Day & Time – Saturday morning well past normal breakfast hours. Location – Janapada Loka – The college of folklore near Ramanagara, 57 km from Bangalore towards Mysore on SH-17 next to the restaurant “Kamat Lokaruchi”.
A bunch of photographers, who have missed their breakfast, are rushing towards the Kamat restaurant. Suddenly they hear the sound of folk music.
The sights and sounds coming from the College of Folklore overpower the sight and sounds coming from Kamat Lokaruchi. They forget the noises coming from their stomachs and their eyes are glued to the folk dances being performed at the College of Folklore. How can they miss such an opportunity to shoot? Within no time their DSLRs get busy clicking the folk dancers.
The photographers get a window of about 10 minutes and there comes another bus load of tourists – all middle-aged families. They also start watching and photographing the folk-dancers on their cell phones and PS cameras. Quite naturally they too cannot miss such an opportunity so easily to get themselves photographed with dancers.
One of the ladies in that group rushes ahead and places herself in the middle of the dancers. She stands right in front of a dancer. The dancer gets completely covered behind the lady. Photo clicked, but the lady is not satisfied. She keeps calling more and more of her friends to the fore to get photographed. They all keep coming and standing right in front of the dancers. Soon the dancers are in the background and all that photographers can photograph is the group of tourists.
Photographers patiently wait for the tourists to finish their photo session and move away. But no! Tourists continue to stand there. Soon the dancers start moving away from tourists and they vanish inside the college. Photographers are frustrated because they have missed some nice shots. And the tourists go away happily without even being aware that they missed the beautifully dressed folk dancers while they were busy getting photographed themselves…….
……I happen to be one of those who missed the dancers.
