dance recital that my friend was in. They had 25 classes all performing some moment in history (my friend’s was the gold rush). The great part was there were several classes of kids and some of them were so goodJ I wish I knew their names, cuz they’ll probably be bollywood stars someday!
The picture has nothing to do with the post. It's a guy trying to sell a fake mustache and beard to me! His looks pretty good, right?
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