Travel Day 873 – Kolkata, INDIA
It was the second day of the Tablaphilia rehearsal and today we finally managed to see the bigger picture of the entire composition…
Kalighat Temple in Kolkata at Night
But first the rehearsal started out almost equally as chaotic as it did yesterday. We had to change the overall seating arrangement, alternate some positions of the playing members and then make some room for the four vocalists who finally made an appearance. For us it was unfortunately the end of our Tabla involvement since the two missing members were also present and so we were sent to the bench to follow along while reading the script…
Unfortunately following the script without understanding all the instructions was quite a challenge again, but by the late afternoon everything became a bit more understandable. This was mainly due to the fact that in the end the entire composition was plaid up and down with little breaks rather than just individual pieces as it had been done yesterday. This was perfect because once more we slowly started to see the bigger picture of the composition and hear the flow of this quite unique Tabla symphony…
After sitting in the same room for the entire day, it was about time to go for a little exploration walk after the rehearsal ended. The Kalighat temple was close by and it became naturally our first destination. Even if places like this attract all sorts characters, with a lot of them wanting money from tourists and even if we were not allowed to actually enter the inside of the temple, it was still an interesting sight. We at least managed to walk within the enclosure of the Kalighat temple complex and absorb a little bit of the local atmosphere. Especially the colorful shops around with all the flowers on display made this quite an interesting sight…
Statue in Handicraft Area in Kolkata
Another interesting sight were all the local shops lining the surrounding alleys. Instead of taking the subway back right away, we decided to rather walked a fair distance through the small streets while enjoying all the stores and crafts shops. It seemed that we managed to stumble into the handicraft area of Kolkata and we not only found a nice Tabla shop but we also enjoyed watching people create all sorts of things from beds to clay statues for religious ceremonies…
It was overall a really interesting area to walk through with quite a special atmosphere and for us it became the perfect ending of the day…
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