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The morning after the inaugural night. Ache of head, grunt of bowel. I do not want to stand up and face a day which will include a two-hour film in MaIa- yalam about "a village youth's search for his identity" preceded by a documentan,- about the manufacture of castor oil. Yet sleep is out of the question, for from three loudspeakers placed around the pool and under my windows at the Ashoka hotel, at top volume, comes the blast of "Macho Man." "Macho Man"! - at the crack of dawn, in Ban- galore, Southern India, capital of the state of Karnataka (fix Mysore). Ah, l'Asie mystérieuse. I stagger to the window, open it. Near the pool, an untouchable stoops, with a whisk, whisking, tidying up the grounds for the touchables, sweeping to the jabbing rhythms of the Village People. Do untouchables disco?
(At tea, later: "Mr. Uppoor, how can you tell an untouchable?" "You can't. No way of telling at all. Well, you just know. They are often stooped. Some cringe. Some convert to Christianity, change their names to something Biblical and stand up terribly straight. My Bombay aunt told me that when she was a girl, if, on the street, one of them passed near whose shadow fell on her, her mother would take her home and burn her dress. But there's no way of telling. And don't use that word: wc now call them Harijans - God's people.")
I rummage through the already mountainous pile of press material and find my screening pass. Dr. Stein's photo has been neatly stapled in the card, framed by the festival symbol: two elephants. Cood old elephant god - he's the one who removes obstacles. Will the village youth find his elusive identity? Let's go see. The party's over, the party has just begun.
The previous evening (after the numbing trip from Delhi, the elevenhour wait for the plane to take off), I had sustained the opening night speeches in a blurry half-doze. I enjoyed the Governor's "Welcome to this salubrious and pleasant city," but in retrospect, only one presence was still felt, one image retained - the lordly mask, large velvety eyes, and expressive body of Devika Rani, the first First Lady of the Indian screen,...