Day 74 - 14 October 2009: Highway entertainment on way to Varanasi

Today is a drive day towards Varanasi. On the road, we see a dump yard, proving that rubbish sometimes collected here. We also see another turned up truck left at the side of the road, and more of the chassis only trucks on their journey towards their completion.

turbo charged Indian police car

We stop to bush camp at a petrol station. I was going to sleep on the truck roof again, but the humidity leaves my roll mat drenched and I put up my tent in the dark.

After settling down to sleep, a party of some sort seems to have started up down the road. Unlike many a curry house veteran, I have always enjoyed Indian music and I get up to have a look. I discover an audience of about two hundred men and children watching some all singing and dancing women and a male compère in some colourful make-up on a stage under a hastily constructed pavilion. However, upon my arrival I become the spectacle for both the audience and the dancing girls. I am greeted with warmth, though not without some bafflement I suspect. I am escorted to a newly vacated chair to enjoy the show. Behind me is a policeman who says he will look after me if I give him some rupees. I never thought I would say no to someone holding a pump action shotgun asking for money, but this has been an eye opening journey and that is what I do. He doesn’t seem too perturbed though.

There is what looks like an obviously planted member of the audience who continually throws money at the younger of the two ladies, which is then collected by the camp looking compère and handed back to him. I am invited by another policeman to sing an English (language) song, but I am not too sure what they would make of Leonard Cohen and/or Nick Cave, which are the only songs I can remember the words to anymore, so I decline.

The dancing women start giving me what would qualify in England as the very big eye, me being the novelty attraction, or so I think at the time. Not being entirely sure about what is going on here, I stay glued to my seat. I do handover some rupees as a contribution to the busker fund though.

After a few songs I go back to the petrol station to bed down, but start thinking it might be quite funny to try to awaken the sleeping campers with my voice bellowing on the sound system down the road. I wake up Laurie so that I have someone to video the escapade. She is not best pleased at first, but I sell her the value of the cultural experience. It is only when we arrive that it occurs to me that she is only woman in the audience, and I’m not sure what the local spectators make of her.

I ask a different the policeman if I should get up to sing a song, but he says no, which is the first time I’ve heard an Indian say no since my arrival here. However, I am again the apple of the younger dancer’s eye and am invited up to dance with her. On stage, I do my best to imitate her dancing, but this only serves to amuse the crowd. I am also careful not to get too physically close to her. Though extremely pretty, I am not convinced she would be of the age of consent if this was England and, though her dancing could be said to be quite suggestive, I don’t take this to be an invite to break what I assume to be social norms in India. Meanwhile, the older dancer has disappeared between my visits to the party.

The compère asks me for some more money and I handover another hundred or so, which given the entertainment value I can’t complain about. However, he has also been continually walking to some men behind me and I hear money being discussed. Eventually one of the men, podgy and about 45 years old, starts determinedly waving a large wad of rupees in the air, only to be discouraged from doing so by one of the other men. The compère seems confused and surprisingly not inclined to take the money. It dawns on me that the rupees I have already handed over were more of a bid than an entertainer’s tip, and I decide it is best to make tracks while also thinking how wise it was to advise Laurie that it was not the best idea for her to get on the stage to dance. If she had invited any ‘donations’ I am not sure she would have been coming back with me without a serious risk of conflict.
The Dancing Girls
The Dancing Fool