August 17: A Beautiful Day in Rishikesh

Even after the 11 hour drive the day before, our first day in Rishikesh began quite early. We were up with the sunrise and listened and watch the devout and faithful walk to the temples to perform their morning aarti (chants and rituals).






The monkeys get chased away all day long, but this early in the morning they were enjoying themselves near the restaurant at our hotel.





After breakfast, Keith and I took a two and a half hour walk around Rishikesh. Really cool!

Very cute monkey guarding Laxman Jhula bridge. You'll recognize the Gita Bhawan temple in the background from the picture on my blog.

Crossing Laxman Jhula, one of two suspension bridges over the Ganges in Rishikesh.

Bathing in the Ganges River.

Shopping in one of the Rishikesh markets.













Hanging with the cows!

Divine Resort: Our room was on the 3rd floor (think 4th level up - ground, 1st, 2nd, 3rd)

In the picture below: Our hotel as seen from the other side of the Ganges River. We were VERY far up!

August 16 – A “five hour” trip to Rishikesh? Yeah, right.

Mintu picked us up at 8:00am to begin our “five hour” trip to Rishikesh. We were happy to be leaving Hotel Sunrise - hot water was available only 2 of the 4 days and internet in our room, only one half day (the rest of the time we had to use the internet in the front lobby with no AC and where the mosquito zapper made me jump constantly).

Anyway, we climbed into the car looking forward to getting to a new city and seeing some new sights. Little did we know that our trip would turn out to be quite an adventure…

Things began well enough. We got through Delhi and most of New Delhi without too much traffic. However, the skies opened up when we crossed over into Uttar Pradesh, the next state over from Delhi, and we found ourselves snarled in a horrible traffic jam. After an hour we had only moved the equivalent of about 2 blocks!

About an hour later we came to the first of several detours we had to make due to flooded out roads. By now it’s 11:30 (three and a half hours into our trip). We start off down the alternate route and come to a standstill when a 50 yard portion of road was under a foot and a half of water. Mintu sized up the situation and decided to go for it. He was worried because his car is diesel and won’t just “breakdown” if it gets flooded, it will cease working altogether!  We were fortunate and made it through ok. We even made it through two others of similar lengths and depths. However, the last “swamp” (about 3 feet deep!) proved to be too much for Mintu’s sense of adventure and off we went on another detour. It’s now about 4:00pm (8 hours into a 5 hour trip).

Mintu decides that we’ll have to go far up into the Himalayas to Dehradun, skirted around Rajaji National Park then come partly down the mountain to get to Rishikesh, bypassing Haridwar altogether.  OK.

Eleven hours and fifteen minutes after leaving Delhi, we finally made it to Rishikesh. THEN we couldn’t find the “Blessed Cottages” where we had a reservation. Luckily, we hadn’t paid or secured that $17-a-night hotel, so we asked  Mintu is he could recommend a good place. All we really wanted was a place with electricity, hot water and a bed that didn’t have springs poking through the mattress (Ah, Hotel Sunrise).  He found “Divine Resort”, which has, so far, lived up to its name.  

We are about 300 feet about the great Ganges River and can see and hear the rushing waters from our room and the balcony outside. There is electricity (although you have to bonk the outlets sometimes to get them to work), a water heater in the room and there are no popping springs. Heaven!

August 15 – Musical morning; Delhi Belly afternoon

I arrived at 9:15am for my final music lesson with Madame Rita Roy. Since August 15 is India’s Independence Day traffic wasn’t bad and Mintu got us there in under an hour.

Once again Mr. Ali accompanied us on the tabla and Rita played the harmonium. Since it was morning, Rita decided to teach me a morning raga – Raag Bhairavi. The raga notes and pattern mirrored the western minor scale, but, of course, with the bending of notes and ornamentation, the “flavor” was definitely Indian.

After working on Raag Bhairavi, we went back to Raag Yamen and Rita encouraged me to improvise a little bit. I wasn’t very successful, but it was good to have the experience and now I can work on it further when I return home.

As I was leaving, Rita gave me the most beautiful letter which I will treasure!

(BTW - the gorgeous painting behind us here was painted by Rita)

We returned to the hotel at about 1pm in the afternoon. Keith was quite “green around the gills” and spent the next 16 hours in and out of the bathroom. I felt so bad for the guy and really worried about how he’d be able to make the trip to Rishikesh the next day. He tried to keep in good spirits, even joking that he was “one stomach flu away from his goal weight!” How many husbands can quote the movie The Devil Wears Prada? What a fortunate woman I am J.  Luckily, we came with antibiotics and by the next morning he was on the mend. We were both just really tired. 

We had no idea how tired we’d be by the following evening…

August 14, part 2: My second lesson with Madame Rita and meeting Bidisha

We arrived at the Roy residence at 3:45 and were surprised and delighted to see that Rita had asked her friend and master tabla teacher, Razzak Ali, to come and be with us for my lesson. I got to sing Indian classical music accompanied by a harmonium AND tabla! How amazing is that??

Rita continued to work with me on the evening raga we had started the day before. This time she added in additional sections that normally would have been improvised by the singer (obviously I was in no way qualified to try to improvise Indian music!). I was able to pick up the melody fairly quickly, but trying to sing the unfamiliar syllables kept tripping me up. Seeing my struggle, Rita suggested that I sing the fast passages on “ah” then go back to the syllables when the note lengths were longer. I was much more successful using this tactic.

Rita was going to go on to teach me the actual words/language, but then decided she’d rather perfect the singing and forms so that I would be able to teach my students the music better instead of concentrating on language.

At 5:00 we said goodbye and Keith and I headed to a nearby neighborhood to meet Rita’s daughter, Bidisha, and sit in on a rehearsal she was conducting with a small group of children.

The children were rehearsing a short play written by Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941), the first non-European Nobel Laureate, on the occasion of the 150^th anniversary of his birth. The play was called “The Invention of Shoes” and the children were beautifully acting out the story in English (although this was a newly-learned language for all of them).  It was so funny to hear Bidisha tell these children some of the very things I tell my students – “speak louder”, “slow it down!”, “You can’t laugh in the middle of the play!”, “You missed your entrance” etc.

It turned out that this group of children are going to the United States soon to join children from other countries for a cultural exchange. We haven’t yet learned the whole story but the from what we were told briefly, some of these children are orphaned, while others have been removed from abusive homes. We had to leave before the rehearsal was over so we are waiting for an email from Bidisha with more information. The group is coming to Chicago next year and we are so excited to help in any way we can to welcome them.

As we left, both of us were fighting back tears. There is so much to be sad about when one looks at the extreme poverty in Delhi (or in Chicago, for that matter). But there are also people who try to do something to bring hope and a brighter future to those that they touch.  It’s heartening.

More information will follow.

August 14 – The Crafts Museum

The day started early for us today. We’ve been waking up at about 5:30am and not able to get back to sleep. This is very exciting for me because Keith can’t get coffee until after 7…

 Since it’s Sunday morning nothing is really open in the area around our hotel. Keith and I decide to just take a walk. Immediately after exiting our hotel we are inundated with offers from auto- and bicycle-rickshaw drivers to take us where we needed to go. They didn’t quite understand that we just wanted to walk around. “Going for a stroll” must not be big in these parts.  

At noon, Mintu picked us up to go the Crafts Museum. According to one of our guidebooks, this museum is “Delhi’s most enjoyable; showcases India’s incredible variety of local artistic and cultural traditions. There are crafts here from every part of the sub-continent and in every type of medium from tribal costumes to ivory carvings.”  Unfortunately, the museum was undergoing an extensive renovation and many of the exhibits weren’t open. The one upside was that we got to see “construction” in India up close and personal- women carrying large bundles of building material on their heads and barefoot men first mixing, then slopping cement onto bricks to build a new wall.

 Of the exhibits we were able to view (in non-AC with “perspiration” DRIPPING from us) we most enjoyed the “Textile Reference” rooms. Traditional brocade sarees in deep, rich colors, formal men’s wear with decorated turbans and gorgeous tapestries were displayed behind glass in the main area, but it was the exhibit off in one of the side rooms that really caught our attention. In this room, several different types and sized of looms were displayed. It looked as if, on other days, they might have craftspeople working the looms, showing how weaving has been done for centuries. Unfortunately, today wasn’t the day for this.

The highlight of this museum, for me, was going to be the outdoor exhibit area where one could see artisans creating traditional crafts. I thought that this would be a great way to channel the idea of traders along the Silk Road hundreds of  years ago, but out of about 25 stalls, only 3 had people in them, although it was cool to watch how the terra cotta statues were made.

Another potentially interesting area of the museum grounds was where traditional huts from different regions of India were constructed. I had thought this would be reminiscent of the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii, but I was, again, disappointed. I think that several of the structures had sustained damage from the monsoons this season and since the place was so deserted, one really could not get a real image of traditional village life. Ah well.

 But maybe I was being overly critical as I was so eager to move on to my second lesson with Madame Rita…

Coming soon: August 14, part 2: My second lesson with Madame Rita and meeting Bidisha.

Hindustani Classical Music Lessons with Madame Rita Roy

“We can work something out when you get to India” was a refrain I heard over and over again while trying to firm up plans. So when I finally connected with Bidisha Das, a singer and artist in Delhi, I really didn’t know what to expect. And when I was told to “Go to my mother’s home today and she will talk with you” I just thought that I’d be listening to a nice woman discuss music. I certainly never expected to meet the dynamic and passionate musician that turned out to be Rita Roy.

It was obvious that she was sizing me up just as much. “I don’t understand what you are wanting to learn.” Turns out I didn’t really understand either. “You see I have some books” I began. “Books won’t help you learn about Indian Classical music. You must FEEL it. Yes, you might be able to sing the sounds, but something higher has to have a hand for it to be music.” And at that moment, Rita Roy became my guru – however much she felt at that point that she wouldn’t be able to do much for me in such a short time.

“You will have a lesson today then you must come back tomorrow and Monday.”  And after that command, Rita began to talk about the music of northern India – Hindustani Music. She spoke passionately and deeply about the music, stopping every few minutes to say, “you write that down” while she rattled off the spelling of another Hindu word. My notebook is full of exotic-sounding words like swar (notes), saptak  (octave), teentaal (16 beats), bandish  (song), dhrupad, dhamar and kheyal (original classical musical forms.

Rita decided that I was to be taught two ragas (melodies) – one morning raga and one evening raga. As she accompanied herself with a harmonium, Rita started singing on syllables, similar to do, re, mi system but each note had a different ornamentation to it and it was clear that I was going to have throw out most of my western European classical training in order to get the timbre required to sound even semi-authentic.

 “Don’t just sing the syllables, feel them. Think about them as if they were something sweet to taste or beautiful to see. Each one is unique.”

After a few minutes, Rita stared at me for a moment and pronounced that I could sing (phew!) and that if I could come back to India and stay for a couple of months, she could really teach me something. I took this as high praise!

By the end of our first session, I had learned the first section of Raag-Yamen, an evening raga and was told that I needed to buy a digital drone machine called a Raagini to accompany myself and my students back in the states. I told Rita that I was hoping to buy the acoustical instrument, the tanpura, but she dismissed that with a wave saying that it would just sit around looking pretty but never be used (did Keith tell her about the mountain dulcimer from Tennessee that I bought 4 years ago?) and that this would allow me to concentrate on my singing. “I will arrange for one to be brought to your hotel tonight and you can pay for it there. You won’t make it to the store before they close.” And with that she grabbed the phone, called Mr. Jeevan at Rikki Ram Music and made all of the necessary arrangements. Turns out than one does not argue with Madame Rita; I wasn’t going to even try.

Today I go back for my second lesson – with my new Raagini in hand. After the lesson, Keith and I will be going to observe Bidisha, Rita’s daughter and wonderful musician in her own right, as she works with some students who will be traveling to the US soon.

Temples, Shrines and Mosques

Mintu picked us up first thing in the morning as whisked us off for a morning of discovering some of the holiest places in Delhi.

 

We began at a Hindu temple and marveled at the beautifully ornate façade. We weren’t able to take pictures inside, but it was more about the feel and atmosphere of reverent calm.

Our next stop was the World Heritage sight of Qutb Minar, a thousand year old Islamic complex.

“Among the many historical monuments and archaeological remains in Delhi, the most notable both in antiquity and arresting design, is the Qutb Complex, a name given to the group of monuments embracing the Quwwat-u l-Islam Mosque of Qutbuddin Aibak, and the lofy Qutb Minar, which stands out a landmark for miles around. Included in the Qutb Complex are the Tomb of Iltutmish, and Alai Minar, Alai Dawaza, the madrasa or school, and what is believed to be the Tomb of Alauddin Khalji. These three kings were, in turn, responsible for the construction of the original fabric of this, one of the earliest mosques extant in India, and for its subsequent additions and extentions.”

~ World Heritage guide

The earliest buildings of this mosque date back to 1192 AD when an invading force from the kingdom of Ghur (in modern Afghanistan) erected them over the ruins of a Hindu temple (elbut-khana), according to a 14^th Century Arab trader along the “Silk Road.”

We could have stayed here all day and still not fully absorbed the beauty of the carved stonework and gorgeously laid-out grounds. We took 153 pictures- here's a small sample:

Our next stop was the much more modern Bahá’i “Lotus Temple.” Finished in 1986, this is the seventh, and most recent Bahá’i house of worship in the world (the first is in the Chicago area and the eighth is being built in Chile currently). It’s truly a magnificent building. We had to remove our shoes before going into the large open worship area inside. We sat in contemplative silence with the other visitors for a while before walking around the beautiful pools outside.

I wonder what those early Silk Road travelers would have thought of this temple!

After our morning of reverence, we headed back to our hotel to rest for a couple of hours before meeting the fabulous Rita Roy…(stay tuned).