Happy Friendship Day

There are many such special days in India. Some religious, some purely secular, such as this one.  My suspicions of one more marketing opportunity to offload a mass of cards were raised.  My parents were always dismissive of Mothers Day, Fathers Day and the rest as just such transparent attempts to sell flowers and restaurant seats, and Val and I have never encouraged such gimmickry.

Nonetheless, I found this to be really quite charming, and gave me the opportunity to shake hands and bid Happy Friendship Day to one and all, and it seemed they were pleased to be acknowledged as a friend.  Noora’s dad Shagrat also took te the opportunity, while dropping off his daughter for the rehearsal, to come in to say hello and HFD with a warm handshake.  Nice.

But the rehearsal?  Hmm.  Although more students had arrived early, it was soon apparent that the overall attendance was worse. Despite exhortations and threats.  Many students had sent apologies at the last minute, whether entirely genuine or not I cannot say.  And Tortoise came within a haresbreadth (sorry) of being sacked.  She informed us last night that she had to miss at least part of the rehearsal because of her attendance at a BrainBob (I think) competition at a different school.  Saba had sent her a message, telling her this would be rearranged; then another asking for a response.  I sent another imploring her friends to ring her.  She came running in, rather late, having ony just seen the messages while being already at this other event (an IQ competition, proving high IQ does not usually correlate with common sense.)

We would have been forced to follow through with our ultimatum.  Despite the fact that she is excellent in the role, (and has the driest sense of humour) her attendance record has been no better than the sacked Mouse.

Overall attendance was dreadful.  I began the session in an uncharacteristically dark mood, which I could not conceal.  Lion was absent, sending a heartfelt email of apology, so even though we had a new Mouse and a new Fawn in attendance, neither could do much without Lion.  But even though many there could do nothing or almost nothing – I sent many home as soon as possible – there was one benefit of the whole sorry situation: that I had enough time to work in detail on those scenes that still had the necessary people.  I found this immensely rewarding, and my mood (as well as those particular scenes) improved.

In particular, we had the chance to work on the Hole, having all of the vital people (as well as the vital prop – two hoops joined by a tube of black material.)  It worked, it showed the situation effectively, and it was very funny.

After rehearsal, Friendship Day continued for me with a belated lunch at the posh Golden Tulip Hotel with Panny – Dr Pankuri.  Our conversation was wide-ranging over the various manifestations of Indian culture (behaviour not art.)  Which, interestingly, was precisely illustrated by the binary, rule-keeping approach of the hotel staff.  It informs everything here!