Today was our last opportunity to go on a tour of the city. It was certainly something we had planned to do all along, but somehow other things had always got in the way. And today too, we passed up the opportunity. There was a lecture on Brecht by the Director of the Brecht Centre in East Germany, Dr Joseph Hecht, which I was keen to attend, + Val, of course, still had shopping to get. The lecture was reasonably interesting, tho’ perhaps a little dry, but the audience was certainly knowledgeable. I think Brechtian theatre exerts a more powerful influence in India than in Western Europe, certainly than England. (I mean, I think, direct influence – Britain’s thriving political theatre certainly owes a debt there.)
Val was very down when I met her – she had gone back to the stall where she had bought the shirts yesterday, to see if she had left them there, but they said not – they would, of course, have said that in any case. So we walked back in together to buy a couple of things. We managed a pyjama-like top for Val to go with her harem trousers, + a large headscarf, both items to form part of the repertoire for the big Muslim cover-up beginning tomorrow. And these two took us all afternoon.
Back at the Arts Centre, we spent an hour or so going round the Brecht exhibition being held in conjunction with the lectures. It was certainly both thorough + well-staged, but really, I thought, would have been more digestible as a book, since that, in essence, was what it was, a large format book of photographs, quotations, biographical data, + so on. The catalogue for the exhibition did repeat much of the contents, + at 10 rupees was excellent value. We both had to give up without completing the course, running out of time, +, it must be said, concentration.
We called round to see Shamshad, to have a final look at the exhibition + to say goodbye, + discovered that we were about to play hosts to a party, under the car-port outside the cottage. Shamshad asked permission for our toilet to be thrown open – of course we agreed, + rushed back to tidy up the room. We were envisaging a very small-scale affair, + thought of buying half a dozen bottles of coke as our contribution. It was as well that the stall was closed, for when we arrived back we discovered that a couple of crates of fizz had already been laid on. We rushed around doing a purely cosmetic job of making the cottage presentable. This too was just as well, for there were quite a few people in there before very long, the party taking place inside as well as out.
All in all, the party seemed to me to be a great success. I felt a little out of my depth at times, since just about everyone I met was a writer or a dancer or a painter, but happily towards the end of the evening they were also mostly drunk. I think perhaps because Indians are generally unused to drink, they go overboard when the occasion offers. At the very end, there were just a few of us left: the 3 artists present, Shamshad, Devraj, + Prakash; 2 ex-neighbours of Shamshad’s; a Canadian girl called Nancy (she was great) + her husband, an Indian man, I don’t recall his name; a wonderfully exuberant (and drunk) Turkish businessman + art collector; + Val + I. We all went out to dinner, to the same place we had gone with Shamshad + Prakash the other night. This time the meal was even better – with more people it was possible to order a greater variety of dishes. Everything, indeed, was quite superb – the food + the company. Not at all a bad farewell to India.
Indeed, a farewell to India at last. I think we did not do the country justice – we were too jaded by travel, and I was both constantly ill and almost as constantly in a foul temper (with some rare moments of cheerful stoicism.) And until just a few weeks ago, neither of us had been back since. It probably deserves another look, but actually neither Val (driving up from Delhi) nor I (with my foray into Lucknow) really thought that all that much was different. Apart from the ubiquitous phones, of course.
