photo exhibitions / symphony orchestra of india (day 2)

the trips into town for the symphony orchestra of india concerts have to be combined with some other event or they seem to be too long a ride for a two hour concert. stupid, it may seem, to be so finicky- but that’s the way it is when it takes a 4 hour commute to get to and back from a place.

yesterday mukul and me gallery hopped as usual. first some rather tacky photographs by a south bombay/ south delhi / new york gay man whose voyeurism when looking at the cruising scene of delhi, or the cross dressing subculture seemed pointless and badly done. the men obviously were made to pose according to some predetermined ideas, and the photographs were flat and curiously sexless. the aestheticized black and whites of smoky american men and the ridiculous diptychs claiming first world/ third world binaries were juvenile. the gallery though was fabulously located in the garage of a huge south bombay mansion surrounded by high-rises an all sides. lawns with caryatids traipsing around incongruously juxtaposed with the densities of the city.

for much better photography we then walked into two separate but related exhibitions by dayanaita singh- one at chemould and the other somewhere in colaba. at chemould ‘beds and chairs’ and at colaba ‘go away closer’. images of absence and loss set in the interiors of spaces that range from bedrooms, libraries, museums, factories and theaters in the extreme formalism of pristine black and white prints.

in the evening the soi concert began with a confusing elgar violin concerto. i did not know whether the piece was just crappy or whether it was the playing. but then beethoven’s sixth was gorgeous- the pastorale with images of sunlight and rain on fields with country folk celebrating nature as seen through the eyes of a city man. the sounds of nature and folk songs play around in incredibly pretty tunes. to hear a full orchestra was great fun with the conductor jumping around in the center. they ended the show with a energetic strauss piece called ‘the bat’. good fun.