About a week or two after I arrived here in Pune (time has been all juggled together since then), I joined the dhol club of Shivagergnia. We had practice almost every night from 7:00-9:30 preparing for our week of performances during the Ganesh Festival.
To start out, a dhol is, as the title says, a big drum. It's an aluminum barrel open on the flat sides, and then covered with material used on drums like bongos and alike. On one side of the drum, there is a black substance put on the inside of the drum surface to make it vibrate more and therefore sound louder. The other side is just left with the original covering. To have the correct sound, the side with the black substance is hit with a wooden mallet, and the opposite side is hit with the bare hand.
My first performance was on August 22nd. This was not part of the Ganesh Festival, but rather, Krishna Curd. We played at the largest farmer's market in the city, called Mundi. It was my first realization -other than being the only foreigner at practice- that it really was an uncommon occurrence for a foreigner to be playing dhol. The crowd was huge, and I swear, almost everyone with a camera took a picture of me. For me, I had to put on a show for them and really got into the music and the beat. Of course, they could always see my huge smile.
Practices continued until the Ganesh Festival began. Our first real performance -other than the mini one at Mundi- was on September 1st, the first day of the Festival. I was shocked by the amount of people on the streets. Thousands upon thousands were gathered to watch the processions pass by. We began playing dhol about 10:00 in the morning, and the processions finally ended sometime during the night. Luckily, I didn't have to play the entire time. The first leg of our playing lasted for about four hours, of which I played for one. There was then a lunch break that lasted five hours, during which I ate at my Suman Aji's (Grandmother on my Father's side), and went home to sleep. When I woke up, I again went to play dhol in a different procession. This time, my mom and her friend came along both to take part in the festivities and take pictures and videos of me. In the evening procession, I played for almost twice as long as I had in the morning. During the procession it started to rain, no, it started to pour. The cold rain was relieving after the sweat from the heat and playing. Being true to the procession, no one stopped playing no matter how much, or how hard the rain fell.
On the final day of the Ganesh Festival, I prepared yet again to play dhol in front of hundreds of thousands of people. However, I was not able to play due to mismanagement of the dhol group and my parents looking out for me and always making sure I have the best experiences possible (THANK YOU!). I was still able to participate in the processions though, thanks to Rotary. All of the inbound exchange students walked the procession route in full Indian dress. The crowds tried to get as many pictures as possible of "those foreigners dressed like Indians," many times coming into our group and having use pose for pictures. During the procession, we did Indian chants and dances as well as showing our nationalities by waving our countries' flags. Overall, it was a great experience and I was smiling the whole time.
Fun Fact: One of the television reporters that had interviewed me for dhol earlier was assigned to cover the foreigners in the procession. When she saw me with the Rotary group, she was surprised to see that I was not playing dhol. I felt really good knowing that she had remembered me, and am now able to show off saying I know someone on Indian television.
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