WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
Indian dancers entertain at the National Council for Indian Culture in Jamaica's (NCICJ) inaugural 'Roti Festival', held at Club India, Lady Musgrave Road on Sunday February 27, 2005.
Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer
IN DEFIANCE of the heat and dust of Sunday, the Roti Festival 2005 made a decent start to what could grow into an interesting foray into Indian and Jamaican-Indian culture. The festival was staged by the National Council for Indian Culture in Jamaica on the grounds of Club India on Lady Musgrave Road, St. Andrew.
The festival is a part of the council's
celebration of the arrival of Indians in Jamaica on May 10, 160 years ago. The culmination of the festival on May 10 will mark that date. The festival promised several kinds of roti from plain to 'bus-up shut'. Alas, it was a case of the early birds running off with the variety.
SUCCESS
The festival seemed to have succeeded
well beyond the organisers' expectations,
who explained that they had catered for 1,500 people and had ended up serving 2,500 dishes. The result is that some persons had to go home with only thoughts of roti, not the actual taste of it. Additionally, many others who came in the late afternoon period had to wait several hours before a new batch of curried goat was prepared. The chefs also found that by mid-afternoon they had to stick to making plain and aloo roti, as the demand meant they had to go faster and abandon the more exotic kinds.
Marcia Carter, a great lover of Indian cuisine, was one of those who arrived in the early afternoon to find that she had to settle for plain roti. She said that though she normally enjoys the Indian festivals, she was a little disappointed in the variety of food offered. However, she was quite enjoying her curried mango.
Along with the food, participants at the
festival could get samples from companies, which used the opportunity to sample some of their products. There was also Indian music (audio and video), movies, and the ingredients to various dishes were also on sale.
FIGHTING THE HEAT
In an attempt to combat the heat, chairs were sprawled beneath a mango tree and tents were available where much of the audience hid from the sun and watched the day's entertainment. Pauline Milwood proved an entertaining
emcee for the events. She often had to cajole members of the audience into various dancing
competitions and the roti eating competition, while amusing the audience with entertaining banter.
The entertainment largely comprised live bands playing various kinds of Indian music and a series of dances from the Gallow Girls, Ratnavali Dancers and Prima Dancers. A
particularly entertaining result of the dances was the creation of a dance-off by members of the audience, after several of the performances. Though the groups were generally all-female, the dance-offs included men and the audience was delighted with the fare.
