Cultural awakening

[This might not make sense without being there or having a picture. Also, I don’t know if the title makes sense. I think it does. If it doesn’t, well, at least it sounds nice.]

I went to a traditional Rajasthani cultural show in Jaisalmer, the cultural capital of Rajasthan - as far as I’m concerned - and it was phenomenal. There were three men in white kurtas and bright, various colored turbans with a red base, sitting cross legged in the middle of a circle of bamboo chairs. They were singing beautiful songs without a mic, swaying side to side with every downbeat of the dhol, and their voices were unlike anything you would ever find in an American singer. It wasn’t just the accent. It was something in the tone, the inflection, the [some word that describes sound that I don’t know because I’m not smart enough] of the singer’s sound waves that was just majestic. I wanted so badly to just trap the voice in a box and see what would be possible if you created English songs out of it. I think it’d be pretty magical. 

Then the dancers came out. Two girls - they couldn’t possibly be older than 17, MAYBE 18. One had the straightest face I could imagine. I stared at her for every second of the nine minute song they performed to first. I couldn’t see a drip of emotion. It was so unnatural. The other one, however, I took note of after the first song.

This girl had a pep in her step. She was smiling the entire time. Contrary to the first one - who looked like she was enslaved into dancing - she looked like this is the moment she was waiting for her whole life. She probably put the same performance on every night, but I felt like she was looking at me during the whole dance, like this performance was for me. I was dumbfounded. 

She was wearing a dark blue lengha with a paisley print composed by poorly block-printed squares. You could tell the dress was cheap, but her vibrance made it richer than what anyone else in the area was wearing. She had the ordinary dark brown eyes of most Indians, but the smile made them glimmer.

Towards the end of every song, she would start spinning in circles. Not like a ballerina, but rather, with a methodical step. When she faced my direction in the audience, she outstretched her arms, pointing at me (as far as I’m concerned) with two straight fingers, slightly smiling with her feet stuck in place where they were but simultaneously well-prepared to keep spinning. In that moment, I snapped a mental photo, and something about the look in her eyes just made me…really appreciate culture. Not anyone could flash that smile. It was something particular to the traditional Indian - maybe even to the particular Rajasthani (if it is, my eye isn’t keen enough to distinguish between the two just yet), and my heart sank just knowing that I had some of that blood in me.

I’m American, but it’s nice to know that I might be a little Indian.