Ox, Goat, Cuckoo & Queen

Last summer a plump little Hindu woman arrived in the U. S. with trunks of costumes, strange-looking instruments and a fixed determination to exhibit her native songs and dances. Her name was Mona Rani ("Beautiful-souled Queen"). In her childhood in India she had played with panthers, toured with her engineer-father into the dark tiger-infested provinces. But in the rush of Manhattan she broke one leg in July, the other in January. Not until last week was she sufficiently mended to stage her U. S. debut.

Aided by a Hindu troupe which she had assembled in Manhattan, Mona Rani enacted Hindu folk songs sometimes singing in a thin plaintive voice, sometimes plucking on the big-bellied vina, sometimes dancing with slow, insinuating grace. With one exotic costume Mona Rani wore pearls in her nose (see cut).

For Hindus all their music has a symbolic meaning, even the notes of the scale being associated with the elephant, the ox, the horse, the goat, the cuckoo, the heron, the peacock. Mona Rani has known audiences in India to sit for eight hours, fascinated by a single thread of melody and intricate drum beats. New Yorkers needed Mona Rani last week to maintain their interest because the wailing Hindu music soon became monotonous.

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