Review by Zhou Ting-Fung

“The Manganiyars are a cast of Muslim musicians, a majority hailing from the districts of Jaisalmer, Barmer, and Jodhpur, which is the heart of the Thar desert.  They traditionally performed for the kings but over the years their patrons have shifted from the kings to a person who could give them a meal.”

In the spirit of the show, I decided to compose my review in the form of a Ghazal*, a traditional Persian literary poetic form that spread into East Asia and India.  For those less inclined to poetry, let me say just this: the show was met with a standing ovation, and was a triumph of the human spirit and the ability of art to make sense of the world, when nothing else does.

Where is she now? An itinerant Manganiyar plucks his stringed sarod.
Dimly yearning, in a fairy light nine-by-four box.

A moustachioed voice joins in cross-legged quivering.
Solace in longing shared plight of nine-by-four box.

Another one wails, his hands possessed in turban-bulbed anguish.
Very wary small – no room to move – in tight nine by four box. 

Substitute mossy iron bars for lascivious lights and loosely drawn curtain.
A paid-for spectacle by curious onlookers, of these nine-by-four boxes.

A fourth cotton tunic forms brightly lighted row of unrequited love.
The infidel heart sings in spite of nine-by-four box.

Boom-da-boom, boom-da-boom goes the heart’s insurrection.
A tabla drum beats away the doubts of nine-by-four box.

Like rollicking rickshaws they thump, like the disappearing miles between
he and she, the weeping bows of the sarangi answer in nine-by-four box.

An unstoppable torrential downpour, a deluge, a flood, of sweet music.
The Conspiracies of History that have kept us apart collapse in nine-by-four box.

Surging past Struggle, in tongues that speak in sounds not words.
Bombay, Kashmir, Kerala, all that there is and ever was in nine-by-four box. 

The masses stand, pilgrims to an unforeseen pilgrimage
Rapturous applause in tightly starched collars and girded floral bags facing nine-by-four box.
 
Why do they sing, beat, pluck, bow? Because in these notes, this wailing,
She is Here again, in this nine-by-four box.

* More info on the Ghazal form.