I wrapped myself in a woollen cloak against the chill of an October Indian night in 1980. Camera in hand and squatting in the dirt, I was surrounded by villagers and their laughing children. We all were waiting for a performance to begin. The occasion was a Bhavāī Mela at the village of Sola near Gujarat's largest city, Ahmedabad. The Mela was sponsored by the National School of Drama (New Delhi) and the Gujarat State Sangeet Nritya Natya Akademi. The privileged, urban students of the NSD were conspicuous in their reserved seating area, disdainfully rejecting the attempts of the villagers to join them. Far in the back of the crowd I glimpsed the still-beautiful Mrinalini Sarabhai, one of India's most famous dancers, swathed in silk and carrying a large palm-frond fan. Next to her was the white-haired Kailish Pandya, director of Drama at Miss Sarabhai's Darpana Academy of performing arts at Ahmedabad. With the first eerie, insistent blast of the Bhavāī trumpets (bhūṇgaḷs), an excitement swept the crowd extinguishing physical discomforts and personal slights. The fact that I would spend the next seven days sleeping on bare, stone floors to see this Mela, became unimportant as the actors began their intricate dances and spirited singing. From my first exposure to the Bhavāī in 1976, I had awaited this moment, a performance not in a university playhouse, but in a village.
