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| Fran with Bollywood actors at the Art Exhibition in Bangalore |
The next few posts on our blog will feature entries from Francesca, from the UK, who is doing a one month long Art Internship with Leave UR Mark. She is currently assisting an art exhibition at Chitrakala Parishath, one of the most revered art schools and galleries in Bangalore. Read her latest post here:
“You know those dreams where you find yourself in a play you have never rehearsed, or sitting an exam you’ve failed to revise for? Well, the inauguration for Hastakarla was exactly like that.
And it gets to four, the time for the celebrity guests to arrive and begin the inauguration. The guests are Bollywood film stars of varying fame. One is a man wearing double denim who everyone calls Love Guru. When they arrive, we are all invited to sit down in a circle of plastic chairs in the foyer. I say invited in the vaguest sense of the word, because you cannot refuse an Indian invitation. I am already a bit surprised to find myself sitting surrounded by Bollywoods, especially as Soni and Jayanth keep rushing off and so it’s just me and them. We are all handed cups of bright orange Fanta and paper plates filled with bombay mix and Indian sweets coated with edible silver leaf. I notice the Bollywoods are not eating, so I stop eating. The Bollywoods are beautifully groomed, my fingernails are dirty and I wonder if anyone will be able to tell that I got my hair cut for 200 rupees in an underground car park that morning. We walk to the stage for the inauguration. I am ushered on by Soni, shopping bags and all. I sit down again in another plastic chair with the Bollywoods. There is a cameraman. Everyone is presented to the audience and given bunches of flowers, at the end the man with the microphone says ‘and Fran’, and so I also find myself clutching a bunch of flowers. Then, one by one, everyone on stage makes a speech in Kannada, and I sit there and I begin to stick to my plastic chair and I look at the audience and I look at my bosses and gesticulate wildly mouthing NONONO and they laugh at me and the speeches stop and thank god there is no call for my words. After the speeches we each light a wick of the inauguration candle and then there is a short dance piece. We get photographed by the papers holding our flowers as we leave the stage, I can’t get my face in the right shape. And then the Bollywoods and the press and me walk around the fair and they pick things up and smile and chat to stallholders. And then there are more photos by the press and the fans and I keep trying to sneak away but each time I am caught and made to stand like a big white beacon beside these beautiful people.
And then I go home and drink wine.”
