Final few days in Mysore
Dec. 20th, 2019 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bethlakshmiI made a new lady-in-tech friend on the plan home - a frequent traveler from Mysore for work. And got the advice to use Uber. Amma is not much a fan - they have been very unreliable for her. And I do see that it seems like Indian traffic is bad enough that your are more likely to be waiting 8 minutes than 2. So if your driver cancels abruptly on you, and you were waiting 8 minutes - that's a real inconvenience if it happens multiple times.
For me - it worked great. Got myself back to the house in Mysore no problem, and had a light dinner with Amma.
I was pretty pooped and the cold was less, but still pretty present. I had an early bed time, fortifying myself for the morning.
Saturday's agenda was light, but food filled:
- dance first thing - final review for the show with Aparna
- get a car to the courier to ship my packages
- NAP! yay NAP!
- lunch in Mylary Agrahara for wonderful dosas, same as sari shopping day.
- go by Amma's friend's shop to see if there was anything interesting
- dinner of chaat
- home on the early side
Day of the Show
I was under strict instructions to REST from Aparna - no problem! The cold and all the fun had me pretty pooped.
But the other order of the day was packing. Mysore was more or less my base camp, and it's a pretty small space so I'd generally had a packing scheme aimed at making the day to day stuff easy to get to, and everything else hard. Now that I'd shifted everything with the courier, I needed to repack to facilate (1) - getting to my dance stuff for the night, (2) - getting to the clothes for the morning (since we left Mysore at 3 AM!) (3) - packing everything everything else into the airline-ready format.
That took probably 2 hours.
Then a quick run through of the show - for Amma and I to coordinate our back and forth.
Then quiet time, and a nap.
Then lunch and more resting (I think I finished website stuff and a post about Hyderabad).
And then the 1.3 hours of dressing... Hustling into a friend's car - we took off to the show.
Getting there, we found that children were already streaming into the space at 5:30. Amma rerouted everyone and we got time to set up, meet the videographers I'd hired and talk it out. I stretched, and walked the space...
And we were off and running!
The show went pretty well.
Highlights I remember:
- For both Jatiswaram and Amma Nimma I sweated my new big bindis off. I think everyone thought I might be exhausted due to all the sweat, but sadly this much sweat is normal for me. But after each bindi loosing incident, they took a break so the kids could sing to ME. It was adorable!! they are quite good and the second song came with hand gestures. I loved it!! And it did give time for the Bindi Pit Crew to reaffix a bindi. I think something is not good about these new bindis - they really didn't stick well and on try #3, Amma hit me with the bindi she had been wearing and there was no further issue. Grump.
- I liked how I did with Yenimahanadeve - the same song I did at Belur. The joy of Belur has not left and made it easy to summon the ecstasy of the dancer in this dance, and the wonder of the poet.
- Tilliana really cooked my goose. It wasn't exhaustion - I fell out of sync in the second set, and the music is the same verse over and over with different rhythms, so I struggled through the second AND third set of the main melody to get myself on the tala the right way. I still think I hit tala, but not the right places, as at the end, there was an entire phrase of music remaining. For the second part, I was fine, as the musical break is really obvious and I stuck to it from there.
Everyone was super supportive - I got many compliments after the show and Amma told me the kids were riveted. I wasn't so sure, I though I saw some bored but polite faces in there - but they were a very supportive audience, and I did think the other adults genuinely liked it. I got time to change out of my clothes (quickly!), and then we were fed some dinner - all very good - sambar, rice, roti, a veg curry, and some curd rice. Amma asked me curd rice would be OK with my cold (curd/yogurt makes a cold more goopy) and I insisted with shameless bravado that I was sure my cold would be great. I think she knew, too, it would be my last curd rice in India, and let it go.
We made an early night of it - 9 PM we headed home. And I was in bed (not easily able to sleep) by ~10:30. I totally regretted that curd rice rebellion - I coughed terribly any time I relaxed enough to sleep. Blech.
Morning
I got up at 2:00 and we were off and running by 3:15 in Amma's car. I was nervous all the way to Bangalore - 3.5 hours away! But they got me there in plenty of time. I even checked in, got a massage, got a coffee and had time to fool around on Facebook before my flight!!
Next step -- off to Trivandrum!
For me - it worked great. Got myself back to the house in Mysore no problem, and had a light dinner with Amma.
I was pretty pooped and the cold was less, but still pretty present. I had an early bed time, fortifying myself for the morning.
Saturday's agenda was light, but food filled:
- dance first thing - final review for the show with Aparna
- get a car to the courier to ship my packages
- NAP! yay NAP!
- lunch in Mylary Agrahara for wonderful dosas, same as sari shopping day.
- go by Amma's friend's shop to see if there was anything interesting
- dinner of chaat
- home on the early side
Day of the Show
I was under strict instructions to REST from Aparna - no problem! The cold and all the fun had me pretty pooped.
But the other order of the day was packing. Mysore was more or less my base camp, and it's a pretty small space so I'd generally had a packing scheme aimed at making the day to day stuff easy to get to, and everything else hard. Now that I'd shifted everything with the courier, I needed to repack to facilate (1) - getting to my dance stuff for the night, (2) - getting to the clothes for the morning (since we left Mysore at 3 AM!) (3) - packing everything everything else into the airline-ready format.
That took probably 2 hours.
Then a quick run through of the show - for Amma and I to coordinate our back and forth.
Then quiet time, and a nap.
Then lunch and more resting (I think I finished website stuff and a post about Hyderabad).
And then the 1.3 hours of dressing... Hustling into a friend's car - we took off to the show.
Getting there, we found that children were already streaming into the space at 5:30. Amma rerouted everyone and we got time to set up, meet the videographers I'd hired and talk it out. I stretched, and walked the space...
And we were off and running!
Highlights I remember:
- For both Jatiswaram and Amma Nimma I sweated my new big bindis off. I think everyone thought I might be exhausted due to all the sweat, but sadly this much sweat is normal for me. But after each bindi loosing incident, they took a break so the kids could sing to ME. It was adorable!! they are quite good and the second song came with hand gestures. I loved it!! And it did give time for the Bindi Pit Crew to reaffix a bindi. I think something is not good about these new bindis - they really didn't stick well and on try #3, Amma hit me with the bindi she had been wearing and there was no further issue. Grump.- I liked how I did with Yenimahanadeve - the same song I did at Belur. The joy of Belur has not left and made it easy to summon the ecstasy of the dancer in this dance, and the wonder of the poet.
- Tilliana really cooked my goose. It wasn't exhaustion - I fell out of sync in the second set, and the music is the same verse over and over with different rhythms, so I struggled through the second AND third set of the main melody to get myself on the tala the right way. I still think I hit tala, but not the right places, as at the end, there was an entire phrase of music remaining. For the second part, I was fine, as the musical break is really obvious and I stuck to it from there.
Everyone was super supportive - I got many compliments after the show and Amma told me the kids were riveted. I wasn't so sure, I though I saw some bored but polite faces in there - but they were a very supportive audience, and I did think the other adults genuinely liked it. I got time to change out of my clothes (quickly!), and then we were fed some dinner - all very good - sambar, rice, roti, a veg curry, and some curd rice. Amma asked me curd rice would be OK with my cold (curd/yogurt makes a cold more goopy) and I insisted with shameless bravado that I was sure my cold would be great. I think she knew, too, it would be my last curd rice in India, and let it go.We made an early night of it - 9 PM we headed home. And I was in bed (not easily able to sleep) by ~10:30. I totally regretted that curd rice rebellion - I coughed terribly any time I relaxed enough to sleep. Blech.
Morning
I got up at 2:00 and we were off and running by 3:15 in Amma's car. I was nervous all the way to Bangalore - 3.5 hours away! But they got me there in plenty of time. I even checked in, got a massage, got a coffee and had time to fool around on Facebook before my flight!!
Next step -- off to Trivandrum!