… which is a Nepali slang word, which kind of means, “it’ll get sorted,” and references the Nepali approach to forward planning, and I reckon must be the Nepalese national word. Because it is the way everything does get done here – last minute, frantic, bodged or downgraded, and above all, from a personal point of view, not at all helpful to my stress levels.
Val is here, by the way, having arrived just before they closed the shutters; I waited downstairs in a cold café just to make sure she was not locked out. But after wolfing down some food Aparna and I had bought for when she got here, she got on with her work – she is, much as ever, deeply involved in a huge and important bid, which is being appallingly put together.
The end result being that she was dead to the world this morning when I went over to SPA, supposedly to liaise with some SPA handyman about the staging, needed today for our run-through. And I say supposedly because it didn’t happen. I was there pretty much all morning, and apart from arranging the chairs for a traverse staging, I did nothing but wait. Eventually, I sent a hugely snotty letter to Aparna and Yogi, and left to get some lunch… though on the way I ran into Yogi and let go of some of my feelings in his direction. Which did at least result in something getting done, with the sound system brought over to be used, Aparna dragged back from her school to oversee various workmen, there to measure up for screens, carpet, platform for Juliet’s balcony…
And then they disappeared to get on with it somehow (except that by 5 o’clock, the bloke making the screens had given up on doing that.) Aparna had at one point suggested that we rehearse elsewhere, though quite how I was supposed to rehearse in a classroom, the only alternative, already crammed with desks, I have no idea.
But we did then get on with a stagger-through. And in the circumstances… well, I suppose it could have been a lot worse. There were lots of mistakes, of course, and much of it was dreadful, but backstage discipline, which I had feared would be appalling, was pretty reasonable. I won’t say there were some magical moments, because, honesty, I don’t recall any. And there’s always the dress rehearsal tomorrow night. By which time, with luck, we will have at least some of carpet, screens, lights, balcony…
Jugaadbaazi.
