Tap Dance and Percussion-Fusion Pujo

I spent close to 5 hours at the Woodrow Wilson Middle School, Pasadena last night at the BASC(http://www.basconline.org/) Pujo Mondop -which is the longest I have stayed at One Pandal ,second only to the time (not hours, not days, cumulatively certainly months.....) spent at the one right outside my home at Jamshedpur!

Having caught the festive-devotional bug at about 10 a.m. last morning, I slipped in my intention of visiting Pasadena to Sagar(my ever willing roommate) in our conversation, supplicating to his charity to drive us there.
And so it was that at 7 pm last evening We found ourselves on I-10 scrambling East and then North On Del Mar Bl. and then turned the corner at Madre in Pasadena, trying to reach before 8-the scheduled end of dinner and commencement of the music programs. To get us into the mood we entailed Anup Jalota-arguably the greatest catalyst to temporary devotion for a lot of opportunists like myself.






The Goddess was as beautiful as ever.
The Mondop was the very same room the puja is being held in for the last couple of years. The same decor and ambience of the room in place. Same stalls of ethnic Indian wear and jewellery.
Scrambling to an ATM and back again for $45 in cash required for the food tickets and program entry we finally managed to feast sumptuously on the Rice, Dal, Palak Paneer, Kofte and Mutton. (Chutni and Halwa too!)
The program, we missed a large part of, was the "Biplober Gaan" (Songs of the revolution)- It was a sort of Musical-verbal drama with landmark stills from various stages of the Indian freedom struggle right upto the Nandigram shootouts in 2007 being projected onto the background. The songs ranged from paeans for the martyrs of the freedom struggle to voices of support for Naxalites. Interestingly the whole presentation sought to address the woes of Bangladesh and West Bengal together-expressing similar scorn for administration on both sides and reiterating solidarity of the united Bangla-as far as I could understand.


The program I witnessed every minute of, was the much awaited "Jambination" fusion music by Abhishek Basu's group. Drums, Tabla, Tambourine, Bass, Electric, Beat Boxing and Taal recital all together- spiced up by dances, of styles I am not qualified to comment on, by Shibani Thakkar and Holly Shaw. Basu had trained at Bikram Ghosh' school and just like him I think he overdoes the improvisation part. For one thing the person at the equalizer controls did a very shoddy job and for another the auditorium was far from being acoustically "sound".
Highlight of the show?- Tap Dance by Shibani Thakkar as the last declared piece of the show.



....and so the celebration of the Bengalis being garnished with the Hallmark Irish gesture of Joy- the Tap Dance- performed by a Punjabi Lady to the beat of the Tabla, a Pan Indian music instrument and the Drums being played by a drummer from Africa-All this in California-diametrically opposite Calcutta- the real abode of the goddess.
The World really is a small place!

References
a)Memory
b)http://www.basconline.org/