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I leave my Calcutta behind on that Rajdani train tomorrow afternoon.  Rather than try to write, I want to say goodbye with two pictures.

Both of them I passed every day, and thought to myself, “I ought to take a picture of that before I leave.”
The first one is the ironing man directly across the street from me.  The men may change, but their look never does.  He never changes, of course.

And this is the sufi shrine on the way to the metro.  The corpse of a saint lies inside.

I just got back from a trip to “northeast India.”  It feels like I traveled through three or four countries, each with totally distinct cultures, languages, experiences.  In no way did it cohere.  I’ll list my destinations in order, then move on to the interesting part of the post: first, Murshidabad, on the plains of Bengal, from which the Bengali Nizams used to rule their empire.  Then, an infinitely long and difficult journey all the way around Bangladesh to Shillong, Meghalaya (the first video from that journey itself).  Then back to Guwahati, capital of Assam.  Back through Siliguri, the only transit hub for the whole region, to Darjeeling (scenes from the Darjeeling Limited playing the whole time in my mind), then a long jeep ride to Gangtok, capital of Sikkim, with a daytrip to a nearby monastery featured in this post, if these videos ever upload.  Gangtok to Pelling, and Pelling to Kechopari Lake, where I stayed at a lovely little hamlet on top of a hill overlooking the lake, with a big family of Tibetans and a big (newly formed, two day) family of French, Isrealis, and Americans–much more to say on that point, later.

Having become obsessed with Tony Gatlif’s movie Latcho Drom before I left Cal for this trip, I decided to document the memorable music that I would come across (of course with no intention other than a blog post–I’m no filmer).  Latcho Drom traces the continuity of Gypsy/Roma music from India all the way to Spain.  It is beautifully shot and full of spirit, with excellent sound recordings.  In contrast, my videos are terribly shot, with lots of background noise, a shaky, low-resolution digital camera.  You have to use the same selective listening you would use in real life if you were trying to listen to music, while, say, at a busy train station full of chaiwallahs.  The other contrast with Latcho Drom is that while Gatlif’s movie shows an underlying unity, I hope that the accumulation of these videos will show the huge diversity of experience.  All cultural experience is valid, even if hugely displaced from its native land. There’s nothing inauthentic about covering Bob Dylan in Shillong, not in this era.  Though the legwork on that one is awesomely over-the-top.  Like all the work I do in India, the only thread holding these together is that I was there, that they shaped an aspect of my perception.  I thought about editing them together, but that would obviously look terrible.

The first one was this blind Bengali boy who sang these beautiful bauls while we were stopped at a train station as I made my way from Siliguri to Guwahati, so on that narrow strip of India that connects the ‘mainland’ to the ‘northeast states’.  Excuse the terrible cuts–i just slapped three videos together on my camera itself.  One thing I tried to show was that for the people around us, especially the two men next to the singer who were simply introduced to me as “local tribal men”, the real show was me and my camera, not the singer.  The man with the mustache sort of ‘produced’ the whole thing, by making the boy sit and play for us, paying, encouraging me to video him–he’s in the army, stationed in Hyderabad, and was in the midst of a four day train ride from Hyderabad to his native Guwahati.  Oh, I think that if you listen to the cries of the vendors in the background, you’ll hear one guy walk through saying “Pendrive, Pendrive” selling USB flash drives and loads of other consumer electronics.

This is some hard uploading. I’m sure it’ll suck to download.  Highly recommend hitting “play” then immediately “pause” on each video, then walking away to do something else. Maybe I should’ve done youtube for all of them, but I didn’t. Felt too uncontrollably public, maybe.

The first day in Shillong, at the Bob Dylan Birthday Bash!

At Rumtek Monestary. I was interested in the sacrifice aspect of it, which I speculate is an aspect of Tantra, which transcends the artificial division between Hinduism and Buddhism. Happily for you, I decided against videotaping a goat sacrifice at Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati, which would have been a nice juxtaposition.

This was, literally, my arrival in Kechopari, on my first exploration of the land. Listen hard. She wouldn’t sing as soon as she saw me, but I know she wouldn’t object to you listening.

And now, on a rainy night in Kechopari:
A Frenchman:

An American:

First one Isreali:

Then another:

And, before this post is complete, I’ll video Dhruva Lal playing. Check back.

And one more from today, in Kolkata!  a kind of sexy/bored one, maybe.  OK, I don’t know how to turn a video, so turn your head. This is the drum I resisted buying at the music store, though I failed to resist buying an Ektara, which I will show you when I see you.

So, there you have it.  As soon as you get on the road, anywhere in the world, you meet lots of wonderful musicians.  This time I just remembered to turn on the camera some of the time.