1881

Factory Act. fixed working hours for children below 12 dangerous machines fenced.

Vernacular Press Act repealed.

Census System introduced in India

A curtain- huge seven story mansion of Bombay, streets, railway lines, ships and factories.

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Sarasvati: Dhundi's kaka worked in the railways in the day, but in the evenings, he became a doctor. He had a cupboard full of 300 bottle with little white pills that were sweet.. and all kinds of liquids in a dusty cupboard in his living room. He had hardly any patients. So he was most delighted when Baba

Mandakini:

Dhundhi

Sarasvati:

He was most delighted when Dhundhi fell ill. Dhundhi had been down with fever and coughing for days, and the vaidya's medicine was just not working. One evening, when he got up, he saw that his kaka was standing over his head, dangling this big bottle shaking a bunch of small pills it it. "Here" said Kaka's voice, somewhere over his head " Swallow this"

Dhundi shook his head. His worried mother who was standing behind said" Dhundi, do as Kaka says, this medicine cannot harm you"

Dhundhi looked at her, but she did not look very sure about what she was saying.

He shook his head again.

Dhundhi Kaka made a funny noise at the back of his throat

Neelkanth is giggling.

Neelkanth:

Like how??

Sarasvati Bai purses her lips and pushes the muscles of her throat till an odd sound, like of a turkey clearing his throat, emerges.

All the children laugh, Neelkanth gets a extended fit of giggles.

Sarasvati Bai:

" Come on Dhundhi!" came this sound.

and so Dhundi swallowed it. And it was sweet.

His uncle said" You know Laxmibai, water has a memory. That is the principle of this medicine. It is made of a water that is mixed in a poison and then diluted again and again, till nothing remains of the poison, technically speaking. But just as Abhimanyu remembers everything from his mother's womb, this water also remembers. And with the memory of that poison, it knows exactly how to attack the poison in Dhundi's body

Prabhakar; Abhimanyu got stuck in the chakravyuh, trying to remember, he did not actually remember everything. Then he died.

Sarasvati bai looks at Prabhakar, wondering how to continue.

Mandakini:

Did Baba recover?

Sarasvati bai:

Yes he did.. ( looking at Prabhakar).. but he was not sure, was he going to recover anyway- or was it that the waters had actually got a memory?

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Phalke is not sure he wants to have this strange medicine. Dialogue between Phalke and the Uncle about homeopathy. His uncle tells him that water has a memory, this water that he is coating the sugar pills with, has been given the same poison that is attacking Dhundi's body. The water has been diluted again and again, till almost all trace of the poison is gone, and when it enters Dhundi's body, it will fight the body's poison with its own memory of that poison. "Like Abhimanyu's memory, from the liquid womb", his uncle exclaims Dhundi makes a wry face and thinks to himself " We know what happened to Abhimanyu"

But strangely, he is soon cured of his illness. He cannot decide whether the illness just ran its natural course, or whether the pensive waters actually fought a war on his behalf.

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A telephone exchange opens in Budapest. Nicola Tesla becomes its chief electrician.

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1881 Ravi Varma spends time in Baroda. He is invited to attend the investiture ceremony of Sayaji, who is finally getting his rightful powers as a king. T Madhava Rao is Dewan at the Baroda court. As state guest of Baroda, Ravi Varma paints prolifically. He gets an order of five Puranic and religious pictures, including Nala and Damayanti.

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Subhadra was a character from Arjun Subhadra, which told the story of how Krishna enabled his sister to marry her choice of lover, Arjuna, and not the mean eyed Duryodhana who was eyeing her.

Subhadra was played by fifteen year old Ganesh, fair skinned, light eyed, plump armed.

The character Subhadra is a princess, well off enough to have a play composed on her, and as though in a respectful and humble understanding of why she is one stage, the character is given all manners of jewels to please the watching eyes. And she sorrows, how she sorrows! in a high sad pitch, holding out her arms from time to time in a gesture beseeching fate to heed her pleas and not get her married to Duryodhana. The audience starts clapping spontaneously as her saree clad voice nimbly runs up a ladder into the skies.

Ganesh lets their applause recede a bit and then starts again, repeating the song and Subhadra's pain, both of which seem much loved. Dressed in a Punheri saree in a resplendent blue, s(he) sings standing before a backdrop of an almost edible palace, a feast for the eyes. Pillars of pink trimmed with a delicate blue recede in the distance. The floor is tiled in mosaics of two alternating colours. A row of glass lamps break the space every few pillars. Subhadra in her vestments looks like she might walk into that landscape, beyond the pillars behind her, towards the vanishing point and turn, to grieve her secret sorrow somewhere far from human eyes.

In fact when the the curtain comes down, that is exactly what the audience feels she must have done.

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Professor Keelhorn cannot stem the surprise he feels at what he had just seen, the grandeur of the backdrops, the energy of the singing, the story that is so evident from the arrangement of actors on stage, from their broad gestures, from the tone of the music. He feels happy. It has been a good evening. "Just one thing" he tells Sheila "that I would like to tell them. This one strange thing. If people like a piece of dialogue or song, the audience goes into thunderous applause- and then- " he threw his hands up helplessly "these people just repeat that dialogue, or sing that song again.. I mean... don't they see it? It quite kills the growing emotion in the audience..it.. "he is at a loss to describe the mesh of things, detrimental things, that he felt sure it must be doing to the reception of the play. "Why would you want to isolate a part of the performance and repeat it like that- like it is something- something- mechanical"

If he only looked closer, on the edges of the newspapers, already, machines were being advertised that were promising to give the consumer the power to do exactly that to the human voice- select a section, repeat it, by scratching a stylus over a disc.

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Indian 'art' music, classical music, is meant to be particular about when it is sung. A particular raga at a particular time. Whose time should it keep in natya sangeet? The time of the performance, or the time within the performance- the time within the story of the play? And then to hear such abbreviated forms of the raga, not unfolding, just compressed to serve as a pleasurable interlude in a longer story..Not to mention that obscene pitch that sounds like it is coming from the netherworlds of the performer's anatomy.

The critic in the audience, the conoisseur of classical music who has come to see how singers were taking to this new stage, fumes. This, for him, is the beginning of a grievous untidiness. One serious looking man is overheard grumbling loudly at a literary meeting.

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Annasaheb is eating jamuns backstage, on his Ayurvedic doctor's advice, when some young boys from the troupe come in to worriedly confer with him. He listens as they report what the old man has said, and as he listens, he eats up larger quantities of the fruit. The boys report later that when he laughed carelessly at the end of their complaint, they saw that legendary mouth open into a foul looking purple cave.

His hand just waves the critic away in a sweep and he turns to his faithful barber " Sing that song again, re!" A song of the Parsee theatre starts, well learnt by the shaukeen barber and Annasaheb goes into ecstacy. " I say we render this tune for when Subhadra wanders alone in the palace garden.. and make it come closer to Raag Kalavati" he clapped his hands. "Next time, don't tell me what serious looking old men say" he tells the boys. " Tell me how many mouths repeat the songs that are sung on stage. Then I'll know how many are coming to see the play again"

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