Thursday 22 April 2010

Get up. Get up. Watch that fountain dance.

Brindavan Gardens. Set some 17 km from Mysore, Brindavan Gardens is a garden complex nestling beneath the walls of some great big dam. Frequently used as the backdrop for Bollywood set piece dance manoeuvres, it is network of concrete paths, interspersed with concrete steps, and occasionally playgrounds for children (concrete animals), and a lot of grass. The star attraction is the range of fountains on offer, including, wait for it, a fountain that allegedly dances to music. Oh yes, everyone loves a dancing fountain.

Mysore 082The dancing fountain is not scheduled to strut its funky stuff until 7pm, so we arrive early to savour the wonders of the gardens themselves whilst it is still light. The usual rounds of cheek pinching and hair stroking commence with alarming speed.  Beth and Hannah stand, unexpectedly, on an ants’ nest and learn that, although they may be small, they can hurt quite a lot if they put their mind to it.

Mysore 104The kids are getting ratty by the time 7pm rolls around, and Hannah, sacrilegiously, suggests we leave without seeing the magical fountain. It is over a long bridge, currently hoarded by millions of Indians desperately ambling towards the magical dancing. And there are beasties in the air. In case you are wondering what this image is, it is a photo of winged beasties attacking a floodlight. Looks a bit like one of those diagrams from CERN. 

 

This is not the dancing fountain. It's just a fountain with lights in it.

Anyway, I persuade Hannah that we cannot leave without seeing the dancing fountain. There are brief negotiations about who will carry which children, and then we cross the water and head up towards the fountain in a modern day haj. It glows in the darkness a bit like the final scene in the original ‘Star Trek – The Motion Picture’ when Kirk and his buddies go to meet VGER. I realise this is a fairly niche reference.

Mysore 105-14When we get there the fountain is clamoured, swamped, dripping if you will, with people. They have set up auditorium seating on three sides of it. I shouldn’t understate the disproportionality here. The fountain, at peak, is probably 10 meters high, and 4 metres wide -  not a huge fountain. There are approximately 2000 people watching the fountain. As the music swells, so does the fountain, pumping and dancing, lights glowing to the overloud Indian pop music crashing out.

I’m not saying it wasn’t a great fountain. Perhaps it could have been a momentary diversion at Disneyland, or a novelty in Milton Keynes. But these people love the fountain. There are oohs and aahs as the fountain alters state. There is something approaching religious mania as the fountain reaches its fervent, tallest, most magnificent state.

We stay for 2 minutes but get irritated by a guard incessantly blowing his whistle at people (and, more unusually, occasionally hitting them with a stick) and leave. Isla sleeps like a rock as we attempt to find our taxi man.

1 comment:

  1. What are GM seeds ? Genetically Modified ?

    ReplyDelete