There's no business like weird show business

March 5th, Shanti Bhavan
Tomorrow night the volunteers are giving a surprise “program” for the students. Some of us are singing, some of us are playing instruments, and all of us are dancing. Miss Nirmala, who is becoming one of the defining characters in my stay here at Shanti Bhavan, is teaching us dances from a Tamil movie. (Tamil Nadu is the name of the state where the school is located, and it has a language, cinema, style of dance, style of music, etc. all its own.) I am in a group dance where I have been cast as the young bride (which is funny because I’m at least four years older than almost every other girl here). Our rehearsals are hilarious because not only is the dancing unusual to say the least, but Nirmala is not the most organized dance teacher.
I don’t know if I’ve described her before, but she is a plump, intense woman with long, frizzy black hair, a big smile, and a round belly. She can be a lot of fun, but she is very hard on the students and disciplines them harshly. Her husband and teenaged son live far away in Chennai and she only gets to see them on weekends. She loves to dance and is very good, but she isn’t as good at conveying her ideas to other people. Anyway, we are learning the number, which I will have to videotape, because I don’t think there’s any other way to describe it. It’s sort of frustrating if we take it too seriously because Nirms (as we call her) constantly changes the movements and doesn’t do anything consistently, but no matter what we do, the students will think we are stars.
We switched our schedule to the summer class schedule this week, which means that we have six periods in the morning, lunch, a two-hour siesta in the afternoon, two classes after nap, and assembly at 5:30. It’s nice to have the break when it’s the hottest part of the day. Today during the break, I’m going with a couple of the other girls to Hosur to buy accoutrements for the show. It should be a trip. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.