Day 4: Smorgasword has been discussed already, and in delectable detail. This is just an unnecessarily verbose attempt to look at the evening again.

Enough has been said by now about the mosquitoes at the DSL Garden, those gargantuan monstrosities of nature. Naturally, we (the DSL cat and I) must skip their exploits and roll down our sleeves (for such is a must in these parts), and jump right ahead to an early evening with four celebrated practitioners of words on stage and celluloid.

Rafeeq Ellias, moderator for the session, jumpstarts the discussion with a brief introduction about his career as film maker (his award winning documentary The Legend of Fat Mama receives no humble mention) and photographer, and confesses to having coerced consumers to buy products they didn’t need in his capacity as an adman.

Rahul DaCunha of the Rage Group requires no introduction to the theatre-savvy audience. He dwells, instead, on the method of writing for stage and screen. Drawing upon his vast experience as the director of a leading advertising agency, he assures the audience that the viewer of today has neither time nor patience for rambling storytelling and must be fed concise and concentrated messages that can be consumed with ease. The one-liner theory he espouses is common, yet a long running tradition in our film industry. You must be able to sum the story up in one line, he says, for it to be effective. Then he goes on to display a few Amul hoarding advertisements (for impression, we suppose). Of course, the lengthy display read aloud in a disinterested monotone dilutes the point somewhat.

Mahesh Dattani, renowned film maker and playwright, offers the first incisive idea of the evening. As opposed to the organic process of storytelling in the written medium, he sees writing for performance as a craft that must build within the temporal structure of time and space that the words will finally occupy on screen or stage. It is like painting a canvas without colours, his confused analogy stresses. The soft-spoken powerhouse of thought also ventures into the popular theme of the pains of writing and the irrational impulse that drives a writer on, every word lapped up by the numerous amateur writer martyrs in the audience. Oh, how we love to celebrate the mysterious pain that none but a fellow writer can ever understand.

Documentary film maker Madhushree Dutta (of Seven Islands and a Metro fame) builds on the need to structure a film in time/space and talks about the difficulty of juxtaposing the page as text (or even pre-text, as she explains with an excerpt from her documentary, Scribbles on Akka) with image and sound.

Then, quite suddenly, what was expected to be a free-wheeling discussion turns into a Q&A session with the audience. This has its pluses, of course. An interaction with the guests is most looked forward to in an event such as this. Questions flow free, about how the writing process differs for a performer, how the documentary narrative can be structured. The answers are forthcoming and insightful, giving glimpses into the mind of the writer as artist and craftsman.

Then, because the discussion has not been given a general direction, the line of questioning meanders. Somewhere between discussing tentative future theatre performance dates and lambasting Michael Moore’s popular documentaries for pandering to popular tastes and stories, the ‘word’ in ‘Smorgasword’ is lost. Not that the thoughts put forward here are interesting, thought out or justifiable either. Popular culture and narratives packaged for commercial viability is quoted as the reason for ’successful’ documentaries. The ‘toilet habits of Shahrukh Khan’, it is said, would be a popular documentary while those expressing more relevant stories would remain unseen. This seems more like a bitter backlash than a logical argument, especially in the wake of largely popular documentaries like March of the Penguins, or even Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man. How the unassuming penguins or an unknown eccentric conservationist could ever compare to King Khan on the crapper is beyond us.

The bitterness continues with laconic nonchalance about the limited availability of and exposure to good theatre and documentaries. A few words of optimism and hope for our times (from Rafeeq Ellias and Mahesh Dattani) aside, it is widely agreed that the onus is on the people. It is the people who must encourage this culture, propagate and popularise it. We agree, but not entirely. Much sub-standard fare is being hawked around these days in the name of national and cultural pride that could be thoroughly avoided. In this heavily mediated world, it is rare that good theatre or documentaries go unnoticed. If an attempt at telling a story is not successful, let’s stop blaming the system of production, distribution and learned culture, and take a good look at where we are failing.

The session ends with an attempt to salvage the ‘word’ in ‘Smorgasword’. A question leads back to the idea of a story originating with a one-liner and of writing within the temporal structure, compared to the continuous inspiration process of organic growth in the written medium (as with poetry, for example). Must cinema or theatre be boxed within this paint-by-numbers structure instead of reaching for something larger as literature, the ‘higher art’, does?

The answers point to popular perception of ‘high art’ as an unreliable standard, since even Shakespeare was considered a writer of crass mass theatre in his time, replete with innuendos and farces. According to Mahesh Dattani, art is created in time and involves the supreme possibility that 100 years from now, even Subhash Ghai might be known as a profound artist. Madhushree Dutta also adds that cinema, being an audiovisual medium, is more available to the senses and thus perceived as an easily consumed or lower art form. All sensible arguments, these, but we do wish for a little open mindedness and a more erudite approach to the question. Must we disregard David Lynch, who scripted Inland Empire while shooting, writing scenes for each day on the previous night of the shoot? Did the European surrealists not exhibit the possibilities of cinema as an art form? The Japanese New Wave, Korean cinema today, have they not broken cinematic conventions of narrative with such success? Why do we, then, struggle to colour within the lines? Is it because we believe this to be a tried-tested formula for success? Are all stories within the formula a success? Certainly not. What is success anyway? And is that the basis for the entire discussion? Or is it simply because the guests enjoy a collective background in advertising that they think in this vein?

It turned out to be a fun evening after all. However, several fundamental questions have not been explored. Without them, the entire discussion flits on a forgettable periphery and turns into no more than a form of star gazing and celebrity chat-ups. The most fundamental of all, it seems, the guests do not ask of themselves every day, as anybody in the strange profession of creation should – why do we create? The answer might put everything else that has been discussed in perspective.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by addytorials

“There are out there more ways than walkers, more dreams than dreamers, more love than lovers”

Shamshad Khan doesn’t just read poetry. She makes love to your head.

Her performance poetry is made psycho-sensual foreplay by every intonation, every pause, short breath and gesture. Her presence on stage will seize any warm-blooded literati. And maybe others as well. As she herself admits, she is surprised by her cool candour in front of an audience while she is instantly self-conscious facing a camera.

Oh, how she holds her audience. Her gaze unfailing, her posture soaking in every emotion behind her words, she makes your pulse race every time she reiterates, “there are out there, more ways than who can say”. And she is immediately endearing and kind and inquisitive as she essays her thoughts to a Nigerian pot.

Akshay puts it down quite simply to her crisp Manchester accent. He is obviously referring to the ‘orgasmic’ quality of her voice. But surely, that can’t be all there is to her! After the reading, somebody walked up to her and said, “you have proved that words are not important”. Imagine her state of shock. And in that tiny instant of visible recoil, she is far beyond just a crisp Manchester accent.

Shamshad Khan is a poet. And an excellent one at that. Her art in performance and in verse is practised and perfected.

It is a colossal misfortune that she graced the stage for only an hour today, the 11th of Feb at the D. S. Library Garden.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by addytorials

“Look, Ma - Paheli!“, squeals a child.

Is this what our great tradition of puppetry has been reduced to? Another lost relic of our multi-hued past viewed in reference to pop-culture?

The little Rajasthani puppet stall on Rampart Row has been holding daily shows every evening on the hour at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. For the rest of the day, the puppets hang on to their mute existence from a wooden stick and watch so many people walking by. Rs. 150 for an example of fine Rajasthani craftsmanship. Rs. 150 for a re-incarnation of our magical, mystical culture. Rs. 150 for a pretty puppet. But who would want one? In an age of action figures (with new technological advancements in lucid limb movement, of course) and Barbie wannabes (with oh-so-cute themed and styled dresses), who would want these colourful little puppets?

The show begins. Dancing to a faint percussion and a shrill harmonic whistle is a lady in pink. She drops to the floor, does the shimmy and quite literally shakes her booty at the court of a wooden faced King and his equally wooden courtiers. Then follows the headless magician, the court jester, the snake charmer and the woman with two faces.

And, oh, look at the audience. A small crowd has gathered and is watched with rapt enjoyment. Children vie for a seat at the front row. And the laughter, the piping, shrill laughter of the children as the magician throws his head up in the air, the clown trips on himself, the snakes attack the charmer and the woman changes into another at the blink of an eye! For those few moments, the magic returns. The air hangs about you with an oppressive old world charm and you find yourself laughing along with the kids.

Then the show is suddenly over and the audience sighs in one voice. Some amble away to other venues. Some linger around to collect the remnants of that magical time they had been transported to.

And there is hope yet.

For the puppets dancing to the whimsical tunes of the great puppeteer above.

And for us.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by addytorials

Who can say what happened? The schedule distinctly said, 8:30 - 10:00 Indian Ocean. So when I finally found my way to Azad Maidan at 7:30 and heard “Bandeh” from afar, I made a run for it. Oops. Wrong Entrance. Go all the way around. Dodge the Biryani stalls. Jump a cat. Inhale dust. Ah, there it is.

Indian Ocean Live was everything I expected and much more. But just to get it out of the way at the onset, what struck me the most was that this is the sweetest band I’ve ever seen perform - there really is no other way to put it! They are friendly, they are polite and they keep up a banter that makes you feel like you’re among chums at college.

And the - an electrifying flawless concert. It is virtually impossible to imagine how a four-man-band can create such eclectic . One needs to see it to believe it.

Amit on drums (and then recorder and gabgubi)

Ram on bass and vocals.

Susmit (left) on guitar.

Asheem on tabla and vocals.

The band.

And there I stopped. Camera in hand, I had been tapping my foot and skipping nimbly away from distressed people shouting at a few people giving in to cancer and the like (”Eh, watch out, you’ll burn the place down!”). I had swayed with the crowd, chanting words to a surprise performance of an unreleased untitled work in progress. But when Ram gave voice to Kandisa, I could take it no more. The camera went back in the bag and I joined in the frenzy, singing myself hoarse (yes, I do know the lyrics).

But the biggest surprise of the evening had to be Rabbi jamming with Indian Ocean on Ma Rewa. A black goggled dapper suited Rabbi played bluesy riffs to the song till it was decided in the middle of one such riff to mix Bullah Ki Jaana into the song. Mixed reactions swamped the crowd and produced much confused laughter and applause. But it was touching, in a way, to see masters of their different styles of the art combining forces and quite simply having a good time on stage.

The show over, Rabbi prepares his set and Amit deftly ignores the “Once more, once more” to inform the audience about the next Indian Ocean show at D.Y. Patil College (Nerul) on the 4th of March. As I walk away, Rabbi fans file in. I notice a group of boys rolling a joint.

God! Who smokes up with Rabbi’s ?

(refer to prior post by zigzackly for links to Indian Ocean and the band members)

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by addytorials

Ravaged by savage mosquitoes, a handful of people and a pregnant cat meandering through mostly empty seats wait for the book reading to begin. The delay leaves room to wonder why events like these suffer the lack of publicity and interest that they so rightly deserve. Is it because Mrs. Jariwalla rapped your knuckles blue in second standard? “Read in your head!” she would menace. Or is it simply because we buy a book based on the number of favourable reviews it has received in recent magazines? It is true. We usually leave the cultivation of our minds to the underpaid over-bribed opinions of freelance hacks looking for a quick buck.

I prefer to get it straight from the black horse’s mouth. (Ha ha, note horrible pun.)

Besides, it is quite a treat to hear prose in the author’s own voice. Every detail of inflection, pronunciation and unconscious body language make a difference. They belie how the writer handles his/her (mostly her) own little literary baby. Their voices resound the voice of their muse, driving their fingers on the typewriter, keyboard or pen.

But there is hope yet. A few minutes into the reading, the D.S. Library Garden is quite occupied.

Fresh Off The Shelf offers an eclectic selection of novels. From 13 short stories of the fictional Halfway House that is roof to the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of characters inspired by real-life encounters to a collection of sexually liberated cartoons depicted through characters like dogs and crows (as the cartoonist repeatedly insists). There is something for every taste as surely as some things that offend others. But none that will not move you to think in some way.

Modern Indian Literature, for example, arouses the cynic in me. Especially the women-oriented ones. Must it always include strange cosmo-spiritual awakening sensual discoveries of the self? Why the kissing and biting of soft hairy chests of dark men in dhotis who appear from nowhere and spout confusing forecasts? I refuse to believe that I need an uterus to understand the allure of such prose. Yet, Sharmishtha Mohanty’s novel, New Life, cannot be ignored. Her vivid descriptions do more than just create a world around you; they birth something inside you that goes beyond the stated. She says it best when she elucidates the importance of knowing the craft and of the need to write. We describe so that we may understand.

The endearing Kankana Basu presents her collection of stories as a splash of humour in everyday life. The stories, she says, are for everybody and for every age. And then she goes on to read an excerpt describing the thoughts of an old grandmother who has just discovered she is dying of cancer. The said grandmother decides to live up the last one month of her life - she wants to watch horny movies. This is where I blacked out and missed the rest of the wonderful plans of the dying Dadi. Of course, humour is subjective, I say. (The author says a sense of humour is like cancer, but that is another story.) However, Basu’s language is simple and thus inviting. It is light-hearted light reading and attempts to be no more.

In quick succession, the panel of authors read favourite bits of their newest works, interspersed with a few words on their experience spanning the putting of pen to their first word to seeing the word in print. So, yes, the evening is not just about writing or reading. Most importantly, it is about publishing. It is rightly said that getting published in this city is difficult when all the publishing houses exist in faraway Delhi. But one must draw inspiration from the panel itself. A short Q&A session dispels doubts. One must have love for the craft and must first know who you want to talk to as a writer. The world of publishing is indeed opening up with opportunities presenting themselves in new media like the Internet and new avenues of self-publishing. The written word need no longer remain in the closet.

The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival is testament to this phenomenon and one has only to look around at the engrossed eyes and pricked ears of the audience at the D.S. Library Garden as proof. The audience that braved savage mosquitoes for a session of book reading.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by addytorials

Shooting Rhymes and Cutting Verses is no less than an eye-opener to the possibilities of expression that the medium of cinema offers. In a country where the short film is denied recognition as a difficult and unwieldy art form in its own respect, this screening is a Godsend. 13 examples of poetry on film.

Poetry as a visual expression is an abstract idea in itself. Yet, some of the films were anything but. Riley’s “The Elevator” has all the slick charm of a linear short film and is yet much more due to its poetic narrative. The claustrophobia of an old racist finds amplitude in the combination of the visual elements and the poetry running through them. Hedgecock’s The Burdened Ass is a touching sentiment in verse seen through the thoughts of a man on sentry duty. It is hard to imagine now if the poetry would evoke as much without the shot of the understanding smile at the end. Rogoyska’s Not Waving But Drowning uses poetry as an effective punchline that twists the perceived content of the film in retrospect. Hill’s The Tyre is a short film that might hold its own as a separate story but is given superlative meaning through the interspersed verses of poetry.

Then, of course, are those films that defy every boundary of visual rationale and dance with the poetic form as an equal partner. These animated films are more a heightened experience of poetry than stories told on the backbone of imaginative verse. They are the moving splashes of colours, words and images that the written word illuminates in that fugitive part of your creative mind. Askin’s Summer with Monika and Arthur’s Picassoesque Naturankles give light and sound to the vivid imagery the poetry demands. Kocevar’s For You (based on a poem by Jacques Prevert) provides stark literal images following a simple and shocking little poem:

I went to the market, where they sell birds
and I bought some birds
for you
my love
I went to the market, where they sell flowers
and I bought some flowers
for you
my love

I went to the market, where they sell chains
and I bought some chains
heavy chains
for you
my love
And then I went to the slave market
and I looked for you
but I did not find you there
my love

Enmeshed at the very soul of their craft, these films take both cinema and poetry to a higher plane of expression. Bold, inconceivable and experimental, the 13 short films are an inspiring evolution in art.

Comments

Comment by Dilip D on February 8, 2006 @ 10:47 pm

I’m told by reliable sources that that poem is not based on a poem by Jacques Prevert, but is the precise translation of a poem by Jacques Prevert (Pour toi mon amour).

Comment by addytorials on February 9, 2006 @ 12:16 am

ah true. horrendous choice of words there. very misleading. what i meant was that the film was based on the poem, which, of course, is a true translation of the original by Prevert. my bad. thanks for pointing it out.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by addytorialsKatha Collage II starts half an hour late at Horniman Circle Garden on Day 3 of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. The theatre company apologises profusely for the delay before beginning. But even after the introductory skit is through, people still amble in at a leisurely pace. They greet their friends in the audience so loudly it makes you wonder whether they too are wearing concealed microphones. And then come the phone calls.

“Hello? Oh, yes. I’m watching a play. No, no, I really can’t talk now.”

Really? But you still are. I always thought that a better way of sending across the message would be not to take the call at all. Has nobody here ever heard of non-verbal communication?

But that’s not all. The woman with the large hair-do right in front of you must lean over to her friend at regular intervals to say, “Oh, he is wonderful. What an actor.”

Well, Bhansali’s Black moved me too, but I’m still against bringing deaf and blind friends to the theatre. That’s just me. If you need people to tell you that the performers are good (especially during the play), you shouldn’t be there.

However, Motley deserves due credit for an engrossing series of short stories enacted with comfortable finesse. To be surrounded by a gaggle of excited teenage girls in the audience who don’t understand a word of Hindi and still be able to lose oneself in the play is a feat made possible only by the substance of the play itself.

From the hilarious deliberations on the downfalls of being termed a good man to an intelligent debate on the benefits on not bathing, the play holds your attention from the get-go. The short humorous satires on everyday life has you nodding in agreement to the silliest of things.

Of course, one may wonder why a play scripted in orthodox Hindi about largely middle-class sentiments has attracted an audience of mostly elitist non-Hindi speaking socialites who look at you with bemusement when you chuckle. And one may also wonder why the populace who seem to be really enjoying the play are standing on unsure feet outside the arena to get a glimpse of the people who seem to be carrying their voices on stage.

But I shall leave that for another day, probably as fodder for another play.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by addytorials4:35 am · General · Walkabout

Festival - (n) a day or period of celebration

(Oxford Dictionary)

And a festival it truly is. Day 2 of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival finds itself bang in the middle of a Sunday. Rampart Row is a teeming mass of children, their respective parents, couples, friends, tourists and those who prefer to soak in the arts in their own individual space.

Cameras click and whirr (or maybe they don’t due to technological advancements, but it sure would be poetic to hear a whirr once in a while). The lights are blinding and inviting all at once. Colours invade your ocular senses.

There, the children scream for cotton candy. The man is unfortunately equipped with only two hands, one of which hugs the frail cane from which hang his pink and blue goodies. He is swamped by a myriad sweet toothed adolescent. And, oh look, some adults as well.

The lone flautist at the other end is surrounded only by his bamboo friends. He looks like a God against the imposing backdrop of his musical wares as he serenades the festivities. A young Hariprasad is dragged off the scene by his mother. Where are they going?

Oh, bookstores, paper-stores, handicrafts, food stalls. There is no dearth of places to go here.

And what about those appreciating the arts? Where? It is too crowded to be standing in one place for too long. The most you can do is catch a glimpse of the dance recital depicting Shri Chaitanya as you are jostled across Rampart Row. Serves you right for being late. How about taking in the cinema? No. The dispassionate security guard at Max Mueller Bhavan informs you that they are restricting entry now in not so many words. “Housefull” is what he actually says.

Not to worry. A casual walk through the Bollywood Exhibition outside Jehangir Art Gallery will satiate your thirst for cinema to some extent. Spend a minute or two to marvel at the static displays that scream filmdom to you in unimaginable ways.

But not me. I take a seat at a white table in the middle of Rampart Row and look around me. Mumbai coming together on one small stretch of road to laugh and hug each other in an otherwise cynic’s paradise. That is Art.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by addytorialsThe quintessential dark horse of modern Indian poetry was brought to life on the evening of 4th February, 2006, under the visionary direction of Gowri Ramnarayan. The elusive baritone doyen of Bengali art-house films, Dhritiman Chaterji, lends his talent to fill the shoes of the enigmatic Arun Kolatkar in a surrealistic interpretative performance of the poet and his art replete with classical and imaginative play-acting. What better way to inaugurate the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival?

The Dark Horse: Walking Down Arun Kolatkar’s Lane

The presentation raises more questions than it attempts to answer. For one, is this a play? I simply couldn’t get my head around that one. On being asked for directions for the “play at 5:30?”, the kind souls at the Help Desk insist vehemently that I must go to Horniman Circle if I want to view a play. “On the other hand,” they say, “you could go for Dark Horse: Walking Down Arun Kolatkar’s Lane at NGMA. It is a literary event and promises to be very interesting.”

“Ah, interesting indeed,” I reply.

A literary event. And here I was getting ready to watch a fictionalised enactment of Arun Kolatkar and his work. What was I thinking? Yet worse was the aura surrounding the words “Literary Event”. They seemed to be the kind of words that are usually spoken in whispers by members of a strange hooded cult over late night cups of ginseng and chamomile tea. Artsy-fartsy people, in a simple-folk manner of speaking.

But lo! I couldn’t have jumped to a conclusion further from the truth. The audience happily presented itself as a singular mass of people who have trouble comprehending the simplistic courtesy of switching off their mobile phones during a performance. Better yet, some even took the trouble to chatter away with friends in the audience, thus reaffirming my faith in us common people. Ha, intellectual intelligentsia these are not. I am on familiar grounds after all.

So what, then, were they doing there? And what was I doing there?

I presume I was there because a few printed words had once opened my eyes to a city I have been in living in for eight years but never really seen as Kolatkar did. And I was there because those printed words had spoken to me and me only. Truly, it was a one-way communication with my name on it. I just knew it - Kolatkar was talking to me. And for once I wanted to see who the man behind those words really was, even as an interpreted ghost of himself.

Of course, I was disappointed. But that has no bearing on the sterling performances. Poetry is a very personal experience. It is read in a voice and a rhythm only you are familiar with. To see that given a voice and a personality by somebody is like seeing your childhood being played out by people who don’t know you at all. It is very disconcerting, to say the least.

But not for long.

Before you know it, you find yourself among the characters. You are the cynical fan who has been touched by his words. You are the observer on a bus-ride to Jejuri. You are the interviewer with so many questions to ask of the man. And in instances you are the poet himself, trying to elucidate on the science of the art. (”I put what I want to say out there. And then I just play.”)

Since the presentation (I still hesitate to call it a play) will be performing elsewhere in the future (and should continue to do so), it would not be prudent to divulge the details of the narrative. But a unique narrative it is. Interspersed with interpretations and readings of Kolatkar’s poetry, the interviewer doubles back to hint at why the poet will always remain an enigma. We will get from the presentation what her magazine readers will get from the interview - paraphrased dialogues interspersed with snatches of poetry to fill the gaps. The poet will always remain a personal interpretation of the unsaid and the overlooked. (”There must be a very interesting answer to your question. But. I don’t have it.”)

I come out of the NGMA not having learned anything about the poet that I can express in so many words. But as I walk from that beautiful gothic structure to the Kala Ghoda triangle, traffic lights wink at me, an old beggar gives me an all-knowing toothless smile and a stray dog strolling by looks incredibly familiar.

Now, that’s poetry.