all sound and light...

The mind numbing cold of December makes one do rather silly things, especially the 'improving one's mind' kind of activities. Our family went, en masse, for the son et lumiere show at the Red Fort. The good folks at the fort take their work literally - only sound and light, no shadows or anything to add dimension. At least we had different colour lights. Anyhow, it rambled on about the fort was built by Jahangir (I think) and how the women of the fort were in charge of the place once a week.....

Then after Aurangazeb the place went to the dogs for the following Mughals were weak, insipid, alcoholic louts. Like the one who kept drinking (we heard him) inspite of news that some invaders or the other were descending on Delhi. All he would say amid his drunken orgy was that Delhi was still far away. Our favourite lout was this unnamed guy who, according to the Voice, fell in love with a common Slut. At this point the sound system's delicate sensibilities were overcome and it shut down for a while. After smelling salts were administered, the system recovered but started all over from the beginning. We half expected it get horrified by the S word again, but it overcame its embarrassment most manfully and continued without a glitch.

I also went for a play about Pushkin written by some Indian woman and dramatized by somebody else. It was called Pushkin's last poem (or was it letter?). With some sad acting and even worse directing, it was one of the most pathetic plays I've seen. They had this narrator who would smirk and explain the scene, and then the actors would enact whatever she said! So silly. And the play certainly did not increase my knowledge of Pushkin or his work except in that he seemed to conform to The Artist Rule, ie., all great artists should love a woman but not be with her, instead they should be womanizing drunks who no one understands and everyone persecutes. And their genius gets recognised posthumously.