Pictures from Bologna Per Tot festival

Came back from London last night.

My cold was getting worse and I had a board meeting, yet I found time to run to park of Villa Angeletti to watch preparations for Bologna Per tot parade. In the local Bologna dialect, "per tot" means "for every one". It is the festival for welcoming the summer, organized by students from Bologna University and local associations.

This year though summer seems to be hesitating if it should come or not. The Par Tot parade was a riot of colours. There were mainly students and young persons, a few smoking pot, almost everyone drinking wine and having fun. There was even an Anand Marg group in the parade with Acharya Kamleshwar Nanda from India.

I clicked a lot of pictures. Even after deleting many of them because they were blurred, still there are so many nice ones. Here is just a sample of those pictures.

If you like these images and want to see more pictures of the Bologna Par Tot parade from different years, check them on the photo-archives on Kalpana.

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Buskers in London underground

I am developing a cold. And I am back in London.

The underground train to Liverpool station stops every five minutes. "We are sorry for the delays caused by lack of sufficient staff in East London", they announce. Every day they make the same announcements. It sounds as if staff shortage is kind of disease or tsunami, a natural disaster. Perhaps, they are all ill with cold and fever? This is London, the capital of one of the most powerful and rich countries in the world!

I love the buskers in the London underground. They have their regular spaces authorized properly. Wonder if they have to pay for it. My favourite is at Piccadilly. It is always wonderful though I remember with nostalgia, once hearing a busker on saxophone playing Bolero. It gives me goose pimples, just to think of it. As escalators go deep down into bowels of earth, the acoustics are great.

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Hyde park and colourful India

Today after the meeting, together with Gio and Davide, we all went to Hyde park. Gio said that he wanted to see the speaker's corner where some body can go up on a podium and speak his or her views. We went around the rose garden and walked along the serpentine lake. I took lot of pictures of ducks. But we didn't find the speaker's corner.

It is in that direction, a guy told us, pointing vaguely in the opposite side. Walking through the park, there were some really nice trees with trunks swollen like pregnant tummies over centuries. Any way, we gave up before reaching the speakers corner. It was too far away and after two hours of walking I was tired.

I also saw initial parts of Bunty & Bubli up to the Kajrare song. This film has very nice colours. It is also nice to see Rameshwari and Kiran Juneja after so many years. However, the film seems kind of synthetic.

After reading Mukul's blog, I could appreciate the subtext of the background song from Umrao Jaan and dialogues when AB Sr meets AB Jr.

The part about selling Taj Mahal with Mayawati-kind of person is really good. Kajrare song is also good but didn't like Ash in it. Her vigorous heaving of bosoms makes her look like a transvestite. Watching her reminded me of Praveen Babi when she was forced to wear bhartiya nari kind of clothes. Her jhatkas are good but on the whole it looks like she is trying too hard.

Later, I watched Bride and Prejudice. It was not that bad and Ash was ok. I wish though they had reduced the " colourful Bharat" a bit. Made me wish I was kind of colour-blind.

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Ballet in Trafalgar square

I am in London. After the meeting, I went to Piccadilly circus, walked down the Reagent street to Waterloo place, where they have statues of Lord Lawrence, governor of Punjab in 1857, and of the better known Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon. There is an intriguing house there with a golden statue of Athena.

At Trafalgar square I found a big crowd, sitting on the stairs watching a giant screen showing a live broadcast of Royal British Ballet company. It reminded me of going to watch films in Ravindra Rangshala in Delhi. Only my bum has got softer or perhaps it is the age, after a while, my bones seemed to press on the hard stairs, making it difficult to sit. So finally I left it and resumed my walk.

British modern art gallery behind Trafalgar square has lovely red colured boards announcing some exhibition, wonderful as a background to take pictures. Seeing a couple of British policemen (actually policepersons since one of them was a woman), I quickly clicked. I Love taking pictures of uniformed persons.

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Black memories

I suddenly thought of the man and his daughter. I was writing about the daily "Sofie's choice" that you make as father or mother, when you don't know if you are going to eat that day, when you decide which of your children is going to eat and how much, if you can take your child to the doctor... and I thought of them.

He was from Rajasthan, he had said. His thin sun-burnt face was creased with lines. He had come to Delhi to break stones on the roads because there was nothing to eat in their village. His wife and two children were dead. Only that girl was left. 8-9 years old, thin with wise eyes. She was sick, swaying slightly. She had diarrhea and vomiting. And she was dehydrated.

It was Sunday afternoon and I had promised Nadia that we would go out. I gave him some medicines for his daughter and told him to come back next morning. There was no other way.

I saw him after a few months. How is your daughter, I had asked. She died that night when we had come to see you, he had said simply. Without any hint of resentment or anger in his voice.

Every now and then I think of that woman, the mother of five daughters, whose husband wanted a son. In the servant quarters. Blood was soaking her sari. I was sitting there with blood on my hands, unable to do any thing.

She still comes in my nightmares, making me wake up with my heart pounding in my chest. Her daughters must be grown up and married. Wonder what kind of lives they had? And did her husband remarry?

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Springsteen in Bologna

Last night Bruce Springsteen was here in Bologna. It was his first concert in Italy. When I heard about it, it was already too late. There were no tickets left.

Fortunately our local TV channel transmitted parts of it.

Silence please, he had asked for it and got it, to sing about the invisible world, the world of war, peace and loneliness of emigrants. Plain simple words, accompanied by his guitar or harmonica. There was no orchestra. Wonderful.

Made me think of Gulzaar. "Hamne dekhi ha un ankhon ki mehkati khusboo.., sirf ahsaas hai yeh ruh se mehsoos karo..".

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Development of sexuality

Suddenly I thought about the differences in the male and female bodies. Why are males full of force and muscular strength but have lower life expectancy while women have less muscle force, are apparently weaker and have longer life expectancy? It is because they have to carry babies in their wombs, I thought, so they could not have participated in hunting and gradually over time, we ended with men developing muscle power and women developing other powers.

May be that is true for humans but is a tigress or a lioness, as strong as a lion or a tiger? I don't think that it is males who go for hunting while females wait at home, so both have to hunt and find food. So then why did nature create males and females? Wouldn't it have been better to have hermafrodites, both males and females in the same bodies? It would have been more practical and reproduction (continuation of the species as the most important primordial impulse) much easier? It has to be something to do with mixing of genes so that if there are any defects in genes, they can be overcome. Confused? I don't know where this kind of thinking is supposed to lead but I am still thinking!

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I like the way they use old buildings in Italy to put them together with new things and the result is wonderful. Bologna has a wonderful university auditorium that was a 2000 year old ruin and they have kept part of old walls and added glass and steel to make a remarkable structure. Or the way, they use old fountains and stairs, like the Spanish square in Rome that is used for fashion shows. In India too we do it, like the Khujaraho festival, but we use old buildings for classical dances and similar things so it is beautiful but not contrasting.

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Hindi Webring

Today morning I was looking for new Hindi fonts. I like Susha, it is really easy to use but there are some signs like the "half R" that I can't seem to get. So I was looking for new fonts and discovered a group called webrings, where they have list of blogs in Hindi. Really great. Result, I have started even a Hindi blog on Kalpana - Jo Na Keh Saka.

I am still without a good Hindi font. Perhaps the problem is with my Italian keyboard and probably people working on Hindi fonts make them for English keyboards. Since keyboards don't cost much and next week I am going to be in London, so I will see if I can find a new keyboard to bring home and then try it for writing in Hindi.

Took some pictures of Marco and Brando today. They have come out really nice.

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My brother Nikhil & Jia

We watched Jia today, with Angeline Jolie in the role of famous American super-model Jia Maria Carungi, who died of drug addiction and AIDS at the age of 26 years in the eighties.

Very obviously My Brother Nikhil is inspired from Jia (in the way it is structured). Compared to MBN, Jia is much more layered film and characters are more gray. Jia perhaps loves Tom Junior and he probably loves her. But the real love of Jis's life is Linda, the make-up woman. In terms of sexuality, the film tackles it head-on with a long scenes of love-making between Jia and Linda. MBN also copies the way story unfolds in the film through a series of flashbacks of people involved in Jia's life, so that some scenes are seen through different persons' point of views. Thus while some of the men in Jia's life see her as a sex kitten, almost nymphomaniac, women are more understanding about it, they see it as craving for affection and stable relationships.

Film has long sequences of Angeline Jolie in the nude and some scenes are very explicit. Watching them, I was thinking about all the big ho-ha Indian actors and actresses make about nudity and kissing. Why are we so shy about our bodies? and about sex? Perhaps it is not so much about being shy as about our image of being a good boy or a good girl? And if you expose, you are not respected any more. But perhaps even in India, times are changing. Persons like Pooja Bhatt could get away with it 15 years ago and persons like Mallika Sherawat are extending the boundaries today.

It is a national holiday today in Italy, the republic day. People just needed one day leave tomorrow, Friday 3 June, to make a four days long weekend and it seems 75% of the country has decided to do that. Bologna seems empty as happens usually in August when every body goes on summer vacation. So roads have very little traffic, buses are empty, finding a parking place is not a problem.

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Perceived insults to religions

It is so depressing to look at Indian news and every other week find some news about a group of Indians who feel that their religion has been insulted by this or that film or that song or that dress.

Hindus in USA seem to be particularly sensitive persons, getting offended very easily because some body has used a Gita shlok inappropriately or has dared to put a Ganesh picture on a pair of jeans. Remove it or else .. they threaten. This is their assertiveness, they say, we need to protect our religion. I think that it is only a sign of their own insecurity. Ganesh ji or Gita don't need protection of these fundoos.

I had thought that Christians were above it but the Catholic protests over the film "Sins" or the Sikh protests against "Jo Bole So Nihaal", all seem equally pointless. Bengalis protest against someone daring to show their Subhash babu as married and want the film to be withdrawn from cinemas. Shiv Sena persons are already well known for their attack at attempts to "corrupt the Bhartiya sanskriti". The saddest thing is that Government seems to cave in every time, in front of any such protest. I wish someone would tell all these moral police to go to hell and if they don't listen, put them in jail.

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In the park, I was eating some shahtoots when Brando pulled me away. The branch in my hand slipped and went up, showering a rain of dark shatoots on my head, leaving purple marks on my shirt. It reminded me of eating jamuns at Badri Vishal pitti's house in Hyderabad. Thinking of Hydrabad made me think of Mr. Rock and his wife, our neighbours in N.Rajendra Nagar. Their twin sons, Jeremy and Stephan. Mrs. Rock's nephew had come from Secundrabad. In the evening we would sit together on the wall in front of our home and chat for hours. He was working at a car workshop in Sindhi house. After the Rocks left for Australia, he too went away. Can't remember his name or his face!

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