Friday was spent marking. But it was bookended by two nice things.

The first was breakfast at the little Tamil eatery we've been frequenting since the beginning of the year. I love their onion uttapams, but I also love the ambiance (sometimes they have temple worship on the TV, but this time they were just playing a gentle, repetitive, melodic song). And I love the walk, via the always differently configured chairs, and the Chinese temple, and the variously sleeping or chomping cats. These are the things I will miss.

Then on Friday evening we watched a DVD of the 2014 movie PK, featuring Aamir Kham (of Secret Superstar fame). A lovely film, exposing the religious middle-men who provide a "wrong number" to God, either through ignorance, greed, or desire for power, and urging people to break free of the religious stereotypes that so easily make us think badly of each other.

Not surprisingly, it was not popular in some quarters. But it's a great illustration of social constructivism (which I subsequently used with a class...), and it was a pleasure to see some old familiar Delhi sights:



On Saturday, given the press of work, we did a huge fit-it-all-in culture trail. Lunch first, at Juan Valdez in the Intermark (a much bigger arrangement than the one in Avenue K). The seven-layer dip is unusual and nice, and I think I could get quite addicted to the tinto campesino (black coffee with raw cane sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and lemon).

Intermark has got the Christmas decos up, plus an exhibition of famous buildings made entirely of drinks containers. Certainly different.





Then to the Ilham Gallery for their latest exhibition, which is called GRUP (Gerak Rupa Ubur Penyataan, or Movement, Form, Torch, and Statement). It "traces the emergence of modern art as a cultural phenomenon in Malaysia in the 1960s" through the early work of the seven artists who participated in a GRUP show in 1967. Providing a context are works on the urban development of Kuala Lumpur. Being "modern" is a holistic thing, after all.

It was interesting, as Ilham's exhibitions always are. Not my favourite style, I suppose. But I found the colours and textures of many of the works quite striking.













Ilham show films from time to time, and that day we caught The Pirate and the Emperor's Ship, featuring movie-maker Khoo Eng Yow and historian Lee Eng Kew (Ah Kew). We encountered this team at Ilham earlier in the year.



They had an extraordinary tale to tell. As The Star puts it: "Can somebody be a brutal pirate in Perak, then escape to Sumatra, get killed, and end up becoming a god with his own temple there? Or can someone 'privatise' Perak's coast for two decades and collect 'tolls' from businesses there? These are the gutsy, real life stories of Tan Lian Lay and Tan Huan Siea respectively, the two Pirate Kings of Perak. Yet their stories are not found in 'official' versions of history."

I must admit I found the doco slightly confusing. I started with the preconceived idea that there was a specific connection between the barge-burning ritual in Bagan Siapi Api (a Chinese-founded town in Sumatra) and the "pirates". Since -- as far as I can tell -- there is no such connection, the misapprehension threw me off for quite a while,

But photographically it was spectacular, with swirling crowd scenes, consuming flames, and dark temples.

And the subject matter is chilling. We hear stories of secret societies and clan vengeance (including the "whole family die" rule, and the practice of granting failing gang members a good meal, extra opium -- and then execution). We hear stories of how the Kuomintang controlled Bagan Api in the late 1940s. And Tan Lian Lay's life ends in a movie-like shoot-out.

But then, again in potboiler fashion, his spirit showed repentance by revealing winning lottery numbers to the townspeople of Bagan Api. He proved so good at this that he ended up earning himself a temple (although not a place on the main altar, which went to the Bodhidharma).

Tan Huan Siea also ruled his turf with a rod of iron, but had the reputation of being a Robin Hood-like figure, paying decent wages and showing generosity to the neighbourhood. He was never caught, and probably ended up in Songkhla.



From there, we caught the train out to Serdang, and then a taxi to Taman Industri Selesa Jaya. Why to these industrial-estate wopwops, you might wonder? Well, that's where the Take a Shot Studio/Cafe (above) is located. This is the Klang Valleys largest film studio. It has the "goal of bringing the creative industry to greater heights", and a mission "to raise awareness about the intricacies of performing arts and film production" among the public. And they were staging the one bit of this year's Butoh Festival that we managed to catch.

The cafe is pleasant, and although the seating for the performance was not ideal (no rake, so you were constantly peering round others' heads), it was interesting to experience the stark white walls, rounded corners, and overhead walkways and lighting racks of a genuine film studio.

The Goddess of Mercy (a "meditative solo performance" given by Lee Swee Keong) was a very different version of butoh from the one we saw last year.

It was based on the 33 manifestations of Guan Yin, but even people not familiar with these (me) could form some kind of interpretation of the four scenes.

The first gives us dripping water and cold blue light, with the masked performer creating by means of a paintbrush and a mirror. In the second the dancer is entirely enveloped in billowing red cloth, from which a mask emerges, rather eerily. Huge shadows form on the opposite wall. The red and green light are very striking. Eventually, he emerges from the red cloth, in an almost birthlike sequence.

The third scene introduces the performer as -- I guess -- an old person. Certainly, he shuffles along the wall. The mask has bushy, untrimmed brows. In the fourth scene, he is not only masked but blindfolded. Thus impeded, he repetitively hits a wooden block. Tock, tock, tock, tock. Is this humanity? Masked, blindfolded, and doomed to repetition? But then the Buddhist nun (from the audience, but presumably primed...) unties the blindfold. The wall at the far end lights up with blue sky and clouds. The music swells.

Fascinating.

Then came Sunday, and I was marking essays and preparing classes again. As though it were all a dream...