Bang Bang Galore!
A Filmmaker’s BLOGELLA
Written by Steve Rosenberg
Blog 12 (Cows)
Sent: March 28, 2007 10:56:49 PM
Yesterday was a day like no other in India, a day full of surprises and mysteries that left me befuddled and perplexed. Yesterday, I was walking along the streets of Bangalore lost in thought, when I felt my left sandal squish an unfamiliar mushy texture. Yesterday I stepped in cow shit. The situation is not that uncommon, because cows meander freely through the streets and seem oblivious to all the modern urban elements around them. Nothing seems to scare them, not even rush hour traffic. If they choose to cross the street in traffic, the roads are theirs for the takings. They are a rather complacent lot, far less charismatic than a lion and far less crafty than a wolf, yet Hindus have bestowed the cow with an aura of holiness. Why do Hindus choose to worship cows? Years ago, I investigated this question, but now I can’t seem to recall the answer.
Last week, I was reading Sara McDonald’s “Holy Cow,” and I remember the author describing the unsavory life of the Hinduism’s most sacred animal. She described them as brainless docile animals that graze on the refuse they find on the streets. Perhaps, a better way to describe them is dull witted. In December, Terry, my partner, threw out an ice cream box and within minutes, a cow smelled the chocolate and engulfed the whole box.
Cows, writes McDonald, graze on litter filled plastic bags and since plastic is a non biodegradable substance, the plastic lives in their abdomens indefinitely, causing them to die slow agonizing deaths.
Unlike the slow uncomfortable death many cows here endure, I am often imagining a dramatic ending to my life. Today could have been my day. This morning, I headed off to the to photograph kids working in the flower market and I was nearly killed by a car. I still haven’t quite gotten the feel of looking left when I cross the street. Thanks to the British, Indians drive on the left side of the street, something a right-handed bloke like myself finds counter-intuitive. It was a blazing loud horn that saved my life. Given the steady stream of horns, I was amazed I even heard the horn above the symphony of all the other aggressive horn honkers and roaring mufflers. Here, the way a motorist signals a lane change is by sounding three small horn blasts. In a city like Bangalore, there were so many honking horns at once, that as a pedestrian, I spend all of my time trying to block out the noise from penetrating my brain. Today, I feel lucky to still be alive.
My arch nemesis in India is noise; the other is litter. Last week, I remember attending an English language class at Born Free Art School and the substitute teacher was asking a series of questions that required students to describe the difference between noise and sound. I thought that it was a wonderful example of language subtlety, but Christine, the earnest young English teacher with a long ponytail and wire – framed glasses managed to stretch out the whole forty- minute class with this very tedious discussion. I thought she would go further as a language teacher if she tossed out her textbook and ask children to speak about their lives.
In between stopping the momentum of the class by answering her cell phone and launching into disciplinary lectures about speaking to her with respect, Christine managed to douse all the fun out of learning English. She encouraged the kids to treat her like a sister; then promptly asked them to raise their hands before speaking and demanded them to rise from their seats if they were chosen to answer her tricky grammar questions. In defense of Christine, she was teaching her very first class, so perhaps her attempt at discipline was her way of setting a benchmark for future good behavior.
This class held very little appeal for Faisel and he floated out of her classroom fifteen minutes into the lesson. I watched him circling the building on one of the scrappy red and yellow mountain bikes he grabbed from the schoolyard. The students who remained in the classroom occasionally peered out the windows as Faisel peeled around the dirt covered schoolyard creating large tire imprints with his bike tires. Even a strong disciplinarian like Christine didn’t see the point in confronting Faisel.
Christine’s next class picked up from where she left off, with most kids blocking out her presence as she continued with the same inane discussion of sound and noise. Incidentally, the correct answer to this two- class exercise is: sound is something that we hear and noise is something that we hear but find difficult to endure. When the kids were later playing volleyball in the schoolyard, I wanted to ask Christine if she thought it was sound or noise, but she is such a square peg, that I decided not to antagonize her. Christine likes me at the moment and I thought she might prove to be a quirky character; someone who may supply desperately needed humour to my film.
The noisy soundscapes here make for challenging filming, but I am slowly learning to cope. I am in Bangalore a noisy, polluted city and I feel truly blessed to be here. Why? India is a nation filled with beautiful brown skinned children, children such as Faisel who is leaving an indelible mark on my heart. As for the cows, I am starting to warm up to them. At least, they are quiet.
