(Foreigners try out local steps).

That’s the headline underneath a photo of me in today’s Deccan Chronicle, a local newspaper. You can see the photo here (197 KB). Beside me is D, a colleague of C’s. We were snapped while dancing at a festival on Sunday night called Navaratri with a big group from The Company.

The costumes we’re wearing in the photo are traditional Ghagra Cholis. We got them in a local “crafts village” called Shilparamam. The lady we bought them off was lovely, but hadn’t a word of english. She would just patiently explain things in her own language (Hindi? Gujarati? I don’t know) until we understood. She obviously liked us, because when her colleague suggested a price, she waved her hand dismissively and divided it by three. I was really pleased to find a cotton, traditional Ghagra Choli after looking at manky polyester ones the day before. I did see some nice modern ones, but they were an unbelievable 100 yoyos.

The festival was absolutely incredible! Thousands of people dancing around in concentric circles for hours. I wish I’d danced for a bit longer. I stopped to conserve my energy for the Dandiya raas (stick dance), but after waiting several hours for it we gave up and went home. When someone asked me to move from the main group and join the smaller one near our seats, I assumed I was getting in the way and annoying the locals. I’m pretty sure now that it was so someone could take pictures of the strange firangi in traditional clothes . I was also asked to “address the media”. As if I haven’t done enough of that in my time! Lots of people from the The Company joined in (including C). So maybe we were on TV too!

Tg