Move Over Michael Jackson

I was invited to sing some songs of Rabindranath Tagore as a part of a celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Tagore, a Bengali,  won the Nobel Prize for literature almost a hundred years ago. His 2500 songs make up just a portion of his literary output which also includes poetry, plays, novels, short stories, philosophical essays and art work.

 Jan and I got gussied up in our nicest Bengali clothes for the occasion.

Then we made our way to the open air stage which had been set up in the middle of town right where seven of the busiest roads met (rightly called the 'Seven-Road Spot.') I feared the traffic and bustle of this congested spot would drown out any performance but I underestimated the capacity of their sound system which drowned out the city noise instead.

Jan and I settled into our seats and awaited the beginning of the program. I wasn't quite sure where I fell in the line up.
 Four mercifully short speeches started things rolling about an hour after we had been told the program would start. (Silly us: When will be ever learn to add an hour to the declared time so that we show up at the proper time. )

 A large group, mostly children, sang a whole repertoire of Tagore songs. They sang with uniform poise and melody steadily for forty minutes in the 88 degree heat. It was evening but the air was still, the lights were bright and they seemed so unaffected. I was wildly waving Jan's fan in my face the whole time to try to muster some relieving breeze. My fan flapped away right through to the end of their performance when all of a sudden, just as the children were finished and leaving the stage, the fan was swept out of my still oscillating hand by a lady in a beautiful sari. I watched her in great disappointment, wondering why she had purloined my only connection to comfort when I saw that she was rushing over to a one of the young singers who was close to fainting from the heat. My cut and run thief was really a mother in good control of the situation and she returned the fan after the girl was revived.

 Music was not the only source of entertainment. Every town has a population of a few crazy people (pagol is the word in Bengali) on the streets. They are harmless but have no hesitation to try to steal the show in such a big public gathering. The first sign that this man wasn't all there was that in the 88 degree heat, he wore layers of quilted clothes. Aside from that, he was using some part of his apparel as a cell phone. When he presented himself in front of the stage during the performance, people would gently encourage him over to the side.

  After the group singing, practically every person in the group sang a solo. The transitions from one performer to the next were seamless as two sets of harmoniums and tabla players had been set up, one on each side of the stage. As one performer sang, the next took their place and waited.

 Without any real warning, the director quietly came over to my seat to tell me I was next. I vaguely remember taking my place, waiting my turn, singing a song and then, (perhaps slightly scripted) being hand-clapped into singing my second song.
  After another six or seven performers after me and three hours after we had arrived, the singing portion ended and the stage would be cleared and set for a Tagore play. We would have loved to see the play in any other circumstances, but it was going on 10:00 p.m. and we had an early rise ahead of us so that we could get home to Rajshahi and leave the next day for the capital city of Dhaka. It was time to call an end to our hot night in the city.