Exhibitions

Last year, I went to a photo exhibition. There is something quite absorbing about an exhibition. You gaze long enough at a photo taken by another person, you add your own meaning to the scene, you build stories about how the photographer reached the place, about the life of the people in the picture, about the relationship between the photographer and the photographed and you spin webs around many other aspects.

Yet, there is another dimension to the exhibition. There is a life happening right at the venue – life of each of the people, life of the buildings, life of the organizers and a life outside the venue. It was on one such day that we went to the exhibition. It was one of the days of festival in Heidelberg. The hauptstrasse was lined with stalls on either side. We walked through one of the side streets, passed a square of festivities and returned to the cross the hauptstrasse into the detour to the gallery until we spotted the signs indicating where we needed to go.

We walked in, bought the tickets from a young girl at the entrance. The wall behind her was lined with photographs, all arranged systematically. She was cheerful and friendly. The sunlight fell on the photographs giving them an additional framing effect of the shadows of the windows opposite. I had already started weaving my stories in my mind.

Having been to this gallery on another occasion at another time of the day, for another photography exhibition, I was prepared for the vastness of the gallery. Yet, the effect of a gallery also depends on the environment of the day. Having come at night, into a gallery lit with fluorescent lights, the harsh lines seemed to have been enhanced. During day time with sun streaming through some windows while some parts remained protected in the shadow, an emptiness enveloped me. Was it the lack of people or was it the type of photographs? I could not really tell. Even the props, though very quaint and painting like, seemed to have been left by someone who was in a hurry to go somewhere.

As I wandered along the walls downstairs, I noticed people walking up the stairs – unlike last time, I could not see any pictures there. There seemed to be some type of non-photo like activity going there. Thinking there might be some voyeuristic pleasure for my camera from a bird’s eye view – to take pictures without being noticed by my subject, I walked up. A beanbag faced a screen – headphones seemed connected to some audio. As time passed, visitors, who had more time than others, took seat one by one on the bean bag, pulled the headphones over their heads and listened. Others stood with the headphones pulled over the ears, listened for a few minutes and left.

In the main hall there were still some people at one corner still assembling some chairs. It almost seemed like an altar where the choir was about to take their position. The atmosphere seemed serene and holy broken only by the shuffle of feet and the drag of the chairs. A piano and the note stands indicated the possibility for a concert. The photograph that served as a backdrop to the orchestra might have induced the sacrosanct feeling – on the other hand the elements in photograph struggled against the atmosphere. How should I interpret this – as love being god given or as a rebellion against the sanctified?

As we came away, I was struck by the myriad of emotions captured in different corners of the exhibition gallery. On one side was calm, on the other side was loneliness, on yet another side was rebellion and yet there was the togetherness of a family all kept together in hundreds of small frames. The welcome signs hardly referred to this opulence of sensibilities that would be generated. The turkish wedding video playing in one of the anterooms seemed an anomaly against the silent tongues all around trying to tell me something. Housed in a dark room, it seemed to want to take you away from those mute conflicts outside.

As I stood at the small hundreds of frames and tried to map the people across the photographs, new wonder set in. With the pictures set in Japan, a country I have always wanted to visit, I tried to understand how many families were represented here. Unlike other pictures in the gallery, this seemed to be the only wall where a normal life seemed represented. All the other pictures could be “modeled” for the purpose of the picture. These ones did not need to be “posed” though some of them were – just like when we take family pictures in studios – just as in normal life.

As we left, we found that there would be an opening concert and a party the next afternoon – unfortunately we were already committed elsewhere.

Celebrating festivals

Last year I celebrated a few of the festivals.

The year started with Vishu, the new year for the Hindu Malayalees that normally falls on April 14-th but might be on April 15-th at times. I went and got yellow flowers, some traditional fruits and arranged them the night before with the lamp that would be lit the next morning. There was nothing unusual in this. I celebrate Vishu every year. The morning “Vishukani” is seen, I go to work, come back and keep everything back in their place. The fruits are consumed, the flowers dry up in due course and finds its way into the Biomüll – the garbage for bio degradable substances. The same happened this year.

The other festivals however took up much more effort and went on for a few days.

I started Onam celebrations 10 days before with the first day of “Atham” on the Hindu calendar. The one line of athapoo or the flower carpet grew day by day to 10 circles on day 10. Each day I removed the flowers of the previous day, cleaned the floor, laid new carpet. Every alternate day I bought flowers for the next two days. From day 7, I had to buy more varieties and daily. My husband watched in trepidation as the wallet grew empty. Not expecting me to continue all days, he did not raise a murmur initially. He got caught up in it too as the days went. Separating the petals from the stem, he said “I had forgotten what flowers felt and smelt like”. While Euros disappeared, the time to create the carpet increased as well. The delay resulted in delay to work but with flexible time at work, it did not matter. The spirit stayed. My cleaning lady balanced herself around my carpet to enter the apartment and swayed on her toes to open the door with her key. On the 11-th day, a break from tradition due to office,  we invited friends home and had the Onam feast on ceramic places.

On the 12-th day, I was bereft. There were no flowers, no carpet… Life was back to normal.

When my sister and nephew decided to visit, my mother warned me. “My grandson has a Christmas tree every year – make sure he does not miss it”. Thus started the scrambling to understand the culture behind Christmas trees, the conditions a tree should meet, what is the size (arguments ensued), what type of decorations and the list goes on. The shopping started. The tree was bought the weekend before he reached – a small little conical tree that neatly fit below our sloping roof. As we went out to more Christmas markts, the more trinkets I bought for the tree. I invited my friend Sindhu’s daughter to help to decorate the tree with my nephew. The two of them made it a pretty picture. So went the successful tree story – “The tree must be the most valuable thing in the house today” – declared my husband after we had decorated it.

The Christmas came, we put up the stocking that were filled by Santa with many gifts – the gleeful look on the face of the little one made it all worthwhile. The visitors left back for the normal life. In Germany, Christmas trees stay until the “Dreikönigstag” when the Magi is celebrated – we awaited the Magi too. The Christmas tree stood it in corner. Life continued for us in the rest of the house.

Yesterday, I slowly plucked the trinkets and the light out of the Christmas tree. We battled the tree to cover it up with the plastic sheets to prevent the leaves from falling on the landing or in the car.

Braving the wind and rain, we drove to IKEA where we got stuck in the mile long traffic – “Everyone is returning the Christmas tree”. My husband dragged the Christmas tree from the trunk and came back with a gift voucher.

“There was a match going on – who can fling the tree the furthest. They did not ask me to participate – because of the plastic. With that completely packed one I could have flung it far” – he said, climbing into the car. We drove back and entered the house – the corner stood empty, quiet and white instead of green and red. Life is back to normal again.

Removing the block

Almost everyone I have linked to, on my blog, seemed to have stopped writing – there are about 4 people who post once in a while and 2 who posts regularly. Who am I to complain? My last posts could hardly be called posts.

In the meantime it is not as if there is a big vacuum of topics – I have been collecting materials left right and center. I went for Flamenco dance again by Maria Pages, two puppet shows – one Augsburger Kasperle played by a couple and another more sophisticated Indonesian shadow puppet show, Wayang, on Ghatotkacha.  My hands itched to write about it – I researched about it and when I thought about writing, my whole mind went completely blank.

In the meantime, I tried my hand at cooking, listened to old cassettes found back when two households became one, started subscription to the Financial Times again – waiting patiently to hold the crisp newspaper in the hand again. The weekend section of the financial times still held the same charm – the latest one talked about Iran and the mysterious deaths of its nuclear scientists reminding me of an unfinished book in my cupboard on the history of Iran.

This weekend, due to the tail end of fever, I skipped four possible events – one a concert of Viola Gamba & Cembalo which I really wanted to go to, the carnival at Oberkirch in Blackforest, the circus which has come to our little towns and the slide show on Hurtigruten, the cruise on fjords of Norway – the second time I am missing it.

On the whole if I thought I will miss cultural aspects by leaving Brussels, that is not entirely true.

Lady in grey

A couple of weekends ago, we had been to the “Wein und Markt”. There were many stalls there. We had gone once in the morning and once later in the afternoon. In the morning, the market had not yet started and people were still setting up the stalls. Everything was still and we could walk where we wanted to. In the afternoon everything was different. There were people packed all around the streets of Wiesloch. We inched our way through and fought hard to cross. There were single files of people going in each direction squeezing through groups standing and chatting.

We met our landlord there. “Anyone who has lived in Wiesloch comes back on this day”, he told me – “It is an opportunity to meet old friends”. He and his wife sat with another couple. We nodded to them and went our way.

At one of the stalls, I noticed a lady. She has an interesting face I thought and clicked a few photos. The last few days I have been seeing her everywhere in Wiesloch. She always wears a grey T-shirt and beige pants. She has a serious look on her face. There is no particular time or street when I spot here – she is all over this small little town. Have you ever had such a surreal feeling of seeing a memorable not so famous face and then bumping into the same face again and again and again? Don’t you feel like you have built a relationship with her though she has never seen you and you have not exchanged a single word in all these one way interactions?

Eerie clear skies

The icelandic volcanic eruption has stopped all the flights to Europe. While many friends, relatives and colleagues are stuck in different parts of the world, here I am on my balcony enjoying the clear skies without the criss-crossing jet lines all over the horizon. I have never seen the sky so clear. The only time you cannot see the jet lines over the skies are during 250 days of the year in Brussels when it is cloudy or raining. Don’t get me wrong. I love to see flights, I love the blinking lights crossing the skies and I love the patterns made by the jet. Nevertheless this quietness is something I am enjoying as well. Let’s enjoy this while it lasts – because the madness will start again.