The Kala Ghoda / ‘Black Horse’ Festival has become synonymous with Colaba and the ethos of Bombay. Conceptualized ten years back, the Festival, aims at ‘maintaining and preserving the art and heritage district of South Mumbai.’ Armed with Arun Kolatkar’s Kala Ghoda Poems, we set out for Bombay from Goa like Cervantes.
The festival attracts many corporate sponsors.
This edition from 3-11 February 2018 saw The Hindustan Times, Jaslok Hospital,
Bajaj Electricals, Nerolac paints and the flavour of the season – Valentine.
Here you will find heritage walks; myriad displays
of installation art; theatre for the asking; music on the steps of the Asiatic library;
dance at Cross Maidan and painting workshops for children on the museum lawns.
All of this is free.
In the press of people who crowd around taking
selfies and keep-sakes, there is a bonhomie which is contagious. Of course you
may not get in for all the shows you may want to see, for seating capacity is
limited and entry is on first come first served basis.
Organizers stuck to their guns and closed the
gates for the children’s play, Snow White
and the Naughty Elves when the theatre space was full at the National
Gallery of Modern Art. This was unlike Kala Academy, Goa which welcomed droves
of curious onlookers for the German Youth Orchestra which performed recently even
after the hall was full.
What hooked me was a fascinating exhibition on the
fringes of the festival at the CSMVS museum at Fort.* It was titled ‘India and
the World: A History in Nine Stories.’ Artefacts from the earliest times to the
present were packed into nine galleries viz. i) Shared Beginnings ii) First
Cities iii) Empire iv) State and Faith v) Picturing the Divine vi) Indian Ocean
Traders, vii) Court Cultures, viii) Quest for Freedom and ix) Time Unbound. The
objects on display were culled from the collections of the British Museum,
London; CSMVS, Mumbai; the National Museum, New Delhi as well as from twenty
museums and private collections across India.
During the festival iconic restaurants like Leopold, Mondegar, Bagdadi and Bademiya, at
Colaba are packed to capacity with
crowds milling over till the wee hours.
Back in Goa, a friend spoke of Dabul, half an hour
away (5.8 kms.) from Colaba by car. The Francis Xavier church at Chira Bazar,
Dabul, was built in 1872 and predates the Cathedral of the Holy Name. The Goan
Institute there in Dabul also deserves mention. It was here that Lorna Cordeiro and Chris Perry blazed their trail in jazz history in the sixties. Definitely worth visiting.
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*See www.csmvs.in for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj
Vastu Sanghrahalaya (formerly Prince of Wales Museum of Western India).
Published in Gomantak Times Weekender, St. Inez, Goa on Sunday, 18 February 2018. Pix taken at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai on the CSMVS museum lawns, and at the NGMA auditorium, Fort on 9-10 February 2018. Courtesy Brian Mendonca.
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