Okay fine, the above title may not be entirely true but adding a little credit to it – Something Relevant, the Jam Band that performed at Kala Ghoda Arts festival yesterday afternoon, mainly consists of some fine Parsi Dikaras.

Needless to say, these guys (Parsis + Non Parsis) completely rocked da house. And such was their impact that even my mum (a non-videshi music listener) sat thru most of their play time without any complaints.

In all honesty, I am not very fond of Jazz/Rock genre but give me Pop or R&B anytime and I am game. However this experience, I will admit made me realize how rigid in my music taste I had been all along.

(Click here to read the whole post)

Two of the gems of experimental cinema - Manhatta and The Man With The Movie-Camera - were screened at the Gallery Beyond yesterday. Since I missed the first one (I watched it on the internet anyway), I shall review only The Man With The Movie-Camera.

Made in 1929 by Dziga Vertov with cinematography by his brother Mikhail Khaufman, The Man With The Movie-Camera captures the Russian life in all its avatars. The movie has no story as such, yet one could call it the story of a people and a time.

The movie shows the Russian way of life in minute detail, and not often in the sad way that directors of art movies are wont to perceive. The camera captures in a most natural way the beautifully uncertain smiles, the lips that make unheard whispers, basking ladies, the victories and the excitement, the routine and the indifference - all captured with the devouring eye of a greedy voyeur and the detailed panache of a keen observer. The result is a movie which speaks of life without judgment and the consequent pitfalls that a jaundiced eye brings to the task of film-making. (Click here to read the whole post)

After Kiran Nagarkar, Saeed Mirza. Mirza’s new book, Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother, is out from Tranquebar Press. On Monday night, an hour after her conversation with Nagarkar, Nilanjana Roy sat on stage with Mirza to talk about Ammi. And Rahul Bose read several passages from the book.

Nilanjana said that when the manuscript came to her (as Tranquebar’s editor), she figured it would take her a week to read it. Instead, she sat up one night and finished it, and knew right away that she had to make it Tranquebar’s first book.

That was introduction enough.

Mirza began by telling us that his mother came from a “tradition of inclusion”, and had a “largeness of spirit.” These were values, he said, that are disappearing today, leaving only a chauvinism and a lack of the generosity he knew in his mother. Rahul Bose echoed that theme. He said of the book that it speaks of a world we all know; it is a lament for this country, a mixture of longing, love, unslaked thirst and a sense of loss. Books like these, people like Mirza, he said, are the “bits of chewing gum” that keep us together.

(Click here to read the whole post)

The third session of Experimental Cinema screenings (and my second), Gallery Beyond showcased the last four of Avant-Garde movies they had chosen to screen. I say chosen to screen because the Avant-Garde Collection (from which the movies are being shown) is a much wider collection comprising many more movies than time would have allowed them to show.

The four movies screened were:

• Regen (Rain) (Netherlands, 1929) directed by Joris Ivens, 14 minutes: This is a movie every Bombayite would love to watch, especially if you’ve grown up watching the rain and what gentle poetry it can create on the streets and in the minds of men. If you can catch this short film anytime, please do so. It is a lovely evocation of rain in Amsterdam and how people react to it. Perhaps the most lyrical of all Avant-Garde movies, it is for the best that it is a silent movie. The gentle strumming of the guitar throughout the movie is the only sound the movie has. It is the director’s best documentary before he moved on to doing political documentaries. It is now my favorite documentary; when you have watched it, it will be yours too.
• H2O (US, 1929) directed by Ralph Steiner, 12 minutes: This movie demonstrates what light can do with surfaces, especially with water. An intensive exploration of the play between light and water, it soon delves into abstractions leaving the consciousness of the existence of water behind. Recommended only if you love the sort of cinema that academics can argue and debate over.

(Click here to read the whole post)

(Apologies for the technological incompetence that resulted in this being empty when I first put it up).

I’ve never read Kiran Nagarkar, but after Monday evening when he spent an hour in conversation with Nilanjana Roy, I resolved to fix that lacuna in my life. Not so much because of the samples of his writing we heard or heard described, but because of the man. If that makes sense.

For one thing, his sense of humour. It was there in the first bit of reading he did. This wasn’t a passage from any of his books, but three short fictional biographical blurbs about himself that he wrote for what he said was a short-lived website he had once. “Take your pick”, he said of the three, and it was hard. In one, he claimed to be the most prolific writer in history, having written works now claimed by such luminaries as Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan, Shobhaa De and the various apostles who put together that book known as the Bible. In another, he claimed to be the inspiration behind the crimes of Idi Amin, Osama, Mugabe and others. It wasn’t just that these outlandish claims were funny by themselves; it was the way he made them, and the way he read them out to us, that had the audience chuckling.

And it was apparent in the rest of his conversation too. Something about the way this man spoke with and to his audience hinted at an alert, vibrant mind, always a good substrate for humour, and so always on the lookout for humour. Not the laugh-out-loud slap-you-on-the-back humour of a Bollywood-style Johnny Lever, yes, but a subtle, self-deprecating kind that grows and builds with that twinkle in his eye. It brought to mind Davy Barry, or Groucho Marx, or perhaps someone even subtler, like Art Buchwald or PL Deshpande.

But there were other things about Nagarkar. (Click here to read the whole post)

I was lazing around in the afternoon and almost on a whim, I decided to attend the Avant-Garde movie screenings held at the Gallery Beyond. And it was so good that at the end of it, I cursed myself for being lazy and not attending on previous days.

The map for the festival does not pinpoint the location of the Gallery. And nobody except the a man standing outside Max Mueller could tell me where Gallery was. As a result, I arrived at the Gallery a full one hour late. To add to my woes, the watchman there told me that games were being played at the Gallery (Yahaan toh khel khila rahein hain).

Just as I was about to leave thinking that the event had been shifted to some other venue at the last minute for which notifications could not be put up on the website, a man told me that movies were indeed being screened at the Gallery and directed me to a door. I entered a darkened hall where the movies were being screened. It was only when my eyes adjusted to the light and I spotted paintings hanging on the walls around me that I realized I’d been ushered into the gallery itself.
(Click here to read the whole post)

At every moment in our lives, perhaps, we are to some extent actors, or performers, as well as spectators. When performers and spectators “connect” it creates a very special quality of theater that both transports and transforms all those involved. In India we cherish this strong link between reality and fantasy first through theatre and now through film. All this age old mimicry of life somehow affects us and in return this mimicry is in itself a self-definition of the society we live in. This is what I love about the medium that through a little imagination and snap of a finger we are somewhere else. Taking it a step further many forms of classical dance in India imbibes the same values of theatre mixing them till we get operaish dance put to music.

Yakshagana is one such dance opera I got the opportunity to see at KalaGhoda yesterday. The dance is usually described as folk but this theatre form from Karnataka, the Yakshagana or the song of the celestials has strong classical undertones. Hardly surprising because the dance was born from the Bhakti movement and was designed to bring classical dance beyond its then traditional elitist audience. As the dance unfolded at the Rampant row amphitheatre it raptured the much of the onlookers with its singing and drumming blended with dancing and the quaint endearing kannada dialogues from players, clad in striking costumes in myriad hues and sizes, provided for a very pleasant afternoon.

I was still curious and wanted to learn more may be exchange a conversation with the artists so I some how evaded the Kala Ghoda event staff and went back stage. This is what I saw - A corner clothesline overflows with hair switches, tassels, garlands and `jewels.’ The dim walls are agleam with bright headgear, chest and shoulder armour and the shelves packed with ornaments and anklets. The table is a mass of crushed and ironed costumes. There sat Rakshasha, or a man dressed as one, in front of pictures of an entire pantheon of gods praying; an antithesis if I ever saw one. Very soon I found myself sharing a chai with large men with painted faces and even larger pagades, (a type of head gear) talking about cricket before their next act began.

If there’s one thing that I don’t like about the Kala Ghoda festival, it’s that it makes me wish I could be at three different places at the same time. For the last two days I’ve been running from one program to another, usually arriving sometime mid-way between the second show which usually leaves me desperately craning my neck and standing on my toes so that I can see over the heads of the crowds. It usually doesn’t help.

(Note to self: Grow taller)

But really, I found myself wishing that there could be some way to stop the tallest people from standing right in front of the stage and leaving all the poor vertically challenged souls (like me) with only a partial view of the stage, and cursing their VC genes. Wouldn’t it be great if seating were determined by height? So if you were over six feet tall and wearing headgear which added another foot to your height, you would sit in the back row and yet, have the perfect view of the stage because only shorter people would be allowed to sit in front of you. See? That way everybody’s happy!

Coming back to the performances.

I reached the amphitheatre about mid-way through the Odissi recital by Jhelum Paranjpe and her troupe, and until it struck me that I could actually climb up the steps of the amphitheatre, I watched about five minutes of six pieces of elaborate headgear bob up, down and sideways all together.

When wisdom and a better view dawned, I came to the conclusion that Odissi is such a pretty dance form - all feminity and coy smiles and sweetness and light. Which might probably explain why the sight of the two male dancers in that group of women, disturbed me on a very fundamental level. Oh they were good – performing all the abhinaya and the mudras and the curvaceous movements with practiced ease - no doubt about it, but it was just a *little* disconcerting to see them dance the exact same steps as all the female dancers and with the same amount of…feminity?

The Dasavatar (ten incarnations of Vishnu) piece that they - the three male dancers - performed towards the end dispelled all my ignorant notions of how Odissi was a purely feminine dance form. Those men displayed energy, and effervesence and grace and there was nothing feminine about it. They were marvelous as they went from Matsya through to Varaha, playful as Krishna, serene as Buddha and downright frightening as Narasimha.

Jhelum then performed a solo on a hymn by Salbeg - a Muslim poet who worshipped a Hindu god – and it was beautifully done. Jhelum was graceful and wonderfully emotive as she acted out the pain of the poet, who was not allowed to worship at the temple because he was a Muslim, and how he longed for his lord to grant him deliverance from his crippled earthly body.

The last performance was a pure dance piece titled Moksha, in which all the dancers performed. It was an awesome sight to see as ten pairs of ghungroo-laden feet danced, ten wrists delicately bent and ten heads gracefully swayed along with the music in perfect unison.

So much prettiness!

I think I shall now have a perfectly legitimate grudge against my parents for a) never sending me to any dance classes and b) passing on the vertically-challenged gene to the sole family member who could’ve done without it.

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.

“We were given the choice of performing at the amphitheatre as well, but we wanted to recreate the atmosphere of the royal court of Wajid Ali Shah, which is where these two art forms – Thumri and Kathak – came into being.”

It is rare to find an artist who can not only convey her love and mastery of her art to the audience, but also make them fall in love with it. It is rarer to find two such artists and even rarer to find them amicably sharing a stage.

But that is what we witnessed at the Kathak–Thumri Milap at the NGMA auditorium today evening. Almost two full hours of enthralling music and scintillating dance. Dhanashree Pandit reminded me so much of those too rare teachers and professors, who made their classes so interesting that you’d actually bunk bunking to attend them. She didn’t just sing those thumris, she owned them – playing them out slowly at first, like kite-string, pulling, releasing, teasing and then… setting them free to fly.

And really, it was an education. For someone whose only talent (as far as Hindustani classical music goes) is being able to differentiate a Des from a Bhairav, I came away from that performance feeling like I had taans and aalaaps sloshing out of my ears (in the nicest way possible). I came away wanting to dedicate my life (or what is left of it) to music! And dance! And glory to the performing arts!

But coming back to real life.

Dhanashree began the show with an introduction to the basic thumri. She explained the birth of the thumri as a counter-development to the more complex and sophisticated khayals of the period. How folk songs from UP made their way into the Mughal courts, where they were cleaned-up, polished, decorated with Urdu words and finally presented as graceful thumris.

Thumri and kathak are apparently sister art-forms, both having originated under the patronage of Wajid Ali Shah. The word thumri itself, has its origins in dance - ‘thum’ being a bol used in kathak and ‘ri’ from the Hindi word rijhana (to please).

The pieces were presented as interactions between the dancer and the musicians - Dhanashree would sing a piece with Keka performing it simultaneously. Watching this interaction on stage was truly awe-inspiring because it seemed that they never needed to speak to each other, like they had this secret language between them which made words absolutely unnecessary. Keka would simply nod at the tabla-player and in the next second the auditorium would resonate with frantic-but-perfectly-in-sync activity from all the four people on that stage.

Keka Sinha was fascinating as she swayed, pirouetted and acted out the thumri themes one after the other. Whether they were the Radha-Krishna stories or the depiction of the eight nayikas*, she was marvelously convincing in all of them.

At the end of this wonderful, wonderful evening, all I can say is thank God for Wajid Ali Shah!

*Classical heroines of the ancient scriptures of dance.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Yazad Jal

Theatre for me is more than the acting, lights, sounds, sets and props. It needs to have a little bit of magic. Large West End musicals sometimes have that magic. Cats had it. And sometimes folk theatre performed in the back garden of an old library has it.

Four short stories on cricket, ghosts, antique shops and jalebis. Poignant and playful the stories were told in a simple manner. All the actors were on stage all the time. Those not playing a part sat quietly in the background, merging with the set. The props used were basic, but managed to transform the actor into the character. An obviously false beard, but it made the masterji look authentic. Just a dupatta covering the head for a conservative housewife. And a ribbon in the plait for a little sweet schoolgirl. The acting was so real that I was there in the school, out in the street eating jalebis, and driving down Chandni Chowk to an antique shop.

I later spoke to two of the players, the husband wife team of Digvijay Savant and Shivani Vakil. There stories were first adapted by Ramu Ramanathan from Yuva Katha and first performed on 9/11! They’ve been adapted especially so that they could be performed anywhere - in school libraries, laboratories, even corridors! The sets and props are there to give a flavour of the lok-natya or folk theatre and appeal to a wide spectrum from South Bombay snobs to suburban security guards! Shivani adapted the jalebi script for her students at Walsingham School, and Digvijay has worked with street children from Aasra in Thane.

Short Stories from Around the Country. Performances by Shivani Vakil, Digvijay Savant, Anupama Jayaram, Jasvinder Singh & Dilshad Eidbam at the David Sassoon Garden on February 8 at 7.30pm

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Yazad Jal

Three writers. Reading from their books. Talking about serious issues. An invigorating discussion with the audience. Sounded like a fun way to spend two hours.

(photo courtesy: Akshay Mahajan)

Shivani Vakil read out a passage from Scarred: Experiments with Violence in Gujarat where Dionne Bunsha visits a VHP / Bajrang Dal “training camp” in Gujarat. Bunsha patiently described the activities at the camp, from rifle shooting to religious lectures to training for emergencies. Her gentle interaction with the camp supervisors and interviews with young men attending the camp opened up a small window helping me understand the roots of the riots in Gujarat.

Dilip D’Souza spoke about his transition from software programmer to writer, seeking elegance and logical processes in both activities. He read from his book Branded By Law about a chance encounter with Deepakbhai, a tribal who was at the same public meeting. Both of them were bored by the speeches and Deepakbhai invited Dilip over to his small hut next to a dirty sewer. And so impressed was Deepakbhai with Dilip’s concern that he exhorted Dilip “to never leave the feeling for the poor that I’ve seen in your heart”

Darryl D’Monte spoke about his experiences while writing Ripping the Fabric:
The Decline of Mumbai and Its Mills giving us an insight into the sale of the Khatau Cloth Mill lands in Byculla and the involvement of the underworld leading to the murder of Sunit Khatau in 1994.

After this, Darryl threw open the floor for questions and comments. Not one to leave such an opportunity abegging, I asked the first question on using technology like the Internet and blogging to enhance reach and promote an interactive dialogue. Dilip, though a blogger himself, was a tad pessimistic about the reach of the Internet. Dionne was far more enthusiastic, being tired of “writing in a vacuum” and wanted Dilip to help her start a blog. A nice old lady vigorously insisted that Darryl was being too kind to Datta Samant who was quite a violent man. Darryl defended Samant and his role in the labour movement, conceding that Samant may have been violent, but he wasn’t the only one.

We then took part in the favorite sport of the highbrow in Bombay - TOI bashing. It started with another lady bemoaning how newspapers of her generation were looked up to, unlike today. Various favorite stories of how the Times is trash were told. Was good fun, considering that Darryl was Resident Editor of the Times in the early 1990’s and Dionne was a former TOI reporter. In the spirit of fairness (yes, even for the Times of India), I gingerly pointed out that the city pages of the Times had substantially improved their coverage in the last few months and that the Times was a sponsor for cultural events, including the Kala Ghoda Festival. That caused a bit of a furore with Dionne accusing the Times of being insular, not looking beyond the city and “it really isn’t a newspaper’s job to sponsor festivals.” Darryl spoke of how the Times blacked out the Bandra Festival just because it was sponsored by DNA.

In sum, I had an enjoyable time hearing extracts and experiences from three keen writers followed by a lively discussion. One of the best events I’ve attended up till now at the Festival.

Hey, you were at this event? So was I!

Comment by Anand on February 10, 2006 @ 11:14 am

A beautiful account. I couldn’t make it to the discussion, sadly.

Comment by Yazad on February 10, 2006 @ 12:11 pm

Really Dilip? Your family was sitting close-by, but didn’t see you with them. Must’ve missed you ;-)

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by Dilip D’souza

German puppet show at the KGAF, what do I tell you. The Theater am Faden of Stuttgart consists of a wife-husband team: Helga Brehme and Karl Rettenbacher. Cheery Santa Claus types, they put a lot of hard work into a show that I don’t know how many of us could have appreciated.

Helga kicked off by telling us (in English) briefly about the story, and that they make the puppets themselves, and that since they are made of wood, they can’t learn any languages apart from German, and so the show would be entirely in German. Now I don’t believe she truly wanted to blame the puppets, poor things. She did say, “maybe some of you will understand German.”

At which point, Karl let out an agonized yell in German: “Helgaaaa!”

And the show began. I did my best to understand the story, and I’m going to tell it to you here in case you missed it which you probably did.

There’s a jester, and a shepherd who plays the flute. The king makes his entrance oddly; he sits in his throne with his back to the audience while the action, whatever the action is, is raging all about him. But when he turns around, the first thing he says, very very loudly, is (and the King’s lines are done by Helga) (and this is in German of course): “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sheeeeee!”

At which point, a huge cawing erupts above our heads: crows in the picturesque branches take off. Whether in response to the King, and whether they caw in German, and whether this is part of the show, I’m not sure still.

There’s suddenly a backdrop showing several sheep. The shepherd struts about, and a small duck makes an appearance, flapping its wings.

The King says, regally: “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sheeeeee!”

The crows go nuts again.

Without warning, the duck attacks the shepherd, flying at him manically again and again. He stands there stoically. The King says his line again, and the crows caw once more. A bear appears, and spends the first several minutes of his time on stage stretching his limbs, as cats do. The shepherd is still standing there stoically.

Without warning, the bear attacks the shepherd, rushing at him manically, the shepherd ducks (no pun) out of the way, the bear charges again. Suddenly the bear is sitting on the shepherd. Suddenly the shepherd is sitting on the bear. Then they both fall to the floor in exhaustion. After a few seconds, the bear rises onto his hind legs and the shepherd starts playing his flute. This captivates the bear, and you wonder why the shepherd did not think of it before, during the assaults. The bear dances and jumps, then stretches, then stands on his forelegs for a long time, bopping his butt to the flute.

The shepherd goes over and nuzzles the bear.

The King says: “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sheeeeee!”

The crows are silent. Perhaps they have emigrated to Siberia.

The jester comes in, and says “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”.

A court minister falls back in alarm, the shepherd comes in again followed by an insipid princess, and then the duck again. The duck flies repeatedly at the minister, who falls down again. He gets up and makes some karate moves, but the duck drives him off the stage and then settles on the King’s head. Then in the princess’s arms. This endears the princess to the shepherd, who looks at the princess tenderly. The duck sits on her ankles, and they exit stage right.

With much guttural snorting, two porcupines turn up, butt first, and start shedding quills in excitement. The shepherd clings in fright to a tree. They leap at him manically, while making more guttural sounds and whistles.

The duck shows up. By then the porcupines are asleep. The duck stands on one, then gets tangled in their quills, then kisses the shepherd. This inspires the shepherd to play the flute. The porcupines give up their hostility and, like the bear, begin dancing.

The jester starts a manic dance, complete with splits in the air, in front of an impassive King. Ends it on his head, which brings forth from the King a particularly emphatic “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sheeeeee!”

The crows are back from Siberia, because they erupt again overhead.

The minister plays the flute and gives it to the princess, who says “beautiful flute!” (Someone next to me translated this one line).

And suddenly the shepherd is back, with 4 nasty snakes after him manically. The jester arrives, cackles in front of the snakes, screams when they turn on him, runs away, comes back, cackles again, runs away again . Yet again, the shepherd finally picks up his flute and begins to play, which turns the snakes all coochie-coo and they sway about ecstatically.

At this point, a strong Kala Ghoda gust of wind knocks over the entire backdrop.

The King says, “Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Sheeeeee!” He falls over on his back. Miraculously, he levitates in that position and swings energetically through the air.

Crows caw in alarm.

The shepherd and princess go off together, then return and do a dance with much kissing. The duck returns, leaps about, does a dance all his own. And the bear, with the jester on his back! And the snakes! And the two porcupines! In their joy, they knock the snakes off the stage. And the minister arrives, but the duck chases him off.

The End

Comments

Comment by Shivam Vij on February 8, 2006 @ 5:58 pm

The great Indian middle ‘class’.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by FatCat

I must admit I was pleasantly taken aback when I saw the pleasant stage setup inside the Horniman Circle. I had no idea that there was a such a sumptuous setting hidden away inside that traffic island. So it was with a reasonable spring in my step that I walked in to watch the Pravah Theatre Laboratory perform their unique version of Hamlet.

Now Shakespeare, as we all know, was an englishman who wore wired up collars and had a luxurious moustache. He was the author of many plays, some of which have gained worldwide fame as a ridiculously difficult school textbooks with weird punctuation. Alas thine musteth have cometh acroth some of them in thcool.

Of his plays Hamlet is undoubtedly one of the most famous. It is about a danish prince Hamlet, son of King Hamlet (or is it the othe way around) who avenges the death of his father. Hamlet, the father, was killed in treachery while Hamlet, his son went off to fight Fortinbras , son of norwegian King Fortinbras (unrelated).

Now what Pravah has done is convert this play into a fusion trilingual format with English, Kannada and Hindi melding in bits of Bharatanatyam and Yakshagana. I must admit if one does not have a background to Hamlet the play can be a little confusing. Also not being a native (or any other) speaker of Hindi a lot of the Hindi spoken portions completely left me stranded. But thankfully I was sitting next to my friend R from Egmore in Chennai and we mutually comforted each other during those moment of duress.

The concept itself was executed very well. The set was simple and utilitarian. The actors were well rehearsed and some of the exchanges had a slick choregraphed quality to them. And this was no mean feat with all the characters played in multiple languages and with periodic Yakshagana segments.

The use of a female character to play Prince Hamlet in parts was a little unsettling in the beginning but grew on me as the play progressed. Knowing the story beforehand really helped and otherwise the play may have been a bit too complex for the layman.

For me the highlights were the excellent use of the set with a window in the background screen for effect, the energetic intense Yakshagana segments and the excellent and vocal support.

The murder of Claudius was depicted through Yakshagana with an intensity that only complemented the bard’s genius.

On the flipside some of the scenes seemed unecessarily abstracted but that is a question of personal taste and I am sure theatre connoisseurs will have relished it. Also the dialogue delivery by the english Claudius was completely lacking punctuation, not unlike a Saravana Bhavan waiter rattling off the menu.

So overall it was a good show. Well executed with no apparent glitches anywhere. Some of the actors were extremely talented and I wish them success with their plans to carry this project around the country.

Now if I only knew what some of those Hindi words meant. R from Chennai next to me still can’t figure out what the word “Khatputhli” means. Frankly neither can I.

P.S. It may be good to indicate what language requirements some of these plays might have.

Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by MayaI was intrigued. Poetry for youth? What could they write about have apart from acne spots and boyfriend troubles? What are their motivations? Are they going to launch a movement to make young people write poetry? Or berate their attempts at string words together to create rhythm?

“We need poetry that is relevant to the child’s immediate environment,” said Anju Makhija and cut through many of my pre-conceived notions about this workshop. For starters, she said there are various categories.right from 4-8 year-olds to pre-teens to teenagers. What would an eight year old write? I was further intrigued.

She continued, “A workshop we held sometime back on the same lines outlined the fact that kids don’t want to know about the dark and lovely woods but want to know about Bombay.” I’m sure, I thought. With the shrinking green cover, dark and lovely woods in Bombay are as imaginative as JRR Tolkien’s fantasy fiction. “It is nearly impossible to effect a change because the textbooks are controlled centrally. But that does not discount the need for a change,” said Anju and invited writers, journalists, copywriters, poets and the likes, who had written poetry for or on young people.

First up was Sampoorna, a copywriter by profession and a poet by compulsion. “I’d rather read a wicked poem about living in my city,” she said. She read four poems varying from a child’s sense of boredom at reading boring poetry, to a pre-teen’s grouse against his elder sister’s friend, to her own experience as a girl who had grown in a co-ed school and then moved to an all girl’s school and college.

The pre-teen’s grouse.
“A poem about my sister’s friend
The two of them make three
And she comes over to our house
Only when she wants to pee”
.evoked bubbly giggles in a crowd of people who were.well.not so young (calling them 40 plus would be polite)

Next up was Rizio Raj, editor of Navneet Publications, who has published two novels in Malayalam-’Avinasom’ and ‘Yatrikam’. She has published poems in several journals and anthologies in India and abroad and presents her poems in various forums.

She admitted to having been fortunate enough to be born and brought up in a wonderful house with a huge courtyard and garden. Rizio attributed her unrestrained spirit to her rearing. “And that what I feel children lack today-the freedom of spirit,” she started off. She read a couple of poems, the more prominent one being about Beslan school hostage crisis where terrorists took an entire school hostage in Beslan, Russia from September 1-3, 2004, resulting in the killing of 186 children. This graphic poem ended with a sense of loss and.”all we can give is a moment of silence, our last way to hold hands.”

Priya Sarukkai Chaabria, a poet and writer from Pune gracefully walk up next on stage and read some great poems in her wonderful diction. “Sandwichwala and Nimbupaniwala were friends, and religious nose diggers.” she started. I forgot to write the rest as I was delightfully engrossed in what she read out; but I remember the end of this poem. “They taught us that forbidden stuff is best,” she ended.
She then read a poem about her first ever crush at the age of 13.a boy called Neil. He left school that year and never came back. “I don’t know where he is today; but he’ll always remain 13 for me,” she said as an epilogue.

This was followed by Anju Makhija herself reading a few. Please forgive me if stumble during my reading because children do that. Or if I invent new words, because children do that too,” she warned. She started with ‘Little Strange Creatures’ and ended with ‘Colour Separation’. I’d like to put the last stanza of Colour Separation down:
“When Canary sings yellow
When parrots cluck green blue
When peacock preens a myriad of hues
Then why do humans see brown?
Add to that black and white; and you could lose yourself in the human zoo.”

Then we had Marilyn Noronha of Poetry Circle and Jane Bhandari of Loquations come up and close the event with their readings. Marilyn was great and Jane effervescent.

With the crows cawing and little bits of leaves and stuff falling on my head, I listened attentively to all that was being read out. Interspersed with humour and giggles, the event was great. Unfortunately, not many people were there to experience it. But it was, indeed, a fun evening, which left you with many questions. Poetry for young people?.Why? Are they losing touch with this genre? May be. With the craft? Hell, definitely. And with memories?.

You know sometimes you wonder what happens to your experiences.as you grow older. Do you tuck them away in some cobwebbed corner of your memory and gloss over them during yearly reunions with friends? And as the years pass by, the earliest one is replaced by the most recent.the early insignificant often replaced by the contemporary significant. Can it get any worse than misplacing your memories???

If not for the art then at least for the sake of memories.one needs workshops such as these.

Brrrrrr.went off to a different tangent.back to KG.read on for the talk with Shantaram.

P.S.: The poetry quotes are not verbatim.sorry, I forgot I was carrying a Dictaphone.remembered in the middle of the next event.