Other Diwalis
Updated On: 12 November, 2023 07:57 AM IST | Mumbai | Meenakshi Shedde
And I was reflecting on the other Diwalis that we can treat ourselves to year round, but often don’t.
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Illustration/Uday Mohite
The first time I went to Europe and stayed with a friend was around 1994. I stayed in Paris with the lovely French music composer Louis Dandrel, whom I met at a highly inauspicious moment, when I thought he was repairing his shoe, as he was standing very still by a wall at CSMT station in Mumbai. It turned out he was a composer recording the “unwritten symphonies” of Mumbai, the daily rhythms of life that we overlook. Uff, yes, my life is full of exciting adventures. It’s Diwali, the festival of lights, again. And I was reflecting on the other Diwalis that we can treat ourselves to year round, but often don’t.
So I discovered early on, thanks to my travels, that a European’s relationship with light is very different from an Indian’s. They treasure and cherish light; we just roundly ignore light, not even bothering with an umbrella at high noon in summer. So I went to Europe around 1994 on a Goethe Institut scholarship to study German, in Mannheim, and after the programme, soon found myself in Paris, the City of Light. This was the pre-internet era, so Louis and I communicated via postcards, and I asked if it would be okay for me to stay over for a few days. He said I was most welcome, and he would be working long hours at his recording studio, but I could take the key from xyz and stay over at his place at the Jardin du Luxembourg.
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