Dawali

This past Friday night Katie and I went to a Diwali festival put on by the Indian Student Association here at Wichita State.  The evening started with some food which I thought was just fine but more than one Indian student said he could make better stuff at home.  That's right, he; apparently these guys can cook.  In my experiences with Indian cooking getting the right spice mixture can be very tricky.  Most of the time, I do the best I can and end up "patching-up" with improvisation to get the food to a point where I like how it tastes.  Now that I think about it, that almost ensures that the food will be in-authentic (not that I have a super good idea what authentic tastes like.)  Suffice it to say that I have a long way to go before I can even catch up with the cooking skill of many of these Indian guys.  Maybe I can con one of them to show me how to make the culinary magic work.

The second "half" of the evening was a talent-show-ish mostly-dancing series of performances.  (It got started about an hour later than "scheduled"; Katie's Indian co-worker with whom we spent the evening was highly apologetic that things were running so far behind schedule.  He seemed honestly irritated that the show started that late.  I, on the other hand, expected nothing less.  The irony of this is highly amusing to me.)  

The first act of the show was an hour-long performance by a professional traditional Indian dancer.  She was not at all impressed by the rowdy, party-loving nature of the crowd and spared no verbal expense in letting us know this. In between nearly every dance she took a few minutes to tell us we needed to respect her performance more and that any kind of inappropriate vocalizations from the crowd (that is to say, more than politely clapping at the end of the dance) would result in early termination of her performance.  In short, she was the equivalent of an opera prima donna being asked to sing at "American Idol."  It was not a good match and I think both the she and the audience were happy when she (finally) finished her part of the evening.  For me, I enjoyed the first half-hour but by 45 min. was ready to move on.  Yup, I'm a cultural bigot.

Though we didn't stay for the entire rest of the show, the rest of the acts were very entertaining.  The performers showed no fear and seemed to either have a lot of natural talent or had practiced quite a while.  Most of the acts were group pop dance-ish and the rows and rows of guys behind us loudly showed their appreciation.  I learned that long, loud, high whistling seemed to be the Indian equivalent of clapping; I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to hear again after dozens of those guys really laid into it.  Next time, I'm bringing earplugs.

I think I was most amazed at how many of the students seemed to lack any sense of embarrassment or stage-fright. There seemed to be no end of singing and dancing acts and members of the audience worked their way onto stage on several occasions or used the aisles of the auditorium as little dance halls to join in with on-stage performance.   The group as a whole seemed to corporately feel much more at ease with themselves. Maybe its a function of forming an Indian bubble here in Wichita for the evening or maybe this was a reflection of a part of Indian culture I haven't seen before; probably its some of both.

Overall, great evening.  Next time, I'm taking a nap before-hand so I can stay up later and probably can just plan on showing up a half-hour after the published time.