Friday, July 01, 2005

Bengali Mela at Dentonia

Dentonia always beings to my mind the image of a dentist, with his painful scapel ready to drill into your mouth. Thus Dentonia park always brings to mind a scruciating slow torture image. Which is usually what these Bengali melas are. Two years ago they had a fight over a soccer match that resulted in a stabbing - no kidding! And it was because of some silly reason such as one team having one player missing or something like that.

There was one such mela today at Dentonia but unlike the previous ones this one seemed to go on well... for most part. The performances were half decent, but the stalls weren't. Most of them sold ladies' clothes only, that too outdated styles that many women had no problem buying. And if you read my gripe before about local food being overpriced, one stall was selling biryani for 9 bucks. Who in their right mind would buy biryani for 9 bucks?

I met one of the volunteers who told me the amazing story about the power supply. Apparently the power for the concert was supposed to be supplied by the city. For some reason something happened and in the end, the organizers cobbled 100 feet of electric wire and got the power from a nearby house! They plugged it into the wall socket where the stove usually goes!

Which was unfortunate because the power went out just when Ms Alamgir was warming up the crowd with her songs (the one really decent act on the show). Probably some one in the house turned on the light and the fuse blew.

This was touted as a Canada Day Bengali Mela (for whatever reason). There were actually lots of people with a bunch of Canadian flags, handing them out freely. Probably more of our sponsorship scandal money at work. Later we actually went and did something about Canada Day by watching the fireworks at Mel Lastman Square.


Say cheese before you take th--what the ****!


As with any Bengali event, there was no shortage of people.


What's the guy behind me looking at?

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