Little Shop of Random Thoughts

For a nation obsessed with cricket!

2011-11-25T11:06:00.001+05:30

Or should it read "To a Nation obsessed with cricket"!. No... that would sound like a Tribute post.

Or, given the magnanimity of the situation - Sachin missing his 100th 100! - which is an even worse a tragedy to this country than the loss of Kishen to Maoists or lives of 1000s of people that get lost in Didiland due to train derailments (who anyway die in this country one way or other or would anyway die sooner or later!) - or should I say, given the gravity of the situation? it may sound like the opening phrases of an Epitaph! Or should it read, "Against the backdrop of a nation where cricket is more fundamental to this nation..." or even better! Where a Sachin's century at Wankhede or Brabourne is more fundamental to some (who are more fundamentally Mumbaikars than Yorkshire men are more Yorkshire than the Terriers, Pugs and Pollicles) than if it came at Kotla or at Kolkata... who cares if India follows on or wipes the lead!

Btw, prayers were aplenty both in the ground as well as on tweets, sms', fb wall posts (where the country these days communicate more than in real time) that India PROBABLY MUST FOLLOW ON because SACHIN GETS ANOTHER GO AT 100TH 100! Gods Zounds and Odd and Ends! We have inexplicably and irredeemably morphed into this self-obsessed Frankeinsteins (or is it Chitti now?) who are bothered more about personal achievements and self-interests that take primacy to bigger pictures! You get the picture? There is a whole album behind this!

We have essentially come to accept the culture of coercion, exhortation and do or die philosophy! Survive or sink? And what of the meek inheriting the earth? And what of the adages that celebrate the beauty of god's creation where the best and the worst co-exist and goodness gets its validity from the existence of badness! To put things in perspective... we have lost our perspective as well as perspicacity! We are just about data, facts, statistics, cups, victories, woes, failures, suicides... This is the India FDIs are made of!

There was a time when the west came here for other things! They don't need to come here anymore because we have become one! Anyway... coming back to where we started.... Kohli is from Delhi, playing for Bangalore and India... Ashwin is from Chennai playing for India and they are still playing to save the invaluable follow-on millions of cricket watchers pray should happen so Sachin shall score his century in Mumbai! And I just now even heard a few shouts (INDEEEEYAAAA... INDIA!) Anyway... sanity has been restored after a moment of cliched deafening silence that followed the heartbreak that Sachin's out at 94 gave! I mean... these guys are not only after runs, but are playing in a way Test Cricket is known to be played. Leaving the right balls out, pricing their wicket than the streaky 4 that can take us through the nervous 90s! You price your wicket... that's what happens when you play for your nation, to save your nation!

Oh, but what about the million voices that say, "we've anyway already won the series 2-0, who cares!" Is it alright to have won the series 2-1 at the end of the series? People from the culture of win or die, answer, please!

42 or 24? Meaning of life!!!

2011-10-02T23:47:00.000+05:30

Oh well... life's been good! What the hell what the score is! But to think that it's just 4 more days and then back to grind... Life could as well mean 24! Sigh!! Will try coming back here tomorrow. Been getting something close to an itch to put something up. May be, something will touch me enough to make me post sumfin!

Adios!!

No New Post

2011-03-10T23:35:00.001+05:30

Oh just thought i'll leave some sound byte even if it doesn't make any contribution. I don't want it to be a year before I posted something. Long live work life, work life is not yet dead... sucks! Hope I snatch one day to do some good blogging! This bitch-rant is dedicated vonly to me and myself!

The Karate Kid - Mr. Miyagi is dead! Long Live Mr. Miyagi!!

2010-06-22T19:53:00.005+05:30

I saw The 'new' Karate Kid - should we call it The Kung Fu Kid! - on Sunday last (20 June) and I should say it is 20 shades paler than the original. In spite of a more charismatic Jackie Chan... I found Mr. Han not a patch on Mr. Miyagi (who passed away early this year and in whose memory I spent an entire afternoon watching and rewatching all the three Karate Kid films).

That said, I shall say that Hollywood's attempt to sell China (how much kickback was got in the bargain, your surmise is as good as my guess!) to Americans is disgusting to say the least. Haven't we been through the Forbidden City, the streets of Beijing, the Shaolin Temple, the Kung Fu universities, the glitzy Kung Fu championships, the Great Wall of China? What we do get to see new is the new Americanised condominiums, people of China playing ping pong and violins and basketballs as well as old men sitting around the landscaped parks of Beijing streets that fail to hide China's poor attempts to reduce pollution levels and throwing Afro-Americans into the Beijing crucible. Jackie must have a huge proclivity or affliction towards his Afro-American counterparts - Will Smith, Chris Tucker... and now Will Smith Jr!

By throwing in Jaden Smith on to the streets of Beijing and showing him play basketball in the glorified ghettos of Beijing, if any subtle comparison is made to the streets of Harlem and Pittsburgh... I miss the point! After 2 hours of loud western music and blurring visuals of boys chasing each other through the narrow streets of Beijing, I came home with a headache. It stayed till about another 4 hours.

Though, all is not unwell in the state of The Karate Kid latest. Jaden Smith has worked his "those words relating to the body part that Mr. Han asks him to avoid speaking" and the learning is evident. The kid has a lot of spunk, gumption and attitude. That brings me to the point I want to convey - the new Karate Kid is all about spunk and attitude. And there is no subtlety whatsoever in this 'in yer face' exhibition of Hollywood's latest attempt to make moolah at the expense of the Oriental. I missed the quietness of Pat Morita's Mr. Miyagi, the serenity of the Japanese backdrop, the sanctity of the Japanese home and family tradition, the greenness of the rural Japan, the heart of the Original, the human-side of the villain of the original and his side-kick foil to the American boy Daniel played by Ralph Machhio... and most of all... the SOUL that The Karate Kid (original) had. This new avatar is just two hours of entertainment. It doesn't stay with you or warm the proverbial cockles of your heart.

Mr. Miyagi is dead! Long Live Mr. Miyagi!!

BRER RABBIT CHRONICLES...

2010-05-16T02:08:00.002+05:30

SUMMER THEATRE WORKSHOP – CAMP NEUVE 2

2010-04-10T07:41:00.001+05:30

CAMP NEUVE – 2

MYT’s summer theatre workshop for youth

For: 12 – 20 year olds

Date: May 3 – 21, 2010 (excepting weekends)

Time : 9.45 a.m to 1.15 p.m

Focus: ENSEMBLE THEATRE

BRIEF: This summer…. get ready to board THE ENSEMBLE THEATRE TRAIN. Masquerade Youth Theatre brings you(th) its second summer youth theatre camp. While last year focussed on introduction to folk and indigenous theatre essentials, this year we focus on getting the ensemble ready to perform. Theatre is a group activity, even when it is a one-actor show, what with technicians and basic stage or production management people required to run the show. Hnece it can be imagined, the magnitude of the need for togetherness and ensemble spirit. How does one quickly put together a team in a month and a good product together. The secret to becoming an actor who can sense and adapt oneself to the needs of the group as well as derive the maximum out of the group… what is it? Come discover that and a whole lot of fun that a big cast ENSEMBLE Production is! At CAMP NEUVE – 2, get ready this summer to board THE ENSEMBLE THEATRE TRAIN.

For fee, app form and/or further details, email masquerade.madras@gmail.com with subject: CAMP NEUVE – 2

========================================================

THE FALL OF THE WALL, I and 15 years later...

2009-11-15T20:30:00.006+05:30

One of the many events that happened nationally and internationally in recent times that affected me severally is the 20 years celebration of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. For various reasons. Combine with it my recent re-reading and re-watching of Henry Porter's BRANDENBURG (a 2005-06 novel) and the 2006 movie THE LIVES OF OTHERS respectively. Of course, a movie such as GOODBYE, LENIN is always at the back of my mind!

Leaving aside the drama, the sentiment, the euphoria, the pyrotechnics and the laser show that sorrounded this event, the sheer monolithic monstrosity of the history behind the wall's existence leaves me breathless and disturbed... more because when I visited Germany the first time, it was hardly 5 years after the re-unification, when the old habits and memories of a land lost by a tribe of people who had set their store by a system - whether they liked it or not - through sheer habit still hung around like hangover from previous night's party!

I went back and dug into the net, dug into my shelf of German literature, German magazines and newspapers I had brought back upon that first visit. Memories come crowding. At that time, I was just a keen-eyed first time visitor to Germany. I did not comprehend the enormity of my stay. I am now trying to put all the shards of experiences and observations of my day-to-day existence over 8 months in places such as Magdeburg, Berlin, Halle, Leipzig, Wernigerode and other quaint little erstwhile East German towns - irrespective of long or short my stay or visits was/were! I even visited the Staatssicherheit's (STASI) headquarters in Leipzig, which was a very very eye-opening and cleansing visit for my soul.

To see the Nikolaikirche, visit Auerbach's Keller blessed with Goethe's feet, body, spirit and sould, walk about the Denkmal and have an esoteric experience of a Russian Orthodox Church Sunday Mass and then to spend about 2 hours on the Open Day at STASI hq in Leipzig - now to think of all these - I do not know what to do with all these accumulated experiences. This is but one day of the several days I visited Leipzig, when I was not collecting materials for my research or visiting famous and not so famous, but experimental theater houses or tourist sites in the rest of Germany or taking advantage of my several friends inhabiting all sorts of towns and cities all across Germany from Schewerin to Constance, Aachen to Frankfurt-Oder, Aurich to Dresden. This is but one of the 3 visits to Germany over a decade between 94-95 and 2004. How many, how many experiences, how many, how many memories, how many, how many memories now come flooding as a result of waking through the night of 20 years of Fall of the Wall celebrations on the Brandenburg Tor! Thank you DW-TV for bring the event live and better than BBC or CNN or anyone else outside of Deutschland.

I think I shall create a new blog exclusively dedicated to recapturing my German days. One post or even 10 posts won't be enough in the next coming days. For now, after 15 years since my first day, when my friend Thorsten picked me up at Berlin-Tegel, I realise it is a complex socio-political and artistic as well as cultural broom that I am trying to assimilate straw by straw that shall ultimately help me clear the cobwebs of my existence! It is humbling, to say the last word.

The Angst and Anguish of an English-patient

2009-11-13T22:48:00.005+05:30

We Indians know not the art of war neither information dissemination that the west has mastered through their media... nor for that matter the craft of propaganda that socialist states quite successfully undertake!

I was watching CCTV today and this thought arose in me. I thought this too would pass like a lot of thoughts that have struck me recently, gently nibbling at my sides like an acupressure foot-massage in a pond full of hordes of little fish, asking me to post a blog.

I had successfully resisted those. I had decided a while back, not to abuse the blogspace by posting frequently random thoughts about random things. I have stuck to it, with the vehemence of a leech on a skin... but no! This one would not pass! So I gave into it as it started gnawing at me like a restless rat on a tin roof over a dingy attic. Hence this post. A while back I had this post on my Facebook about why we don't need Slumdog Millionaire and how it is not a great movie and all those who praise its Oscar-worthiness are lickers of white backsides because this is the latest tool of exploitation of Mother India by the Colonials. A great many gen-xers of the school I teach at rose up in arms in a Sepoy Mutiny against this anti-British stance of mine. I stood like the steadfast tin soldier then, as I stand now. Search me! What I explain below is God's own truth as witnessed by me and heard by me.

Since yesterday, the CCTV has been televising CCTV 2009 National English Speaking Competition. It must have been already a long-drawn process typical of any National level competition, which must have started at germane levels, at Colleges where hordes of people participate at the intra-college and -University level challenges and have arrived where they are.

23 participants are being pitted against 3 challengers and judged by a 9-member Jury about the English speaking quotient of each of them. THREE of them - after a three-day ordeal (the last day being tomorrow - 14th Nov, 2009) - would go through to a Grand finals. What is the competition about? Speaking English. What is the message it holds for us? A lot actually. At the moment we pride ourselves with our BPOs and Call Centres being the cash crops of our country's foreign revenue harvesting. Soon, this would vanish if what I witnessed was true.

A quiet little revolution has taken place. A lot of Chinese are starting to speak English. With an accent that would be much much more acceptable among the Western countries who want to transact with Asia - India or China or Japan or South Korea! With an accent that the English native speakers as well as the European english speaking businessmen would be comfortable. Add to it, the Chinese spoken English grammar may turn out a zillion times better because most Chinese go to language schools where English is taught by native English speakers. The grammar as well as the accent and the command is bound to be better in comparison to ours.

We had earlier in the recent past seen or read how the Chinese were being coached in English to serve the visitors during the Beijing Olympics. Further additions to this point: by its sheer volume and numbers, we all know China is bigger in population than India; in terms of the percentage of youth population, China is equal if not higher than India, if Indian statisticians and demographers are to be believed when they say that in 2020 or whenever India would have the highest youth population in the world!

The projection is: in three to five years time, when these college and university attending youth of China pass out and graduate to the world of business, China will have more English speakers in the world than even United States, which is the single largest English speaking nation and contains the most number of English speakers in the world. What will happen to our BPOs and Call Centers? How much of Green Bills would migrate home then?

I remember the times when I was in the IT sector, working as an in-house translator first, then as in-house full-time language consultant for German, then after as a free-lance consultant, when at the best of times a translator could spin more than a lakh of rupees in a week's time. That was the height of the IT boom when Indian IT industry was preferred in the West due mainly to our ability to do transactions not just in English, but good English. Even the European market - inspite of the lingual-cultural barriers and difficulties would come to our doorstep as a preferred business partner than China - though both our labour charges were cheap equally - simply because of our English abilities. The way school education is headed these days when, leave alone the students, teachers cannot communicate properly in English shows how badly communication suffers.

Communication is not just about content, it is more. It is the art of speaking a language, the art of structuring thoughts in a language through which the thoughts are presented, the art of having command over a language and presenting it in an effective manner. The Chinese are starting to master it, we are losing it - much like Arunachal Pradesh. The Pakistanis are (according to some of my young friends who have debated at the international levels, where the Pakistanis have a longer and stronger traditional and respected presence) mastering it and we are losing it - much like Kashmir!

What do we do? We are having internal skirmishes over haves and havenots. We breed petty politics and politicians and deliberately keep the population illiterate. We cannot say China is fully literate or totally prosperous; nor that it lacks corruption or internal political hassles; but... what they do not do is shoot movies that show our badness or our slums or our past glories alone! what they do not do is sell our souls to foreigners - who once ruled us - who shoot our undesired side and pitch it at Oscars. How many films or documentaries are made about the other side of China. All of us have the other side, but do we have to project that to claim material glory?

We have this biggest joke called Prasar Bharathi - they are celebrating 50 years of existence, the first 20 years of which it never reached the masses. When it is now reaching the masses, we know its quality. Supposedly, Doordarshan is beamed in 30 different languages, but look at its digital quality. Look at the packaging of programs. As an avid watcher, I can vouch for the heterogeneity of Doordarshan's content. Its content variety far outstrips any 10 of the private cable and satellite channels put together. Sadly, though, DD lacks in quality packaging. The latter these days is very important. It is just not what you give, but how it is given!

I am unaware of the following fact. Like the BBC or DW-TV or TV5 or ABC or VOA, do we have any television network that is beamed primarly targetting the countries we should be targetting and packaging a politically correct picture of India? Please let me know. I am as Adam as before the toad did its job!

Coming back... it becomes doubly our duty to take up communication seriously. It is quadruply important that the current tweens and teens and gen-x learn communication tools properly and master the common language of the world so that we do not lose out on progress. After all, speech is the one unique ability that humans possess; having been subject to 400-odd years of English-rule, we cannot afford to squander that advantage because our northerly and Dravidian politicians do not want to make the effort to learn Angrezi. Crazy, isn't it? Of course, when we reach out to our own masses, let us speak their language, both in spirit and letter, but we have to push ourselves to extremes to polish our communication. After all, true challenge lies in going beyond the basics and mastering the aesthetics. Would we? Do we have the grit to rise above our self-excavated rubble?

A small winding up info. There is this international competition for schools called World schools Debating Championships (hereafter WSDC) that is held annually in some city of the world or other, where teams representing countries, with participant-representatives drawn from schools of the respective countries, brandishing their Debating abilities and debating in English over a range of topics that bother the world at large on areas social, political, cultural, economic and artistic. As a curtain raiser to that, they have a mini-WSDC, which is a sort of whetstone for aspirant teams, novices and debutants to the field. This year it was held recently in October-November, as a prelude to the forthcoming WSDC at Doha, Qatar in February 2010.

Know what? China would be a debutant at Qatar2010. They participated in the mini-WSDC and wound up 4th in a field of 10 teams that contained some of the strongest debating teams in English such as New Zealand, US or Chile! As a rejoinder, after what I saw on CCTV... this is a strong foreboding. If you care to, and you receive this channel I am referring to, follow the CCTV English Speaking Competition if you happen to chance upon it.

JAI HIND!

Rain Rain Stay Along... Keep Coming another day!

2009-11-08T01:56:00.002+05:30

I really am loving it! The rains. Finally, I could get back to my DVD closet and my Book bureau. Today: The Bourne Series with bowls of Haldiram's Aloo Lachcha. Yesterday - was on Bhasa trip. Finished reading Karna Bharam, Uru Bangham & Duta Vakyam. The last one especially rocked! Been on a trip of Sanskrit works (of course in English translations). Last week - Chandrapida Charitram (for the uninitiated KADAMBARI by Bana Bhatta of the Harshvardhan court fame!) The poetry is spell-binding, to say the least. And last weekend - Mudrarakshsha. Intriguing and tempting you to stage!

Well, lemme see what tomorrow brings!

Some time at last to post...

2009-09-28T22:37:00.004+05:30

That seems more like it. It looks like another age and era when I used to post regularly. It looks like another millennium since I posted anything worth-while. School's really hectic. It doesn't give much time for intellectual existence. You're always preparing or correcting something or making someone regurgitate things from those CBSE books. Poooh! Shithole existence.

Nevertheless, I have accumulated like another dozen fiction, a handful of scripts for both mainstream and adults... and another shelf full of classic dvds of movies from before 70s. Some interesting Charlie Chaplin and Ingmar Bergman collection. Besides, recent European movies. And I am back at my long-forlorn-into-extended gestating novel - DARKEST BEFORE DAWN! It has taken a new avatar and has started sputtering and staggering to a re-start. Some improvements to the plot. I am not sure I will post any more on the web. I don't want to be pointed fingers at for plagiarising my own stuff at any point of history in the name of someone else's work! I am giving myself another year before I am going to approach a publisher with some serious aspirations to becoming yet another Indian writer in english!

In the meanwhile, we (Masquerade) have finished premiering 3 productions and played 13 shows in a space of 5 weeks between the first night of NIB and the last night of Dystopia. Three new artistic directors - that's exciting. Even more exciting, I am not pressed to churning out shows to keep up the annual 4 shows from our stables. Come to think of it, after Jigsaw early this year, the next event I was involved was recently the launch of the CHENNAI DEBATING FORUM at the Oxford Bookstores on 26th Sept. That was fun. We performed some story telling - subverting and repackaging Indian mythology in contemporary terms, read some steamy Roald Dahl for adolescents and Carol Ann Duffy. At the end of it all, 8 people debated in a combination of Worlds and BP style about "The Need for Reinventing, Rediscovering and Repackaging Culture". Not too many people in the audience. About 15 people at the small Cha Bar beside the Masquerade and MYT people. So it looked like about 50 people. Though... the floor debate we generated at the end of the speaker debate was like 100 participants. Quite interesting. We have quite a lot of interested people wanting to be part of the Chennai Debating Forum and we meet again on October 24 - 4.30 pm to 6.30 p.m at the same Oxford Bookstores, Haddows Road, Chennai.

I have been reading heckuva lot. There's a performed reading of all 6 short-list nominees on the eve of The Man Booker 2009 at the British Council. Of course, we are reading on Oct. 10, while the winner would be announced on the night of Oct 6th. So, we would really be reading from 5 nominees and THE WINNER. I am in the middle of two books. The other 4 I would have read before 10th. So, lot of work happening. No complaints. Or perhaps... one: not able to sit and put that pen to the paper and post some articles. Hopefully this should leave a hangover and I should post one tonight later or tomorrow latest!

MASQUERADE presents NUN IN BLACK

2009-07-22T11:06:00.003+05:30

The RIGHT side of SAFFRON and the LEFT side of RED

2009-05-17T11:06:00.004+05:30

Everything, it seems, is a question of hysteria, conversion and expediency. Does it naturally follow we are talking India: be it Cricket, Culture, Politics, Religion, Entertainment! The mandate - I thought long and hard - is not in favour of UPA or Congress or against BJP as people are led to think. The mandate is in favour of the ability of any person who is projected as an icon and possessing the ability to sway people's emotion than intellect. Example: Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Bannerjee... the list is long but not endless, because there are also failed icons and cheats. The example of former being L.K.Advani and the latter being P.Chidambaram. 22 Recounts? They recounted until the counting minds and hands tired and gave up, knowing Chidu's will to retain the constituency is stronger than the will of the others to gain. Power Play is the game of those who are afraid of losing, not hate losing. Look at what happened in the Sivaganga constituency. I am sure there is a scenario that transpired yesterday in Sivaganga that is similar to what happened in Florida in the year Cousin Bush recounted and won. So...

In the middle of all this, the LEFT finds itself in a mess. Lalu issues a statement obviously repenting the wisdom of non-pre-poll alliance. Expelled speaker Somnath Chatterjee conveniently blaming Prakash Karat. UPA believing that they are more secular than others and hence they won! BJP claiming that there was oil all over the body but not on the mustache enough for dirt to stick on it: "Oh! But look at the seven states where we have done well!"

The sum total of inability to convert the figures to form government is higher in ineptitude than the parts that constitute a whole new political dharma, dear Jaitley. It seems more than anyone else, the Fourth Estate, especially the TV News channels seem more bent on using the fall of BJP and the LEFT to their TRP best by vilifying the former and mourning the latter as though they finally moved Lenin from Dzherzinsky Square to the inner precincts of some seedy museum. Axes continue to fall through the press on figure heads who deem themselves culpably responsible for the fall of their bastions. In this context, I think, Mr. Advani must be either the most qualified drama person or the most naive politician. He says he wants to quit. He reminds me of the Soccer team managers who are either axed or take moral responsibility and quit because their side lost. Is he so naive to believe that he could have made the party's march to Parliament happen were others not to be there? He did realise years back that he was not as charismatic as Atal-ji. Barely had he said he wants to own moral responsibiity and quit, the idiomatic lip-service that he should not quit rose inside the party; but in just over three hours it died at the same speed it rose with and now they are already clamouring among themselves, WHO NEXT - You or me?

The trouble with all those who are magnetic enough but not charismatic is that they lack that extra moderation. Atal-ji never did anything that was politically flamboyant. Manmohan never has either. Sonia doesn't too. The ability of a leader in India to retain the mass hysteria to their side, today, comprises of a certain quality to be in the middle and yet not get emotional. In some cases the lack of emotions or intelligence can also be helpful, which leads us to the burial of Left.

More than anything else that happened in Elections 2009, it is not the so-called end of Advani that will be remembered, but people's faith in democracy and the eradication of superstitious belief that socialism can exist in India in the garb of communism.

Communism calls itself a rational and social way out of religious beliefs that generate superstitions and lack of thinking as well as gives rise to capitalistic inequality. Accepted, the commies have their right to whatever they want to think. After all, we believe in Freedom of Speech and Thought. Have people forgotten the old axiom that anything that is an "ism" is not very different from religion! They also seem to have not taken notice of the fact that since the liberalisation era India has been inexorably catapulting and inevitably spiralling downwards towards the nadir of a free market economy that would lead its Dow Jones and Hang Seng listings ultimately towards its own little share in the global meltdown of economy when it would happen. We may today say proudly that India was not as affected as other and developed nations. The lesser the share the less the damage, but... it did, didn't it not?

We do live among a generation that believes in everything being material and everything is there to be questioned. More suicides and more harassments and more ills than positives. The other day I had an argument with someone about how there are more unhappy people in the current generation than ever. He said that statistically there are more happy people. It also statistically means that the population has increased several fold over a period faster than rabbits fornicate and profligate and populate! When the number of happy people increase, the number of unhappy people also increase by that same logic that where there are more people being born there are also more people dying, if you go by number theory; and where number theory comes into play, capitalism sooner than latter overhauls any other belief because it becomes the Right of the Might and not the Might of the Righteous.

This is where Communism and Communist parties got it wrong. They thought that they had the UPA by its proverbial balls during their last reign. The Left blackmailed UPA with its one-point agenda of "NO to Nuke Deal" if it is from US! The UPA strongly proved them wrong.

It looked, from the LEFT angle, only for a while. After all, the elections were round the corner and there's enough sluice gates that could be damaged across the country. Then again, the LEFT has not delivered to the people what the capitalists have not either. I strongly think the one single favour the Indian voters did to themselves in this election is that they threw the Left; but are they finally and totally out or just bloody and broken, not yet battered and defeated? The coming days would prove that.

One thing is certain: Life is not that bad on the RIGHT SIDE OF SAFFRON as they still are the only other national party and they do have the best single majority this side of Congress and hence shall continue their seat-warming on the bridesmaid side. They have been the best Opposition party in the history of our 60 plus year old democracy and we need them in the opposition. If they are good enough to do positive developmental contribution economically and politically in their respective areas, there is no reason why they cannot have a better cheer next time around. Their statement that they are willing to be a constructive opposition seems earnest for the moment... unlike THE LEFT SIDE OF RED who are already sliming their heads together as to how they can dismantle their Third Front and go Back to associating themselves with a secular governement in the face of a fundamental opposition. To give a little twist to the Giorgio Moroder song of the distant past in what could become an NDA post-poll song of woe, "YOU ARE LEFT, SHE's RIGHT, I AM WRONG".

The Illogical Mandala of Indian Politics...

2009-05-16T15:25:00.007+05:30

...and the sad plight of the Indian voter!

Yes... this must indeed be the saddest day in the life of an average voter of the world's most populous democracy!

Bharath is 2000+ years old. Hindustan is as old as the Moghul invasion. India is about 62 years old. In the middle of this confusion are caught millions of millions of people who do not know which concept justifies their geographical existence.

And today... it is all becoming very clear. The so-called world's largest democracy is after all the world's largest monarchy. Back up at the centre until the EIC came to rule us, we were always dynastic. Which ever way we look, our country had always had dynastic and monarchic rule. Down south, the Cholas, Cheras, Pandyas, Pallavas, Chalukyas... and now it is the Karunas. The fact that today the Indian voting majority has just about ended crowning Congress at the centre and the Tamils the DMK is proof of my proverbial pudding. Not that the BJP or the AIADMK are angels and the Congs and the DMKs are demons. All of them are the same flea abuzz the pee. But, the question is, are we the pee? or the peed? One good thing in the middle of this electoral melodrama is the Left is left behind and the Third Front has been put in its place. This just goes to show that if you desert those who depend and believe in you, Divine Providence takes over. The Mayawatis and the Karats and the Yechuris of the world can take a flying trip to moon and fall back or stay in the orbit.

It is always my belief that an ideal state to have is a two-party system, where one ascends power for the development of the country and the other becomes the watchdog opposition that criticises constructively. Not that my belief is unique or invented. It is at the root of the spirit of democracy. So, it is good in a way that the Congress is retaining power and without this time having to resorting to the barter-minded pimps who are ready to sell their ideologies for the sake of key portfolios or minimum common programme in their or their party's or their state's interest; or for that matter this time Congress is not going to be blackmailed by two-timing commies who won't even be respected in a communist state. I am glad for Congress for this result. This is one reason I feel it was better that BJP must not come to power this time... for they would have come to power only with the help of such species as we discussed above, although in different name packages! Now the Third and the Fourth are just that in the Houses when the parliamentary sessions would begin. The debate would happen primarily between the Party in Power and the Respected Opposition. The Third and the Fourth cannot topple any motion or there won't be no more armtwisting at no-confidence motions. Good for them, good for us.

Talking of the Opposition: yesterday, during my conversation with a long-time friend of mine, who also happens to be a psephologist - those guys who analyse elections and try justifying the statistics of ballots in retrospect! - I happened to mention that I had a feeling BJP would end up and must end up in the opposition because they would never get an absolute majority to go up the pedestal. Some of the reasons are: 1) Advani is not your ideal moderate head that is fit to be a Prime Minister of the country, 2) BJP is yet to come up with a prospective incumbent to that post (and Nitish is an ally, not an incumbent of the party and has also expressed his self-doubts), 3) the Mayawatis and the Sharad Pawars can only tug at the bit but not hold it - they are all too regional in their presence whatever said and done (and in Maya's case it has been proved so) and 4) the Congress orchestration is so fine-tuned and well-oiled a machinery that is almost 100 years old that they can sway sentiments and put together that vicious combination of pseudo-secular indoctrination and the image of Gandhi in the minds of the unsuspecting mass of the North... AND 5) they have too many more alliances to hammer up the 2/3rs majority that UPA requires. Look at what has happened. 202 out of 543 just by themselves. Give them another 3 months of campaigning time, they'll get 275 themselves!

How true! I have never been proved true thus in my entire life on any issue. I don't like the fact that UPA is forming the government, because I keep asking, albeit rhetorically, are these the choices before a voting Bharat-putra? The trouble with Indian politics is our Constitution. We need to urgently topple it over its head and scrap the IPC and build a fresh preamble and a constitutional rule book. We are stuck with the British colonial legacy, only we call it IPC. It could as well be EPC. Who better than Congress to run the legacy! Are they not the ones who connived with the British and made us A NATION DIVIDED? And then went out of their way give separate existence to the two physically divided parts of our neighborhood Spiderman Pakistan? After all, these Congressmen and women of the Gandhi family are all Britain educated, no? I have to digress here...

Today, at my MYT workshop, there is this 9th standard kid who thinks the Gandhi - like a lot of uneducated people of India - in the Indira, Sanjay, Rajiv, Rahul etc. belongs to Mohandas Karamchand! I had to take her through a short course in history to clear where the Gandhi comes from! And there is someone else who has not heard of Win Chadda or Ottavio Quattrochi or the Italian antique dealer connection of Sonia. How much of history would Congress continue to dress up with 123 and Nuke Deal and Aam Aadmi and NREGA? I talked, also today, to a folk theatre activitist who gives me statistical take of how much of NREGA's 80 bucks a day reached the Aadmi. All this would look like Cong-bashing. So be it. They are not fit to rule even the come-full-moon submerging islands of the far coasts of Lakshadweep. Then again, neither is BJP.

Coming back... if this is the case of the country's only two national parties caught in the regional party politics, what way out for you and me? We keep alternating between these two parties and most people vote for Cong because they hate BJP because they have been so glamorously indoctrinated against BJP for what the Sene and the Sena and others do. One doesn't understand how easily the allegedly educated (because being educated seems to be a sin and crime to me as we don't take anything but reactionary measures) and urban Indians fall prey to well-orchestrated press campaigns of breast-groping men in Sene outfit which gets equated with Bhartiya Janata Party that also incidentally shares the saffron colour with other religiously Hindu in belief outfits. Why is it that an average Hindu has to shirk from the very terminology that defines his existence because every one who is not a Hindu and in a position to doctor things through their access to press is power-mongering and thus rally behind any one else who is not a Hindu in the name of secularism? Is secularism only Hindu bashing in this country? When the sewerage goes into the Bay of Bengal or Arabian Sea, does it gets separated on the basis of Hindu shit or Islamic shit or Christian shit or Dalit shit? Why then should we vote on the basis of secularism or the lack of it? It just dawns on me that the average voter of the world's most populous democracy is no better than that shit he shits, according to these politicians. And we continue to vote... and we continue to believe in the democratic process that extradicts the Quattrochis and the CBI that abides by a Supreme Court decision that always favours Congress. Is the Supreme Court also Congress' hand-puppet? How does Congress continue to keep its stranglehold so long? Will the allegedly educated urban Indian who is more bothered about his space to fornicate with or without reason and choose to consider morality as a conveniently changing view point depending on his inebriation levels ever wake up to ask the right questions even if the issues that bother this nation does not touch (leave alone affect) him/her? Don't get me wrong! I am not asking you to vote for options open besides Congress here! What use is the choice we have? Only remember... because one doesn't like the deep sea one can't dive into the devil's mouth or vice-versa. We need to create options, we need to take well-argued and analytical stand. How do you do that, ask you! I hear. I shall give one small example.

On my way to cast my vote, at the gates of my electoral booth, I ran into a friend who came out having voted. I asked him casually if he had done with the process. Inspite of my not asking, he volunteered that he had voted for Congress. I asked him aghast when he is going to change his family tradition when he - who used to work high up in a leading Chennai newspaper and as opinionated as a jehadi can get about Indian politics - countered me by asking what is the option? I told him several, one among which was 49(O). He said he was not willing to compromise on his physical security since 49(O) requires that you should disclose your identity! Now, if you do, that is what taking a stand is! Assuming that the goondas of the parties of India would sorround your house like the NSG during the Mumbai Taj Siege and hence do not want to compromise on your security is what I call the spinelessness of an educated urban Indian! Do we think that the powers that be are watching us like the Big Brother of 1984 or the Overseers of Zamyatin's WE and send people to destroy all the 49(o) voters? How shallow can we get? For god's sake, this is a country of 1.2 billion and 49(O) as of today can't usher India-shaking changes. But at least, one would have taken a stand! I really do adore all those who voted for the Independent candidates because at least they chose an option, winning or not! This is probably how we could begin.

We have FIVE GOOD YEARS TO DO THAT STARTING TODAY... let's begin... NOW!

The Curious Case of CSK

2009-04-29T20:22:00.002+05:30

What is happening to Chennai Super Kings at IPL 2? The question that surfaced the other day in some column or some TV channel crops up again: Is MSD a lucky captain or is MSD an anagram for MDS (read MiDaS)? Well... at least for now, looking at 1 out of 5 wins and 1 washed out game that was a certain win (against a beleagured KKR), CSK's ante looks to be up and out.

If one took a closer look at The Curious Case of CSK, there is nothing strange. History is only repeating itself, only so! Last year it was Deccan Chargers Hyderabad, this year it seems to be CSK at the moment. At the moment because, they still have 9 matches to go and if they make the semis, which is not a very BIG IF, but an IF... then anything is possible. As the prosaic and hackneyed adage goes, cricket is a funny game!

Let's get back to what the curious case is. Last year DCH was doing everything right and still ended up the bottom of the table. It was the inability to put together the extra oooomph of winning touch. The problem was that they probably possessed too many big guns.

Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, Herschelle Gibbs, Rohit Sharma... and yet they couldn't wind it up! Similar problem for CSK this time around: Matt Hayden, Andrew Flintoff, Albie Morkel, Jacob Oram, MSD, Suresh Raina... and yet! May be when you have too many big 'uns you expect one to survive if another fails. Look at KKR - it is happening. Brendon McCullum, Chris Gayle, Brad Hodge, Saurav Ganguly and there's a few more as yet unvetted! When you know your stocks are limited, supply is handled frugally. A case at point: Rajasthan Royals in IPL - 1.

What other causes? The first 6 overs. The Power Play period. Last time around Gony, Balaji, Ntini, Amarnath and Murali were delivering. This time around, Gony is looking listless to say the least, Ntini and Amarnath are only seen being interviewed in the 7 and half minute time out or playing water-boys and Balaji has had some success. Joginder 'Iceman' Sharma is busy chewing his paan somewhere between the third man and the dug-out area. There is a limit to how much a recovering Balaji can do. So Murali is your only option. Also... that IPL truly derives from its local flavour is being proved time and again. Last IPL the Indian local recruits performed better in Indian conditions. This time around... it is the South Africans, barring Graeme Smith.

Look at what happened today to Royal Challengers Bangalore. They were struggling till last night. Suddenly, they cruised to a win, even if it is over KKR and even though the score line indicates a last ball victory. The four overseas recruits RCB played in the Eleven were all South Africans. It is indeed a strange scenario why Boucher came into the side this late. Boucher coming in because Rahul is back home is no excuse not to have played a man of the former's stature. I mean, he is the finisher for South Africa. Today RCB played Kallis, Roelf v d Merwe and Mark Boucher who are South Africans and play for South Africa. Of course, their captain is Kevin Pietersen. Now, we haven't forgotten KP is a South African by birth and almost, only almost played for S.Africa and moved to England when denied opportunity. And he is the biggest buy of RCB. So, again the local flavour doing the winning contribution theory holds water!

Eventually, here is the rub: may be CSK should keep Gony out and bring Ntini in. Rest
Albie... Yes, no point resting Badri because he is a pure batsman and his only problem is the inability to clear the ropes. Someone must tell Badri that his strength lies in playing inside the park than into the stands. When he is in flow, it is such a delight what his bat does to the cherry. The groundstrokes are breathtaking and next only to Sachin, Saurav, Rahul or VVS! Barring Mohali, no Indian ground was big enough last time. Also, his range of strokes are better than Morkel who either swings it right or left giving too much stump vision for the bowler thereby making himself vulnerable to well-bowled blockhole deliveries or disguised slower 'uns. He is more of an agrarian with the bat, Albie is!

I also do not think if Ntini, Balaji, Oram and Murali can't do it, neither can Albie win the match with the ball. So, either keep Badri and rest Albie or bring in another pure batsman. Grapevine, newspapers say, is M. Vijay may play instead of Badri, which is a bad idea. Kapugadera is no great slogger or match winner even in LOI for Sri Lanka except the odd contributions. So, why is he in the team in the first place? MSD seems to be in a fix. There is so much talent and shelf back-up, this team is spoilt for choice. MSD's golden touch is also losing out. Behind the cool exterior one can feel the sweat these days. He hasn't scored enough, hasn't middled enough and his ice-man Joginder has not delivered at death. More than Midas touch or luck what had served MSD in the past is his guts to try out lesser mortal and surprise the opponents with the unknown. People are getting used to his tactics. But to give the scenario a hard look and clinical analysis, nothing is wrong with CSK, they just need to understand they are very vulnerable if they don't shove the push hard to endemic levels up the opponent's face than minimal enema they are administering now.

There is a good match coming tomorrow against Wily Shane's Royals. If MSD passes this litmus test, CSK will march the rest of the way into semis. Remember, CSK has a 0-3 record against RR, and nothing like a victory to set this record right, in the process helping themselves to winning ways with IPL-2. All is not rotten in the state of CSK, yet!

IPL 2 and the carnival...

2009-04-19T14:38:00.005+05:30

Bakhtin would certainly have mused at the intellectual audacity of whoever named the IPL 2 a carnival. It certainly is not carnivalistic, leave alone carnival atmosphere. "SOME ONE PLEASE BRING ON THE REAL CROWD PLEASE" Will the Real Slim Shady please stand up!!!

As the IPL 2 bandwagon rolled out on stage yesterday, this was the thought that came to mind at the end of the first over. It still is not IPL. For one, surely missing were the fans, the provincial element and the parochiality of it all that makes up for the atmosphere, the din, the noise, the clash of cymbals, the fanfare, the cheer girls from our own climes... and that distinct clamour an average Indian fan brings on as he frantically gushes and blushes upon sudden recognition that he is being covered by the tv cameras and the thought that he is for that one instant the cynosure of the world cricket watchers' eyes! Oh, the lack of it all! Alas... what boots it incessant care, as Tennyson's Ulysses says! Sachin slams a delectable FOUR and the crowd sits smug. Taylor loses his stump first ball and Kohli does a brilliant run out and Uthappa runs amuck... the crowd is unmoved, Kumble does a 5 for 5... shit happens. No Fun this Safari, I tell you.

How do you expect a Natal Ninja to understand and empathise with the Chennai Super Kings chennaiite fan? Or perhaps the IPL people must have attached a local hyphenation to the Indian teams - CSK-Cape Town Comrades or RCB-Kwazulu Natal Combine etc etc...

If Lalit 'the commissioner' Modi thought - wisely too - that England would be a bad idea to host IPL 2 1) because the English are not noisy and IPL thrives on the hoopla around it and 2) the English would be saturated with cricket by the time IPL bandwagon bids farewell and T20 World Championship starts the very next day, he was right. If he thought the South Africans with a native culture and the Zulu beats would add bindhaas to the IPL 2, he surely went wrong. The local Indians couldn't match the Indians in India and the local South Africans 1) didn't have any empathy for the teams and 2) are still white skins and for that matter too confined by their Genteel roots. I won't be surprised if during the Knight Riders match SRK invades the pitch or shouts and whistles with fingers in his mouth some voice comes over the PA System "Quiet Please. Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen!"

IPL-Moditva has got the moolahs right not the hooplas! And what-o-what-o-what has Mandira the Extraaaaaaaaa Bedi done to her hair. I couldn't recognise the midget (in comparison) next to Simon Doull on tv before the match yesterday. This IPL is sooooooooo phoney, I would like to call it Indian Phoney League. Bring on the real crowd please!

2009-04-17T10:54:00.006+05:30

presents

CAMP NEUVE

A different summer performance camp that combines:

Creative Dramatics
Movement Theatre
Story Performance
Public Speaking and Debating

Dates: May 4 – May 22 (excluding weekends)

Duration: 15 days

Time: 10 a.m to 1 p.m

Age Group: 12 to 19

The workshop would attempt to serve as a platform for both the creative as well as the analytical energies of the participants. While the dramatics and theatre aspects would prepare them to learn about their own body, voice and gesture capabilities, the public speaking sessions would try and build self-confidence and self-belief.

The introductory sessions to debating would teach them to develop methodical approach to research, analysis, reasoning and assertive presentation of their ideas. We believe performance is not limited to stage and should extend to facing real-life situations.

An informed speaker is a good manager, a trained actor is a good communicator, but an informed and trained individual is a better leader. AND COMMUNITY NEEDS GOOD AND ABLE
LEADERS.

For price details, application forms and enrolment, email masquerade.madras@gmail.com

Masquerade presents...

2009-04-17T10:52:00.001+05:30

Masquerade - the performance group

presents

Peter Shaffer's

LETTICE & LOVAGE - a comedy

in the cast: Ramya Mukund, Maheswari Nair, Aishwarya Mahesh, Hrishikesh Siddartha & Dileep Rangan
Light Mgmt.: Harsha Ganesh
Sound Mgmt.: Mathivanan. R
Stage Mgmt.: Abhinav Suresh
Design & Direction: KK

Dates: 23 & 24 May, 2009
Time: 4 pm & 7.15 p.m
Venue: The Top Storey, Alliance Francaise, Chennai

Passes: Rs. 100/-
Available from 15 May 2009
For Booking Details, watch this space.

Summer is finally here!

2009-04-01T20:05:00.003+05:30

Yes... I am truly kicked!

Just now I finished recommending a few movies to few friends. Am on this movie spree. And I am reading what I would truly name as the first indigenous attempt at espionage and counter-espionage about Indo-AfPak (a recent coinage of Mr. Obama admin) - LASHKAR by Mukul Deva. Hmmmm... interesting. If you are an Indian, inciting... if you're on the other side of the border... infuriating. How much it is true, I know not, nor would we probably know of! But... as a read, quite good. My brother is contemplating reading it, but plans to leave shortly back to Philly and is not quite sure if he would be encouraged to read it in-flight, what with a name like this! Crazy Americans!!!

More Later!

Markus Zusak's The Book Thief

2008-12-28T00:45:00.003+05:30

Book Review in progress...

Book - THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak

I haven't really read a book in a long time. So when I set my eyes on The Book Thief during one of my aisle-haunts at the book shops of Chennai, it gave me a twinkle and a twitch of the eye - the book's cover, I mean - and my instincts were to pick it and read the blurb. There's this big weakness in me to read any novel dealing with the German culture and past - a weakness I am not alone in harbouring! The last book I read about Germany in a fictional form was Henry Porter's BRANDENBURG and am still reliving it from time to time. The tale was haunting. So when the blurb told me this is the story of a little girl during Nazi Germany, I bought it unquestioningly! After all, I had also picked a new copy of Irving Stone's Agony and Ecstasy since whoever had borrowed my copy had vanished with it. So, if this book doesn't work out, I can at least go back to Michaelangelo treating his customers with disdain and jumping his patron's wife with total abandon! So, there I was... with the book in my hand and the bolster on the sides! At home...

I don't repent having bought it! How often do you come across a first-book so cannily written. The ruse is interesting. Zusak's narrator is DEATH... along with his little protagonist, a ten year old girl who thieves books! Zusak, the first page says, is an Australian writer. I have a little weakness for Australian writers as well. Patrick White and Peter Carey! Am still reading this book, let me see how it ends. So far... it is the single most poignant book I have read this year. Will keep you posted.

Long Time Gone... I know!

2008-12-19T21:53:00.002+05:30

Yeah, that pretty much sums up. I just visited and posted on impulse and nostalgia. It's been gruelling few months since taking up teaching. A lot of serious good posts pending. Not necessarily on theatre though. Hardly have watched any play this year. But been reading a lot and hoarding new books and newer books. Must post some day soon!

EXHIBITION - Theatrical relief from Land...

2008-09-15T12:58:00.001+05:30

EXHIBITION - Theatrical relief from Land...

CIT is heartening to see theatreenthusiasts watching plays ormelodramas in spite of the manydigital attractions and dozens ofsophisticated movie theatres inthe city. It reinstates communit...read more...

Tribute to an Unknown Soldier - Meher Baba

2008-01-17T23:15:00.000+05:30

For most people, the name Meher Baba would conjure up images and write-ups about the Saint Meher Baba. I am certain, not so for those of my generation and before - for whom the domestic cricket meant a lot more than Test matches featuring visiting foreign teams. For me specifically, the Ranji Trophy matches as well as the Gopalan Trophy matches of the 70s hold a lot more fondness than any other form of cricket. These and the Buchi-Babus were the ones I grew up watching. And the days I hung tirelessly around Southern Railways Institute ground watching Abdul Jabbar and the Binny Ground watching Venkataraghavan bowl. Of course, the special day when my uncle came and took permission to take me out of school early so that I get to watch Sunil Gavaskar play for Mafatlal at Loyola College Grounds. Memories... memories... memories!

I remember playing my road cricket one evening in the mid-70s. I was fielding closer to the batsman, on the road. In front of me, unfurled was the Test Match Brochure I had procured while watching the India-England series that featured the feared English pace attack of Arnold, Old and Co. The page that unfurled in front of me was that of the profile of Eknath Solkar. That was how mad I was at cricket then as a little scrawny boy in the 70s. For me then, as to millions today, cricketing heroes did much more than gods in temples. Eknath Solkar was my fielding icon and Ramnath Parkar & Gundappa "Vishy" Vishwanath batting gods. Legions were my fight with friends about who's better Sunil or Vishy! Can you take it any better when I say, 14 out of 18 centuries by Vishy paved India's wins?

This post is dedicated to one such great dashing favourite of mine... who sadly, recently passed away at a not so old age of only 58, succumbing to cancer.

MEHER BABA - who played for Andhra chiefly, at a time when Andhra was like Tripura today in India's cricket map; who I incidentally had the opportunity to watch as a 9-going-10 year old boy at Salem, playing against Tamil Nadu that featured greats like Venkataraghavan, Michael Dalvi, V. Siva, V.V. Kumar (he of the legend that goes that Kumar refused to take guard in a match featuring Dennis Lillee on his run-up to bowl. I don't know how true that was considering Kumar played Test in '61 while Lillee started first class cricket in mid-60s! But this is a nostalgic bitchbyte from memory lane discussion), Satwendar Singh and T E Sreenivasan. The reason I remember this match is not just because of Meher Baba. He did nothing much in this match, although he was known for his exciting and intrepid approach to batting. It was because Venkat came two down, if my memory serves right, before T.E ! But I was too young to fathom the importance of all those then. One more thing I remember is it was a really "gone to the wire" matches which was won by 1 run or 3 runs. Who won? I forget!!! Back to Meher Baba! He played prominently for Andhra, very briefly for Hyderabad and was a regular feature for almost a decade for South Zone against both other zonal teams as well as visiting foreign teams in those days when visiting teams played a lot more practice matches with domestic teams to get themselves acclimatised than like now!

In my cricketing memory, Meher Baba would always be remembered for his dashing and fearless left-handed batting much more to be identified always with either Tamilnadu or Sri Lankan cricketers (has there been any county or nation that has produced so many left-handed dashers compared to these two, I really wonder. Of course, New Zealand comes close in the south-paw department, but not quite there!). I have not much seen him play, but read a lot about and heard commentaries of - at times when the golden voices of Suresh Saraiya (who is still commentating, even now during the on-going Down Under series) and Anand Setelvad dominated the radio and radio was our staple diet and main source of live cricket! I visited cricinfo to get some stats about Meher Baba and this is the link, if you want to get there: http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/india/content/player/31312.html

People who have watched Baba in action please fill me in. Or anything about 70s Ranji Cricket! May his soul RIP!

Digging into my favourites....

2008-01-17T22:43:00.000+05:30

I wasn't really intending to do this. But, my daughter set it off. In my previous post I had confessed to going moist-eyed - to put it mildly - after watching Taare Zameen Par. This post has been prompted by hearing that wonderful voice of Shankar Mahadevan in the title song. While the world is going ga-ga over Shaan's Bum Bum Bole, I think the title song takes the cake. So soulful. I guess it has to do with the movie itself. Very soulful. And I have met or spoken to hundreds literally now. Not one has not confessed to unabashedly going "lump-in-the-throat" to "cried-on-every-frame" at some level or other. While I was on that, I mulled over the other "made me moist-eyed" movies. And surprise surprise... some among them were teacher related movies. It has nothing to do with the fact that I am one. But take a look at the list of my favs in that genre: Dead Poets Society must rate on the top of the heap; i.e. until Taare came along! Then the movie of Poitier's based on Brathwaite's apocryphal (to me) novel - To Sir With Love. What a masterpiece creation that novel is! The movie was in my opinion so true to original. Of course, alongside ranks its Bollywood kin Sir featuring Naseeruddin Shah. I remember the day vividly - it was not too often I went for Hindi movies then. But this was one of them. Back in the 80s? I remember seeing it in VeeCumCee Emerald that used to be part of the proud edifice called Safire Complex - never mind the "what later became sleaze joint" popular VeeCumCee (which later virtually became the We Cum, See! joint for quickies and prostitution!) Blue Diamond. There have been several fantastic english movies that have boarded the Blue Diamond bus. But... when you hit the bottom, it gets really bottomer.... Anyway, before I get nostalgic and start contemplating a hubristic eulogy to Safire Complex on which stands weed growth and rubble on Mount Road now, let me cut it off! But...

The following are my education or children related favs: Taare Zameen Par, Dead Poets' Society, To Sir With Love, Sir (surprisingly Kamal's remake "Nammavar" doesn't kick me at all!), the Promethean Pink Floyd video Another Brick in the Wall and lastly but not in that order, Pearl Jam's JEREMY!

Now while we are on movie trip, let me also put down my Top Ten Tamil Comedies. I am not meme-ing anyone on this or anything else. But you can respond with your own Top-10s! Welcome. Here goes:

1) Kaadhalikka Neramillai

2) Ninaivil Nindraval

3) Anbee Vaa

4) Uttaravindri Ulle Vaa

5) Ullaththai Alli Thaa

6) Michael Madana Kamaraajan

7) Singaaravelan

8) Magaraasan & Kaadhalaa Kadhalaa

9) Pancha Thantiram

10) Thenali

I guess I do some kind of compensatory justice to my not including Nammavar in my list earlier. 5 (6) out of 10 (11) in the list you would see are Kamal movies. Well, goes without saying, with his sense of timing and eye for comic nuances, obviously Kamal comedies are off the rack better than anyone else's this side of Sridhar's movies. I am sure, top of 7 out of 10 people's all time tamil comedy list would contain #1 - Kaadalikka Neramillai. Of course there are other movies of yore which are so special for their comic moments - Thiruvilayaadal, Ooty Varai Uravu, several Chandrababu and Nagesh as well as NSK movies, Thillaana Mohanaambal... even the much later Ramarajan's Karagaatakaaran (inspired obviously and modelled on Thillaaana - similar to Sangamam. Three other movies I would like to add to my list, if I had a Top-12 would be Sabaash Meena, Kalyaanam Panniyum Brahmachari & Sabaabathi (bringing up the Baker's Dozen). One may also mention stuff like Aan Paavam and Nethi Adi by Pandiya Rajan and Indru Poi Naalai Vaa by Bhagyaraaj, but they wouldn't somehow get into my Top-10 for reasons I can't explain!

Anyway... so much for Tamil movie nostalgia. I shall stop here. The rest is laughter!

My last Blog for 2007... or is it already the first for 2008?

2008-01-01T00:02:00.000+05:30

It's that time of the night. Very Janus-like. The time I start posting this is still 2007. Perhaps when it loads it is already 2008. In any case... at least am not wasting my night getting drunk or riding on the beach manically shouting "Haffy Nu Yaar" to anonymous passers-by. Writing... typing... data processing... some thoughts. So we are safely in the realm of cerebration rather than celebration. Of course, through my closed windows I could already hear infrequent sounds of wishing crackers and whizzing rockets and swishing chakkars.

I would like to place on record in this my 95th post (if only I had been a bit more active, this could well have been my 100th!), some moments from 2007 I want to retain in my heart and mind. Top of that list has to be:

the wetness in my eyes after watching Taare Zameen Par. I haven't really done that in a while.

Number 2: Some readings that have made me rethink my priorities and the reality:

Andha Yug by Dharamvir Bharati, The Life of Ramanuja, Indira Parthasarathi's Nandankatha. These have in turn driven me to do more reading on these respective topics as well as visionary religious luminaries.

Number 3: My relative inactivity in theatre. I produced and directed just one mainstream play. Am not unhappy at all about it.

Number 4: I have delineated a clear thematic focus to my fledgling novel that had gone into a huge hibernation and the beginnings of which can be still found hanging around here. I have resumed work with DARKEST BEFORE DAWN and hope to finish it in the next two years or before!

Number 5: I absolutely look forward to 2008 with the belief, faith and trust that the rest of the Border-Gavaskar trophy Down Under India-Australia on-going series is going to go India's way if only the Indian team believed in itself as much as I believe in them. Honestly, cricket has been really an electrifying talking point of 2007 as far as India is concerned. And I shall definitely do a post on Indian Cricket 2007 before my 100th post hits the deck.

Wishing you all a Happy Gregorian-reformed-Georgian New Year, given the fact that you and I may not culturally share the same new year! Wish you a Happy 2008 if you accept Gregorian Calendar... Wish you a Happy 53 if you believe the revamped Georgian Calendar. For further confusions, go here...

DUS KAHAANIYAAN - an Indian Decalogues?

2007-12-31T23:44:00.000+05:30

Seven Visionary Directors. Ten Spectacular Stories. One Cinematic Journey... so goes the tagline of this cinema production. That perhaps is what best qualifies this venture for this is no one single story movie or one thematically united episodic movie. No doubt, it is an impressive attempt in the Indian movie firmament, when run on the mill movies dominate with their old wine in new bottle formats. But, but...

What they did not tell you about DUS is this: the twist in the tale is the tail... and... it has probably one of the best line-up of actors since "LOC - Kargil". Nevertheless, it sadly fails to interest you. No aspersions on the actors or the quality of acting. When you have Shabana Azmi, Naseerudin Shah, Nana Patekar, Anupam Kher, Manoj Bajpai and Sanjay Dutt for acting as well as Mandira Bedi, Neha Dhupia, Dia Mirza etc to sizzle the screen... and several other impressive names and then some more, you expect a buffet of pyrotechnics and thespian thrills; but...!

It doesn't matter how good your players are, if the playing field is bad, you can't put up a good total on the board. DUS, thus, looks like the best batting line-up in the world - the Indian cricket team - that fails to deliver at the crunch. The title is the most impressive part of this Sanjay Gupta - Sanjay Dutt cohort. The 10 short films remind one of perhaps the greatest film-making attempt under a single title - The Decalogues of Krystof Kieslowski, the great Polish director; but there ends the parallel. Rambling, boring, cliched, predictable fare this one is.

Let me give you a sample. You go and judge for yourself. Or the other alternative is this, you can wait for Moserbaer or someone to bring out a 28 buck vcd or 34 buck dvd, buy a copy and see. There's no hurry here. After all, 10 stories in two sitting, if you count the interval after the first 5 tales, is a bit too much. Not every one is used to the film chamber or film association screening of two, three films in the same sitting. Or you can even borrow it from someone else who wants to add it to their collector's chest simply because it is allegedly different from other Indian films (if you discount the fact that Satyajit Ray has done it decades back!) So... let me get to the content of DUS.

We start with MATRIMONY - the first of the short flick. The flick starts very impressively. The camera does interesting things. Stays where it is or cuts and cuts back without ambiguity between Mandira Bedi's lips and her husband's glass of mango juice. He leaves, she smiles, they coo to each other sweet nothings... and then she leaves. Cut. Ms Mandira in the back seat of car, voice over: "I am Pooja Sarin, the bored and lonely wife of a multinational's vice-president". Overlooking the bad use of possessive pronoun, my mind starts thinking. A-ha! If I just replace Ms Bedi with Ms Sherawat (not much of a difference actually!), and accept neither Arbaaz nor Sudanshu Pandey are equals for Emraan Hashmi in the bilabial department, I think there is a Murder or other hot semi-porn flicks of its ilk. Only... I wonder and am piqued, how can they make a semi-porn flick that you can watch uncensored the next time you travel in a Lufthansa flight, in just 12 minutes. My fears get allayed. Soon Pooja Sarin is finished making love to her army-boy lover Adi (that's how! you skip the vital parts and like a bikini just show the bare minimum to excite the viewer!!) and he breaks the bow with a customary twang: the boy is going to the border, not before he has gifted her a nice necklace. Hey... wait a minute. Yeah, you got it figured. It's D-A-H-L, Roald Dahl all over. Yeah yeah yeah. No new year's gift for figuring it out. And do you need me to continue the story?

Well, for unwhetted viewers of populist bollywood movies, these shorts would come as whiffs of fresh breath. Each tale has the O'Henry twists in the tail. But the bottom line is... the pattern gets to you. The tail is too sun-burnt to look healthy. Movie after movie after movie of repetitions about marital discord and flings and betrayals in an urban scenario, as though the bourgeoisie and the emerging nouveau riche urban middle and upper middle class have only a metaphorical middle finger in their minds - whether it is in the back of the Mercedes or the backroom of a CEO's office or in between brunches and lunches! Mr. Sanjay Gupta must give a little more credibility to the urban livers and lovers, even if he shows only Mumbai-ites. Now the last straw... as though he and his other directors and 10+ story writers and 6 or 7 music directors as well as screenplay writers have no faith in the thespians of the movie, they push the children of bollywood's lesser gods in the first half. And what have we. Besides Manoj Bajpai and an older Amrita Singh, all the big names are kept in the back pack. Or the back pack contains inferior stories and had to be beefed up with bigger performers?

Now then! Coming to the object of my post: the movie bears no parallel to any work of art, leave alone The Decalogues by Kieslowski. There is no grace nor seeking Grace here like in the case of the Kieslowskian protagonists. Of course, both the TENs (DUS and Decalogues) have a lot of focus on female protagonists and both the lot try and grapple with human existence, but those of DUS grapple with stupid and unnecessarily glamorised sordidities of urban existence. Their daily lives have cultural myths and urban legends deflating their seeking something elusive, no doubt. Nevertheless, these concerns are absolutely trivial and would not even appeal to the majority of the urban Indians, not remotely in a broader context. Their concerns are several other things.

Only Bollywood can come up with a sold-by-the-soul belief that urban Indians have different concerns from non-urban Indians. Slickness in movie-making need not make one believe that it can happen only with slick decors, suave settings as well as suitings, silky locales and interiors aided by stylish lighting and svelte cars as well as clevage-popping heroines. Slickness is in the planning of frames and editing to aid a strong narrative. Film-making is no different from other forms of story-telling. And the telling is what is important. Not necessaril the how. There are better themes and issues to shoot flicks on. What a waste of meters and kilometers of film rolls, when there are so many struggling artists carrying dreams to emerge as mainstream directors and storytellers.

Having said that... there are three flicks that are the saving grace of this TEN TALES: Pooranmashi, Gubbar and Zahir. And the attempt to give the Jimmy Shergill starrer High on the Highway a touch of Natural Born Killers, though laughable is tenuously laudable.

Rain Rain Go Away...

2007-12-19T19:47:00.001+05:30

Sounds silly to title a post thus after an old nursery rhyme, but... it's been one blerry frustrating long week, ever since the Met Dept actually predicted a low-pressure depression in the bay or thereabouts... and for the first day it looked pretty usual - situation normal and Met Dept mis-predicting - before day-before-night when it started getting windy in the middle of the night. After that... it's history! There hasn't been any let down in the downpour. It's pissing every blerry 10 mins. Can't go out, but can't stop panicking since tons of work is pending. On top of that... had to travel to Haddows Road at 10 in the morning on Tuesday to keep an appointment for a show slated for Friday at Oxford Bookstores. And then... after blowing about 250 smses about the show... had to cancel / shelve / postpone the show. And another 250 smses informing the postponement of the show.

Besides that... missing all the early morning Perumal kovil pongals of Margazhi since this rain ain't letting me go around the Mylapore Iyengar temples. Very depressing. The best that could be done was to stay home and savour mum's pongal on 1st day of Margazhi over Malola Kannan's rendition of Andal's Thiruppavai! Well... beggars can't be choosers.

And, unsuccessfully tried writing a post denigrating myself for sacrilegiously letting my mind even recognise that DUS KAHANIYAAN actually means THE DECALOGUES! How on earth can one even compare or dare to compare - even if at just the title level - the Sanjay Gupta-Sanjay Dutt crap with Kieslowski's gift to film world! Anyway... the movie is absolute crap. And for what it's worth, I shall try and post that ridiculous post of mine. Please try not to read it.

But but but... on the brighter side... I bought 3 books, read one and a half and ended doing another comparison (in mind of course) that shall presently take the shape of another post. Book 1 - POORVA by Lakshmi Devanath (and the book I contrasted and compared with - Poile Sengupta's VIKRAM & VETAL); Book 2 - Sri Ramanuja (in tamil). I wonder, if he were born in England, would they have knighted him and made an Anagram out of Sri? Silly PJ! Book 3 - ANDHA YUG - yes, that classic by Dharamvir Bharathi in an english translation by Alok Bhalla.

Also... re-editing and titling THUS SPAKE SHOORPANAKHA. I think I shall have it recast and performed in the near future; but not before I produced Mohan Narayan's new play - THE TRUTH ACCORDING TO DEMAS, GESTAS & OTHERS - that I've been working since January this year. That is a real record for me: actively working on one single production constantly and rigorously without a break for almost 12 months. And to think I haven't done any production in the meanwhile. Well, after about 355 days of research, 17 workshop days, 12 changes in casting and 4 re-edits besides having driven poor Mohan to the wall and wit's end, I guess we are well on the way to a good production. The cast that's been around for 12 months and the ones that got settled around last week are to be credited for their faith in me and the work. I think it is a very proud moment for me personally to have a cast-crew that stays with the process and not jumping from show to show. They really are process-oriented. We need more such in Chennai. Just this morning I was talking to another director and she felt we really need actors who would derive more pleasure from sheer work than doing roles on stage. So... the work is ready to roll out on to rehearsals. But 5 more workshop days remain.

Meanwhile, work has started happening simultaneously on 1) DOWN THE ROAD, intended for whenever in 2008. First reading for a re-cast Shoorpanakha-Shakuni show begins this weekend. And the Carol Ann Duffy show is postponed to January 14th most likely.

In the middle of all this, I still manage to steal a kutchery here and a dance recital there. I was at Pethachi this evening... a good Narmada violin recital. But, gates were worse than a Masquerade play... 20 people in the audience. Makes me wonder what is the point in pricing tix at Rs. 500 and Rs. 300. I really pity the Sabhas, but respect their patronage in keeping the spirit of Margazhi kutcheris alive. May there always be Sabhas and may Margazhi Kutchery Season be bestowed with more crowds!

Until the next post!

Anil's Last Stand... IMPOSSICANT!

2007-11-10T08:56:00.000+05:30

Or is it BCCI's temporary stance?

The other day - a week or so back - my father and I were on another of our afternoon, post-lunch discussion about one of the three inevitables of our desh: cricket. And he did opine that if anyone must be made captain of Indian test team, it must be Anil Kumble. The logic: well, he's had a long, faithful and earnest career, the only blemishes being those overstays in the middle with his bat when team-thinktanks had delusions that he can bat in the slog overs and a lot of hot air capable of inflating zeppelins into high-altitude places flowed between his misses and the keeper's gloves. The only thing he hasn't had is captaincy. Inwardly I cursed my father: 'why do we need to heap that insult on Indian cricket's only true sportsman and on-field player?' Of course, BCCI must have heard my father's wish and not my un-wish. Anil today is the captain.

Now of course, when every dog has his day and unrequired comebacks or retentions in the team inspite of sustained and consistent non-performances, why not Anil! He has even scored that enviable comedy of a century that put the smiles back on a dressing room full of gloom in England recently. He has batted, bowled, fielded off fours and taken catches. As Kris Srikant recently told in his own inimitable idiotic way on Times Now late-night immediate reaction to Anil Kumble being made captain of Indian Test Team, he's a South Indian and even a qualified engineer (meaning he's got a degree...)!

And our - my father and mine - discussion proved meaningful in the aftermath. But... to what end? Being captain of Karnataka as well as now of India has only been by default. Has he deserved it? I mean, these days, being captain of a team in India is not earning accolades. It means an insult. The clowns who run the richest and most sinful organisation in the world pick someone only because someone else is not ready. Anil Kumble is the clown king till the crown prince gets ready. Anil deserved it much before. Of course, the stoic soldier he is, he will strive his best, without as much as a monosyllabic ayes or nahs.

But, my heart bleeds for him.

Crusade, Spiritual Counseling and being Born Again

2007-11-10T08:44:00.000+05:30

Ruminations - 2

Am I I? Or who am I? What is my identity? Is Identity a requisite? Does identity matter? Why then are there so many questions on identity in the first part of any application form? One thing is certain. This is a short paragraph, relatively speaking.

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Ruminations - 1

This is India. I mean, we are supposed to be Indians, from the country founded and raised originally on the banks of Sindh River and spread to occupy the sub-continent. May by the use of that word "occupy" is significant. May be not. I am not commenting. All is conjecture. Then again, Sindh, Inde, India, Hind all point to one thing: this is Hindu country. At least, twas! And yet, when I look around, what do I see. Three out of ten neighbours in every neighbourhood is likely to be a non-Hindu. Frequently there is bound to be a Muslim in this list and two out of every seven can be born-again Christians or within 500 meters there is bound to be an Islamic, if not, definitely a Christian worship place, a Fancy Goods Store or a Departmental or Provision store of the local variety run by a Muslim or Christian; to add to it, in certain localities, there may even be a Dhabba and some Tibetian or North-east student community presence indicating Sikh and/or Buddhist ilk. Yet, we are shouting about Hindu and anti-Hindu sentiments; and yet further, Hinduism is termed as a trampling religion that is non-secular. Parties are being accused of being fundamental and Hindu right-wing. The Prime Minister of this country is a Sikh. The person who ramrods the President and Prima Minsiter is a Christian. More unequivocally put, comes from the proximity of Vatican. The erst-while President was a Muslim gentleman. The current incumbent is a champion of underpriveleged; by which is meant the Dah-lits. Aren't they all? And yet this is called Hindu country and being Hindu has come to mean anti-secular... because, secularism aims at vernicht-ing that so-called Hindu identity in order to bring about a certain state of multi-religious, multi-sectarian society so that people are kept divided along religious, casteist, sectarian and yes, sexarian. I refuse to call it sexist, for often, again and unabashedly, in a very partisan and polarised way, that is equated to chauvinism, as though one can't be a female sexist. You see, you can't even say feminist as the antonym of chauvinist, like you can't call Christianity or Islam or Zorastrianism the antonym of Hinduism. Now of course, Sikhism or Buddhism are excluded conveniently because they are really the elite and ignorable minority. The antonym of Hinduism is the priveleged domain of Da-lits these days, like sexism equals chauvinism and feminism is a redemtive word for rallying for a noble cause. For: anything originally allegedly suppressed or underpriveleged or opportunity-denied has come to become elite, positive, inclusive, and hence minority. Very confusing? Imagine my confusion and visualise the lines of chaos running on my visage early in the morning (if you consider 6.30 a.m early enough!) when I pick my customary The Hindu and shake the inevitable supplementary sections and daily appendages of ink on sundry newsprint to shake off the trojans and backdoors that come stuffed like lettuce in a burger. What befalls? A handfull of 70gsm Christian literature falls out! Well, I always thought these sundry lettuce stuffings only take the form of fliers for furnitures and mosquito nettings and Reliance Fresh. But no! Conversion attempts begin at 4 a.m in the morning when they get lettuced into newspapers and fall out of the bread of commode-reading habit around 7 p.m at the latest. And yet this is Hindu country. And yet Da-lits are rallying for more and more minority status. And yet a Sikh is a Prime Minister of this country. You see, this is Congress country. Every party that can threaten their stay at top would be non-secularised, every society that can undermine their peaceful non-co-existence will be campaigned un-democratic or non-socialist friendly. The commies are the exception,being a law unto themselves. As useless and un-country-friendly. The commies don't know what they want. They neither can become majority, nor can reach consensus within themselves, or can successfully divide the bread between the monkeys. And yet, they rule the people who rule the man who rules the country. So who rules the country, what country are we in, what are our guiding principles, what is our religious or secular, democratic or fundamental status? Are we being secularised or vaticanised? Are we being made minority or majority? Is minority the majority or majority the minority? Are we being subverted or converted? Do people who talk of revolution or taking over of India by the military as the only purgative, laxative, whatever-ative realise it is not even working in the proverbial "hatti" called Pakistan, India itself being the Kabab of the sub-continental spread (after all, Pak-stan was a Pak-stance of Jinnah from pre-partition India). Is it better to be isolated from the main-land sub-continent, courtesy waters of Indian Ocean, like Sri Lanka? Is this blog about religion, politics or our country? Do we even have a single identity? Is it even possible to think of a physically undivided India since we are mentally so divided? Would anyone have the sanity to take the double-barrel and blow the heads of the dynastic party that rules this country who is in turn ruled by a 'woman' who is rank-outsider even in her country of origin? Would it really be the panacea for the common good of the people of this country if the figure-heads are wiped out? Or do we need to overhaul the nomenclatures of the political offices? Why are we even made aware of these differences? While we are going over this, hundreds of infants are dying, girls are being raped, boys are being kidnapped, women are being raped on the highways of Delhi, Noida or Gurgaon in the backseats of cars and SUVs. We remain indifferent because the 24 hour newschannels have benumbed our sensibilities to horrors by packaging them for their own TRPs. Gone are the days when newspapers use to carry news. There are only olds, thanks to live newschannels. Good news are no more news. Bollywood and ramps are the only celebrative affairs worth beaming as good news, else all news is blood, gore, or al-gore or bush. Only one thing is certain. This is a very very very long paragraph.

Rahul's Last Stand

2007-08-14T09:59:00.000+05:30

While people unaware of the title's significance should not mistake this as Dravid's 'perhaps' final stand in the company of a quick scoring Ganguly in India's second innings at The Oval, others who are aware of the undertone reference to Gen James Custer's Last Stand must realise there is an inversion of application involved here. The historical Custer took a stand against the Indians and wiped them out in an American version of Jallianwallah Bagh. Rahul the Indian (East, though) took his brave stand to wipe out the Whites (represented by English) in the recently concluded Test Series, thus bridging a relative history apparent only to crazies like me! Another metaphorical post-colonial piece of sorts! But, let's to cricket...

A lot of hue and cry - as the cliche goes - went into the making of an Indian second innings declaration at The Oval recently during the 3rd n-Power Pataudi Trophy India-England Test Series. Dravid was severally accused uniformly about an erroneous declaration tactic: it came late; later than it must have been; in the first place, he must have had the English to follow-on; an act of cowardice, etc etc.

Chandu Borde - the naam ka waste Manager cum Coach of sorts - was quick to the cover up at the press conference at the end of day 4, where England went back to the Pavilion and to nightly hibernation at 56 for no loss of wicket, secure in the feeling, at the worst, they can't lose this series. The English perhaps believe in the dictum of saving the battle even if the war is lost. Ah! that English sense of Honour and Pyrrhic victory!! Anyway, Mr. Borde quickly refuted the criticisms and allegations and accusation levelled at Dravid's decision saying the team was only ensuring that absolute no-loss situation first before anything else.

I wondered for a moment! If the same decision had been taken by a Mark Taylor or Mike Atherton or Nasser Hussain or even Ricky Ponting, how the Western media and pundits of the game would have applied plaudits that defy all logic and common sense in the name of sportsmanship and in accordance of bravery in the confines of the laws and the spirit of the game once played by the several Sirs Play a Lots of English and Aussie shores. Bah! Humbug! Nonsense and Crap! If Taylor does it, it is sporting declaration. If Dravid does it, unanimous cudgelling. The shrinking hypocrisy of it. But what else to expect, it is an Englishman's game!

The point is this. Even the fecking Indian press, especially the Indian television news channels that shamelessly have been tirelessly working proudly as foreign channel tie-ups, were bent on blackening Dravid and squeezing every bit of public sentiment and hysteria to defame Dravid, not in the interests of the game they seek to preserve through the several well-intended (or so we must believe) debates and big fights they initiate in special 1 hour slots everytime India takes a bashing. (It is another matter that if India does not get a bashing elsewhere, they will concoct one). Actually, it was a very brilliant tactical work by Rahul Dravid. The backdrop is this: no-one has successfully chased large scores at The Oval; the fifth day is infamous for its spin assistance, according to the pundits as well as the retro-statisticians of the game. And there was the risk that England, after the realisation that if they applied themselves a bit more (and some timely assistance and bursary from the umpires), they can emulate India's first essay big score, thus bat for two full days and save the test. Now, looking at how they played and almost scored 400 runs without losing out wickets much, they could have, had Dravid taken the chance to impose follow-on. What if they had scored 600 playing out a whole lot and Panesar & Anderson came back (with assistance from umpires of course) to bundle India out in the second innings. We have crumbled before. The chances of India crumbling on the 5th day to the swing and life of Anderson and Tremlett as well as spin of Panesar must have come into Rahul Dravid and the other think-tanks' calculation. And thus, it is a very wise decision to let India bat inspite of the temptation of imposing follow-on to attempt an innings win... or a 100+ target chase in the fourth innings. Also, with Zaheer nursing a leg-strain and Sreesanth not being able to find his rhythm, it was the best decision a captain would have taken. So stop taking about it, whiners and whingers of Indian cricket.

It was an absolutely wise Last Stand the Indian took against the Whites and ensured an Indian victory.

The Anatomy of Murder and the Killing Fields

2007-08-11T11:48:00.000+05:30

Hola... here goes the unedited version of my Citizen Report to The Grossly Commercial Company's recent international premiere of Timeri Murari's two plays at the Metro Plus The Hindu Theatre Festival 2007:

These are days when anything indigenous is exciting. I do not know whether it is a little low-esteem thing on the part of Indians. We go gaga when someone goes celeb internationally from India. Be it Paes, Sania, Narain Karthikeyan... be it embracing a newly discovered Sunita Williams... Glad to say, I don't get excited about it, because I think we Indians are no different from others if we put our attitude on our sleeve and work. But on the night of 7th August 2007, at the Metro Plus Hindu Theatre Festival, I WAS really excited for once. The reason... above all the brand building exercise of tall and hackeneyed names of luminary theatre personalities adorning the stage and groups that have become more the "got to be there" to add to the tradition and box-office assurance, there was something genuine to celebrate.

The Fest had its First. A Chennai playwright premiered at a Chennai Theatre Festival... aptly so in the Chennai Chapter. I think, the Chennai Chapter is a good idea. For those people grousing about Chennai Chapter in a condescending way, I guess over the last three years, the quality dished out from visitors has left often times a lot to be desired and it is to the credit of Chennai groups, they have acquitted much better. And last night The Grossly Commercial Theatre Company's international premiere of our own Timeri Murari's double bill on the anatomy of murder and killing and assassins' minds was something Chennai ought to be proud of.

The first play on the attempt to assassinate Salman Rushdie by two naive villagers desperate to make the big bucks was a very poignant and telling statement on the lure of the filthy lucre. It is many things at many layers. These two bumpkins are no different at one level from the agrarian exodus to the cities to get better living. At another level it is a study of a contaminated human mind that is very Faustian in the hands of the lady who is their Mephisto, luring them to sell their souls to a cause they don't even comprehend or believe in . But in the end it is a very BoBo-GoGo Becketian predicament, having waited for their own Godot, as they realise the futility of it all. The idea was beautiful. Mr. Murari had chosen his concept well. The only problem about the script was... like so many of Indian scripts, in the execution the shadow falls. The amount of platitudes and cliched expressions creeping in in those moments when the playwright starts getting into the psychological and philosophical territories detracted from the theatrical illusion we were getting mesmerised into. The moments of theorising were agonising to say the least. Could have probably avoided. But knowing it is a first performance script and not yet published, there still is time to rework to make it a finer piece of theatre to have emerged from Chennai yet.

The second play... well, was nothing to write home about in terms of scripting. But the narrative flow was neater and the dialogues were very Fugardian. It really reminded me of the two convicts in The Island by Athol Fugard. Except these are an old assassin and a young and proud killer. Ishwar was simply fantastic, to put it mildly. "The Killing Time" was and will remain an example of what the power of theatre is! If you put two right actors who are capable of bringing out a good chemistry and pit their pride and acting talents against each other... it is a director's coup and it is to the credit of director Deesh Mariwala that this play worked from page to stage. His minimal style of theatre making complemented an evening that would have been spoilt with sets and sound for distraction. Again, as regards the script, though it was taut in its narrative structure and inventive in its cyclical style, I must say I left the hall wondering like several others whom I heard discussing, was it the acting that won the day for the playwright? In any case, last night Chennai Theatre was the winner and richer for that experience. If this is the sign of things to come, forget the Ghosts of Christmas Past and let's look forward to the other two plays in the Chennai Chapter that has already shown a remarkable departure from the pitiful spate of comedies where wannabes hang about to be seen. Here is a Chapter that is Theatre with a T, despite its many teething shortcomings, that I hope gets sorted as it grows!

Notes from Nowhere - this and that blogettes

2007-07-05T21:37:00.000+05:30

Nimitz and the Left-paranoia - A Crocodile and the Monkey fable

USS Nimitz had arrived and finally all the crowing about had come to nothing. They docked 2 nautical miles away from Chennai coast. The Marxist Left was not right, as they most times are. Everyone is missing the point. Everyone is making a beeline for shouting about India's security, as though these are uncompromising guardians of Indian security. Put them all on the border to face the infiltrators, then we'll know. It's easy to do armchair speculation and talking as though they are the guardians of the fortress that India is. Even as the resident-sailors of USS Nimitz are busy helping clean up slums and NGO premises for underprivileged, a lot of unnecessary noise is being made to politicise their presence. Well, I don't for a moment think the sailors going out to slums is a diversionary tactic while something ominous is brewing inside the Ships with people sitting on computers and studying the South and South-East Asian region.

Ultimately everyone is missing the point about the docking of USS Nimitz on Indian shores. They are not recce-ing India, by any chance. What are they going to gain doing that when they're willing to sign Nuke deal. It's probable that the signing itself is a trade-off for bigger things, of which Nimitz-docking is probably but an aperitif. Not even Pakistan then; or on a long range - Iran or Iraq. Everyone's pretty clear now on Iranian uraniaum enrichment situation. My guess is China. Or is there another significance? Are we missing the point: Bush is conveniently meeting Putin back home in Maine, while Kremlin had been vehemently trying to make the US not deploy Nuclear Shields and Scanners in Central and Eastern Europe. Is this a diversionary tactic that US is good at playing? Remember, the whole idea behind US going to war - every, every time - is that the incumbent President is battling problems internal and busy trying to last the term as well as to shift citizens' focus on something international. And the Democrats are all over the ruling Republicans currently too! So, Putin must watch out says the bird inside me.

The Belfast Confetti

Well, at the end we won actually handsomely, for once. And what a needed win that was! The Future Cup would not have silenced the cynical and the stoical of the choicest critics of Indian Cricket; but it sure has come at the right time. Beating South Africa two games in a row in a climate which one would expect the South Africans to exploit better means a lot to Indian Cricket at these beleaguring times of transition. Especially to travel without a coach.

In Bangladesh there was at least a make-shift Manager-cum-Coach. One must say, having started his playing career as a middle-order nuts and bolts all-rounder, Ravi Shastri had been a makeshift opener at one point, before settling down in that role and take the cake away from poor Kris Srikanth in the 1985 B&H World Championship Cup. Ravi Shastri is a master at this art of pulling the rug from rightful owners and he did that in 1985 while actually the opening partnerships India had then were courtesy Chika. Similarly in that infamous Pakistan tour at the end of which we squared (no mean achievement under circumstances) an away series, Chika was stripped of captaincy and axed from the team along with a debutant Razdan who had a 5-wkt haul, while Shastri survived. Almost a decade later, Shastri by being the right person at the right moment, cornered the glory in Bangladesh. And he knew. He left back to join his ESPN commitments. So it came to pass the Indian team travelled to Ireland without a proper Head Coach. Of course Robin Singh and Venkatesh Prasad did an admirable job. Chandu Borde sat around like Bheesma Pithamaha. Zak and Yuvi performed. Sachin enjoyed his cricket and Ganguly stayed to survive another tour. But, but...

The heart of the matter is, we did it. My earlier writing about a foreign coach and Chetan Sharma's perennial crowing on The Fourth Umpire in DD-National came to be vindicated. We did it without a foreign coach. That is the best part. See, Swaraj is always better. The Future Cup is ours. But is the future secure?

At least for the English tour, I think so. Except for the continual bomb scares. If it was so heartening to see the coronation of Yuvraj from the Crown Prince that he is to Mr. Atlas of Indian Cricket after two back to back winning finishes, it was even more poignantly sweet to see Sachin acknowledge the fact by announcing to share his Man of the Series award with Yuvi. Actually the second ODI we won would not have happened if Yuvraj had not given that solid performance with both the ball first and the bat later (or is it vice-versa?). Agreed, Sachin's 93 was important. But after India lost both openers and were tottering at 134 for 2 and then Dravid and Dhoni departing, we would have died. So, Yuvraj's contribution was bigger. But for some strange reasons Sachin got the award. And finally, it is sooooo nice to see all and everyone in Indian Cricket embracing Dinesh Kaarthick whole-heartedly. Finally, a Tamil Nadu player seems to have won one and all without any reservations. Of course, Ajay Jadeja doesn't count in the picture by any distant imagination. Kaarthick's Belfast Confetti in the company of Yuvraj to take India to a finish is something am going to keep fresh in my memory for a while!

Nishabd - an RVG Factory Shower

This is one movie that's definitely not off the Ram Gopal Varma conveyor belt. He has worked at it. I sat to watch the movie with a lot of reservations: would it have been better to have a younger Emraan Hashmi instead of AB, having heard of the storyline? But thankfully it didn't turn out another Murder or The Train. Very refreshing. Except, I must say RGV is turning out to be the Kitschlowski of Indian Cinema.

There are some scene compositions in Nishabd that reminded of the Kieslowskian treatment. Still scenes with the sheer weight of silence. The filter treatments. The glaze and the sheen of the environment put to aesthetic use. Revathi's unspoken declamation when another melodramatist director would have given her reams and reams of dialogues right out of Balaji Telefilms script. And much more. But somehow, at the end of the movie, it all sounded silly and corny. It is a kitsch movie at the end of the day. Awww... Jiah Khan is sure a winsome wench, but somehow I fell for AB's daughter (played by Shraddha Arya) in the movie. It's tough and difficult being a daughter of such a father who has a Lolita-complex. Ultimately it is an unabashed Indian version of Lolita, except, a lot of pains have been taken to romanticise a sexual subject which is so passe. And that makes... RGV definitely our Kitschlowski!

Ruminations on a Review: The cultural politics involving Flame of the Forest

2007-07-05T10:42:00.000+05:30

I had not intended to indulge in the cultural politics of the FLAME for obvious reasons. But now that it had been - quite deliberately, if I may hazard to say - touched upon, we must analyse the consequences or the spinoffs of the same in the light of the recent review of the play in The Hindu. And decide for ourselves is it welcome? The work is welcome; but if there was a culturally subversive politics hiding in there, should we take the scythe and harvest the Count Vlads of Sabha Culture - meaning the "rashikas" - away from our theatre? Truly, this write-up belongs to the dedicated sections of Friday Supplement where the arohanams and adavus are discussed. But no!

Look at this little example from the review: "Flame of the Forest... has introduced the Tamil theatre tradition in English. The tradition harks back to the Natya Shastra of Bharatha ...where dnace and music were integral features." And read the last para: "As a new genre in English theatre, it could very well widen the circle of audience in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere." First, English theatre has its own musical form. An extension: Chennai has its fair share of musical and dance theatre in English, even if it is random. Second, it is not the introduction of Tamil theatre tradition in English. Has been done before. Third, is this the writer's first time watching English theatre in Chennai? Fourth, there really is no English theatre in Tamil Nadu elsewhere but Chennai. Fifth, I dread at such a possibility of widened circles. Questions arise in my mind...

The questions that arise are:
- Should an audience have a foreknowledge of the history behind the work on attending a play?
- Should one know the basics of theatre or the functional grammar of a performance one is watching?
- Or is it just enough if they remember the watching etiquettes?
- How valid is an artist in thrusting his/her choices, preferences, foibles and whims and fancies on his/her audience deliberately? Does it not amount to evangelism?
- What must a review do?

Having asked these questions, my mind surfaces with the first salvo. The review in question - or if they want, for argument's sake, to keep their conscience clear - the writing on THEATRE column is the most singularly patronising piece of embracing a dangerous cultural politics I have come across in theatre in recent times. It shows the writer well-read, learned in the arts (probably) that she's talking about. It also shows the writer as a nostalgist for all practical purposes. This is a very dangerous sign of things to come. It is in this light my questions above have been raised. Let's see them one by one.

In my previous post on the play, I had consiously avoided discussing the story in its context as it has no more relevance to us than Mr. Bean watching a horror movie, which only tries to entertain us. Assuming I would not have known the history of Tamilnadu and had gone to watch the play, I feel it still is irrelevant. Why should I know who Mahendra Pallava was, who Sivagami was? There is no rule of the thumb I should read the original. It is not Bible. Even if it is, why should one read it? It is the same argument put forward by entertainment critics at loggerheads with literary critics and historians. In order to watch Electra why should I need to know Agamemnon was killed, in advance? Or should I necessarily Wiki myself on the Google how Hamlet Sr. was killed to watch Hamlet? Is a pre-knowledge essential? And if so, to watch extent? To what end? Is it to show, "listen folks and juntaa who are here to watch this play, I know the work better than you do, so am qualified to write about it, if not discuss it to clanking bangles and wine-glasses at a private party"? Or to put the seen performance in the true light saying "I know the background, so I know what am writing about and hence I can truly properly explain to an uninformed audience"? So, to pay tribute in an unabashedly nostalgic way is limpetty and harking back to something from the past, which is to say, something is lacking today.

What was yesterday cannot be today, but in the fashion cycle it may come round the Ferris Wheel of culture tomorrow. But to say that someone is bringing something from somewhere to elsewhere it is not present is to not question whether it is valid for the elsewhere or not! Why is it important? Without that can English theatre not exist? This nostalgisation of theatre is a new derivation in Chennai. At least among the critical aficianados. I do not want to discuss when it started. Then we may have to go into a lot more muck than we are now. And if all linens are proven dirty as charged, there won't be any left but the naked truth. Though that may lie in the middle, it definitely won't be the middle path. We may all have to take up cudgels and start slam-dunking each other goriously (I would have said gorily, but can't resist the hidden sham-glory!)

Artists have sought to consioucly eradicate theatre of its elitism in the English theatre circles, bringing the levels even. At a time when what is needed is to awaken interest among the theatre-goers in a non-political but genuinely experimental way so that audience get involved in the factual possibility of creations, we are starting to either resort to the creation of dumb, mindless farces and comedies like fast-food (and hence the creation of a 'Fast-food Theatre') or create culturally grammatical classical theatre with a lot of nostalgia for the dance and music and costume, which we need only on dance stages or music sabhas. The former can be excused, but not the latter in the opinion of, I am sure, the more politically conscious left-inclined theatre artists.

We must facilitate the watching of theatre for simple minds, which is the audience that would readily pay without any other agendas but to see theatre than being seen. If we need to create better working environment in terms of finances to facilitate better productions, without having to resort to mileage-sucking corporates and private organisations, we need to learn to generate finances through gates and that is possible only by simplifying theatre without forsaking the aesthetics. After all, art is all about bringing aesthetic quality to our lives. And we have to start dealing with real issues (which actually FLAME does, but is conveniently forgotten by theatre watchers) than superfluous and incidental paraphernalia. If the demands on audience grows, forcing them to equip themselves with preknowledge or challenge them in unrequired ways, we would only get audiences who are educated. And the ratio of educated money to illiterate money is very thin, as we know. Also, it polarises those who would like to come to English theatre, seemingly from an un-english theatre background. Make no mistake, even if the theatre work doesn't underscore this fact, the write-ups do. After all, the write-ups reach the household whereas the audience go to the theatre and you know which has more reach and hold!

It is not long before there's going to be a street-fight. You may laugh now, probably. You never know, in this country. Did we ever envision a Reservation Politics? One day the class and racial prejudice problem that has emasculated itself as casteist politics in our society is going to extend itself to the theatre. In fact, this is what has polarised Tamil theatre for decades. Even the Sabhas aren't doing well and that is no secret. And highlighting such politics hidden in the play by talking about the so-called (for lack of better phrase) Kalakshetra elements, we are only treading into unwanted territories. Let's talk about dance and music without involving certain signifiers.

Also, by cross-pollinating theatre thus, we are eliminating the simple joy of watching and forcing a certain section of audience out of theatre, and bringing those undesired, so-called cultured rasikas that cannot discuss or bother about anything "real" life into halls. A lot of these people have no concern for reality and live in a comfortable world of travelling by four wheels, drink Malt Whiskey and discuss Kalki or Christie in oh-so-fashionable ways. They can only skim the surface of society because the stench of the sub-surface is anathema to their very upbringing and ancestry. And this review is so feel-good that it glorifies the periphery aspects of the theatre work, whereas there are many more redeeming and noteworthy features to FLAME. The writing is so form-centric.

Theatre is not all about putting things nicely. Theatre is not a place for interior decoration. Theatre is a place, at the bottom, to discuss issues, however much a work may not do it openly. In fact, the beauty of theatre lies in sub-textualising the issues and the duty of criticism is to bring it to the surface. FLAME is from a writer who translated Kanya Dhaan and we know what the latter work is all about. There must have been non-apolitical reasons for any writer to create or translate a work. The writer of FLAME must surely have had such strong reasons for translating Tendulkar's work, and that is something the review in question just about barely touches upon. Such writer belongs to such audience, perhaps.

This is the truth, note this: a lot of them don't even know a menu button from call-end button. And they all carry fashionable Nokias and Motorolas in their handbags and speak sabha vocabulary of Tamil in a very accented English tone. These are the audiences the artists of late-80s thru the 90s had consiously tried to distance from theatre unless they came to accept artists of any plumage with an open mind, the only criterion being the strength of the production. Would they be seen in a show by any or every company, irrespective of the branding or who's who of the show?

Furthermore, the current patronising review, by referring to TKS brothers, only tries to revoke the dormant T-rex eggs of elitist culture. But then, the TKS plays from my hear-know from my parents and grandparents did seem to have popular elements as well!

Personally my anguish is not against the play in question. Every artist has the right to creation. Every performance artist has the right to bring on stage what they like. And as long as it is for creative purposes, it is welcome. It adds to embellish and punctuate the growing annals of culture, tradition and history. For we are very clear, without tradition and history, culture cannot be enriching or rewarding. But when this starts getting eulogised by critics who are supposed to be at the vanguard of writing and giving the truth and nothing but the whole truth about the work as is where is, it is unwelcome and subversive and counter-productive.

Take this statement: "Gowri extends her grandpa's story with a convincing sequel...." How much more subjective and personalised can a writing get? Is this what a reviewer must do? How much ever one masks the writing in the name of THEATRE or something that doesn't quite say REVIEW, it is an after-performance piece and hence an opinion, a view-point, etc etc.

When one writes in a personal space for discussive readership it is a different matter. One is entitled to one's opinion and so is a reader; and we can start exchange of opinions, views, get argumentative, debate, conflict, contradict etc etc, which at least leads to exchange of ideas. But when it goes up on a public space which people pay to read, you are corrupting possible minds that just read and lap it up. These could be the young children of these "rashikas". Probably the formers' minds are still naive and uninfluenced. Let them choose their entertainment form. Don't give opportunity to these rashika-parents to evangelise their children's choices. Or at least stop playing your part in shaping their choices. What else are we artists there for? You do your job, we will do ours.

Except for the penultimate para which just states something very unconvincingly something superfluously unseemly about the play, read the writing and let me know if there is anything boldly unpatronising about this!

Please by all means use music, dance, etc etc in theatre. This is the quintessence of theatre. It is such a fantastic multimedia confluence to tell stories in ever so interesting fashions. But do not make it elite and take it out of the reach of people who have been coming to it all these years. It would not be right to say, were one to say, we are 'attracting' audience to theatre through the opulence and richness on stage. And please don't quote Bharatha and his Natya Shastra and sully his name. That's like saying "Tom Jones" or "Tristram Shandy" was the first work of meta-fiction!!! First let us sustain the existing (whatever) masses, then talk of bringing new classes in.

Honestly, the day I visited, all I could see were blonde and brunette heads ethnically dressed... or side-parted and clean-shaven, and if not abroad educated, at least proudly possessing one person of the family in Wisconsin or Strathclyde or wherever types, who had their phones on and were half the time caught with their 'palms itching to make love to each other in the name of clapping' between scenes. And they did not even know whether their act of wanting to clap is right or not. See their hypocrisy? Their upbringing tells them it is untimely to clap and disturb the actor. But their instincts tell them that the scene either deserved to be clapped genuinely or their upbringing has taught them that one needs to clap to show their polite approval of what they saw... and hence thus be recognised as being present in the audience. A lot of insecurity is the sub-text of this dubious and sneaky act. Whereas a genuine watcher would have expressed his/her enjoyment uninhibitedly. These are the people who go to watch Yehudi Menuin when he comes to Music Academy and clap at all the odd-ball moments.

Take it from me, we are going to witness the Second Coming of the Discerning Elitists to Chennai's English Theatre: the moneyed class that do not mind throwing 500 bucks to get a pit seat proudly in Museum Theatre. You remember what pit meant in a Shakespearean context? These are only refined aficianados of the pit. I think we are unfortunately sinking in the quagmire of Fast-food theatre while the hand that reaches out is Nostalgic-Heritage Theatre. The makers are not at fault. They are being encouraged by those who are smart enough to realise business-opportunities. Somebody is driving the market subtly. Wake up artists!

Love and War in the Time of Call-Era

2007-06-30T08:44:00.000+05:30

Non-Disclaimer: This is an opinion post and not a review. However, it is not devoid of review-elements!

I saw the play Flame of the Forest produced by JustUs Repertory in association with The Madras Players, written and directed by Gowri Ramnarayan and acted, in most parts, by people whose features I could not delineate and would have failed to recognise had I not known their faces from previous exposure to the cultural legions of Chennai. So much for mood lighting. In fact I left with the feeling that the play would as well have worked better - given a certain decent tautness of the script that surfaced on and off to remind you that a play can transcend the production if well written - with just a few parcans for general lighting.

Now to the author: my first exposure to Gowri Ramnarayan was in 1997 when I 'also' figured in a local production of Vijay Tendulkar's KANYA DHAN, translated into English by her (which incidentally was performed by a travelling Mumbai group on the same day as the FLAME in a near-by venue). And my recent closer acquaintance to Gowri Ramnarayan started in 2005 through her Dark Horse and an acting stint in her second oeuvre Rural Phantasy. My admiration for her as a translator and writer is high. The essence of translated and/or adapted work of art is that it must not mess with the quintessence of the original. She seems to be a master craftsman at that.

I have not read nor can I claim to read Kanya Dhan because I can not Marathi; but, having read both Kanayazhiyin Kanavu (which became Rural Phantasy) and Sivagaamiyin Sabatham - Sivagaami's Vow - (which has now inspired the Flame of the Forest), as well as my share of acquaintance with one Prof. Neelakanta Sastri's works, I can earnestly acknowledge her honesty and dignity as a translator and history-oriented writer. Now here is the truth: among her four stage works that I know of, only one is original. FLAME. Even her Dark Horse is largely made up of Arun Kolatkar's original writings, around which and the poet's personality and life itself the play revolves. So I would like to see a totally original conception and creation from Gowri Ramnarayan before I would involve myself in the analytical vocation of a literary critic that I was trained 8 years for through my Ph.D period. Nevertheless, I would still do it gingerly because I am not qualified to critique a work that involves areas of music and dance I don't know the grammar of!

About the productions: Gowri's conceptual vision as an artistic director is coupled with the dramaturg in her. As a result what one gets - if one gets to meet her and hear from her about her show before the show hits the public eye, that is - is a very rich visceral image stretching grandiosely over two hours of performance time in our mind's eye, where she makes you visualise the resplendent colours of the scheme, not to mention the entire texture and the hardness or softness of the light. I still remember her explaining the last tableaux of Dark Horse, with the golden halo behind the Arunachaleswara posture that Drithiman goes into! But somehow for some reason I have often found T.S.Eliot true: "Between the idea/And the reality/Between the motion/And the act/Falls the Shadow... Between the conception/And the creation/Between the emotion/And the response/Falls the Shadow."

In a sense this is very true of most artistic directors (those I would call artistic since there are a lot of hacks who masquerade as either artists or directors in Chennai) because of the kind of circuit we work in. It has not to do with the paucity of talents or raw materials or designers who can envision the director's mind. It simply has to do with our inability to push the boundaries of creativity in a compromise to hit the stage as scheduled so that our fear of 'the longer you soak, the soggier it gets' gets allayed. I do not see the point. A finer thing would be to not set a production target date. Work on the paper and at rehearsals till you reach the stage where it can be shared with the first public, meaning your designers, then set a target date and start run throughs or tweak throughs. Of course, for that you need patient artists or at least actors, who understand the creative process and plod on. For the rest, there are bedroom farces and leave-your-brain-in-the-freezers 90 minute entertainers where you can keep your cellular phones on!

Coming back... I have personally listened to Gowri explaining the visuals in Dark Horse and with the then given resources I could not even produce 10% of her colourful vision on stage when I helped technical assist one of the runs in Chennai. Then, Rural Phantasy too... I remember her elucidations of what she had envisioned. I hope she got what she wanted. I really can't comment on it since I was an accessory fixture to the sets and lights on stage during the performance. Hope I didn't disturb her vision, standing out as an odd-piece of jigzaw that refused to paste itself properly. And now FLAME: I have heard from her once about the production plan. It sounded great. Probably as a result of that descriptive session, the show disappointed me.

FLAME is a play I would like to draw parallels with Via Dolorosa by David Hare, Sticks and Bones (to a limited extent) by David Rabe as well as his best screenplay film Casualties of War (starring MJ Fox and Sean Penn), Andorra of Max Frisch, Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Romulus the Great and some others. The reason. It talks about war and the senselessness of the same in a society bereft of any values. The play much reminded me of Duerrenmatt's Romulus the Great and its final scene where Romulus, the last Roman Emperor (according to the play) and Odoaker, the invading Teuton meet after the plot has managed to create a greater anticipation for the better part of the 2 and half hour story. When they finally meet, we realise how both actually hate war. Astounding work Romulus is. Similarly FLAME in the scene where Pulikesin and Mahendra Varman meet. Of course there is only one side here lighting the candle, while the vile jackal under the skin of cow that Pulikesin is, he promptly and expectantly backstabs the Pallava king. Mahendra Varman is an artist trapped in a Kshatriya body (much like Arjuna in Mahabharat) and he pays the price for not behaving the Warrior he was. It is a humane work, FLAME is, much needed in these times of (misguided) Love and War in the Time of Call-Era.

However, much as I liked the play, I doubt how many would have appreciated it as a read. For its part, the script is not without its little faults; the pace for example. As a work of writing, the action decides a certain tempo for the plot to develop, in the case of any playscript. Since it is not always possible to create a frenetic tempo just to engage the nails to the teeth at the print level, the director has to find a way to balance this slowness when the work goes on performance, especially in a climate where grey means boredom and miscomprehension of slowness for lack of tempo. Perhaps this is then one area where the production failed. Especially given the fact that the playwright and the director are one and the same. Often the sag in tempo was glaring. It could be due to several factors. Nevertheless, in a work that is polemical, the production must close the gap between the page and the stage. Agreed that it was the opening night; still... one expects the work to open in good shape. The opening night word could make or mar a production and that has happened in the past everywhere. The fade-ins and -outs and cross-fades added to the woes. A simple rule of thumb of lighting for theatre is that before or even as the actor reaches the space of action, the light must find him/her. The light almost always came after the actor started speaking, leading one to conjecture the technicians perhaps did not get to attend or have the comfort of enough run throughs. This further abetted the problem of concentration. It made listening to the dialogues difficult. I mean, there was a lot of discourse and subtext in the story.

The point further is: the play is a treatise play. And the problem is: most Chennai audience have no aesthetics for such plays. You provide them comedies, they appreciate. So you could imagine my chagrin when I was more concerned about the cellphone ringtones I kept hearing because the performance failed to grip the audience who had turned up 1) because they have heard or read Kalki's work, 2) to hear and watch some good Carnatic music and Bharatnatyam Dance (that have become the draw in Gowri's shows) or perhaps because 3) Priyadarshini GOvind was dancing (similar to T M Krishna singing in RP earlier). One of the three or all. In any case, so you reap as you sow! And how do you expect an audience that is used to Sabha dramas or Kutchery listening and Dance watching to suddenly behave in a way one would expect an ideal theatre-goer to behave. It is high time we used mobile jammers in the auditorium. In the end, I felt cheated and deprived of what could have been an exhilarating experience given the potential for production. Now, I cannot even claim to do a proper review of the show because it was a very harrassed watch. FLAME is a nice literary work like RP as well as Dark Horse. We are perhaps not yet ready to be treated to theatre productions of these plays. But, brave then is Gowri who keeps walking Via the metaphorical Dolorosa everytime she creates her Iyal-Isai-Nataka creations.

Having said this about the production, I still do not hate everything about the production (psst! psst!), except that it is the misfortune of earnest theatre practitioners of Chennai to be caught or stuck with an audience that is in an eternal cycle of elitist and socialite warp. No one wants to watch a play with total attention. No artist can expect to spellbind all the audience all the time, but audience must realise that they have an equal responsibility to put an effort to make the show happen. Even where it may not bother the actors on stage, it does to your friendly neighbour. One of these days the "sssshssss!" are gonna turn "quiet or quit". Then the friend in the next seat may turn the fiend that pokes your ribsides! On the other hand, if we really do push the stakes on the audience by transferring the weight to them by giving intense scripts with emotionally draining and challenging and risky performances, we really can salvage some genuine audience. For the rest, the word is QUIT. Or go watch farces. But are we ready to lose those few hundred or thousand bucks in the bargain? I guess so! Not that anyone's salary or income in Chennai comes solely out of theatre as of now.

By the way, I visited the performance on the premier night, on 29th June 2007, the Friday.

Doubts re-surface...

2007-06-03T17:14:00.000+05:30

Hello... anyone out there? Hey-loooooo.... anyone who can clarify this Dalit identity issue about which one of my recent posts talk???

In the meanwhile, there have been two occurences that further muddle my search.

1) I saw a footage in one of the 24-hour News Channel showing a mass conversion of 2000 Dalits to Buddhism in Mumbai

2) In today's The Hindu, there is a news item about how the Dalits are planning to protest by forcing their way into the Draupadi Amman Temple near Salem, to which they have been denied entry by the caste Hindus for the past years.

My researches on the web haven't yielded the result I seek. Could someone out there clarify my confusion. Who is a Dalit? Or what constitutes a Dalit Identity?

Thanks and much obliged.

This summer thus far...

2007-06-03T16:30:00.000+05:30

It has been a very interesting summer, away from the heat outside, from the hurly burly of rehearsal-driven theatrical existence... full of reading, writing, introspection, watching movies, analysing books, movies, energising and stimulating discussions with friends who read the type of works I read! And... of Gandhi.

I discovered one Mr. Gandhi, also known as Mahathmaji and the Father of the Nation! How? Why?

How come, and now suddenly? would be a more appropriate question. I'll tell you how.

In recent times, my re-introduction to Gandhi came in the form of my working with Gowri Ramnarayan during the Rural Phantasy production, about which I had written elsewhere in about two posts, within this blogspace.

Re-introduction, because, at some point or other, all of us go through Gandhi either through English or History text syllabus. But then, how many of us really take Gandhi at that point of our lives except as someone who can get us 2 or 5 or 10 marks to some question we answer in some examination. Of course, forget the fact that we are on day to day finger (our) to face (his) terms with him through currency coins and notes!

I have been for a while now (if 5 months count as for a while!) working on this new and as yet unpublished playscript by Chennai playwright Mohan Narayanan. Among several other things the play deals with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Appropriately, this is the 150 year of India's First War of Independence (about which a lot of furore has been raised in the media), 100th year since Gandhi's acquaintance with Thoreau's Civil Disobediance (that great tract that changed the course of American struggle against the British, like ours), which was to forever change him from his UK-educated lawyership to the Ahimsavad that he later became, and the 60th year of our Independence.

As part of the on-going work, I have been doing quite a bit of research. First, I saw Attenborough's film Gandhi, with an open, first-time eye. It is quite a difficult task to see something again as if it were the first time. But this film this time was really different. I saw it three times again and again, not because I wanted to understand as part of the research. But the sheer magnetism of the script drew me again and again. I do not remember remembering through the watch that I was here to research, look for something, rewind, etc etc. And then, I listened to a lot of those Bhajans and songs of MS that Gandhi was supposed to have paid audience. Well, what can be said of MS. She is... MS! Of course, this doesn't deter me from my daily quota of MLV and MDR. Somehow, those are my favourites. Probably because of the very different type of voices they have (in spirit and tape, if not in real-time anymore). And... am currently reading R.K.Narayan's Waiting for Mahatma. It certainly is a different experience among all the other RKNs.

I have read a dozen RKNs or probably more. I always get carried away by the simple charm of those Malgudi descriptions and the realistic characters. Waiting for Mahatma is more. I have a few pages left and am going to face a huge void after am done with it. Alongside, there are other books I try and read on a few pages a day basis so that monotony doesn't set in or one book doesn't affect me totally. Some may argue that it may take away the totality of reading experience. It somehow doesn't and hasn't till now. Each book is a living thing of its own and brings a different encounter experience of its own as much as each person we meet. Anyway, the first two parts of the book have been very moving in their earthiness. Although the book is dominated by Sriram the protagonist, the on and off presence of Bharathi is so 'hitting'. She really brings about the Gandhian in one. The work begins with Gandhi's arrival in Malgudi and by the end of the first part, as he leaves we begin to wonder how will the book sustain, there are several more pages to go. Like Caesar's absence in Julius Caesar beyond almost the mid-way point of the book, so is Gandhi's. His phantom lingers. Let me tell you when I finish. It is a good read.

In the while, I do not know whether it is by pattern or accident or design, whatever material I seem to touch, it seems to involve Gandhi. Could anyone explain this phenomenon? I started doing a bit of reading upon the Boston Tea Party, for a little presentation coming up on the eve of July 4, lo and behold! I end up reading about the Salt March. Actually, there is a lot of similarity and difference between the Dandi March and the Boston Tea Party that's quite interesting to note. This is not the first time it has happened to me, this phenomenon. Still...

I can sense some little changes coming over me (no no... I don't and won't own a charka!) in the process. May be it is for good. I leave it to time to throw light.

Community Theatre: or why I like to keep off big-budget mainstream theatre!

2007-05-28T00:03:00.000+05:30

Ever since the arrest of Mr. Chandramohan, an artist from MSU Baroda on May 9th, there have been hue and cries, and waves of protests, bandhs, signature campaigns across India from across the artists' community.

In Chennai too, on May 14th, a few artists gathered at Lalit Kala Akademi (on Greams Road) around 4 p.m to raise slogans and protest as well as to do a signature campaign. Only visual artists as well as some regional theatre artists, besides the omni-present press photographers, were present.

The english theatre community of Chennai was busy as usual with its whatever existence, preparing for a busy forthcoming season full of comedies. Need I say we are as far from reality as Pluto from Sun. And briefly a glimpse of the vandalising scene from my last year's production of Gautam Raja's WOOD appeared in front of my eyes. I felt proud. How truly inspiringly visionary can art be! How insightful was Gautam's play, even if it was called cliche!! But, at that moment, I also felt a little twang and a tinge of irritation in me. I felt, for once, so disenchanted, disenfranchised and alienated from most of the manufacturers of english theatre in Chennai, of whom I have been a part the last 15 years!!!

It set me thinking.What does the word community mean to people involved in theatre? Is there a community theatre in Chennai? What is or must a community theatre like or do?

Asking a question such as this is to ask what a nation is or must do. At the foundation of a society is the community. It is the bringing together of individuals from various walks and professions of life. A profession, in turn, need not necessarily be always with monetary objective. A priest at a place of worship is an example. A priest is a service personnel who does not expect monetary or material reimbursement. When the fabric or web of society in a particular place is represented by a cross-section of professional congretgation, we call it a society. And the best representation of each particular profession come together to make the founding fathers of a town, village, etc. Thus is a community formed. or so we are informed through history.

This community essentially needs entertainment. At times, beyond entertainment, the entertainers also become the moral voice of the people, reminding them when they go off the righteous track. Thus, theatre becomes the voice of the community. And this has been seen time and again throughout Indian, European as well as even American theatre communities.

Now if we take chennai as our immediate and monumental example, we neither have community nor such a theatre. If you think I am being sweeping in my statement, remember, I am talking Chennai's english theatre. For there is no righteousness left nor moral guardians amid the fast exploding bourgeoisie BPOs of Chennai (since there is no morality there consequently need be neither guardians, in a city were DOKs and F&Gs and Dollar Shops have become symbols of culture).

As a result, all we have left of theatre here is entertainment. Rather, those who practise theatre mostly believe only in entertaining theatre. This belief that we are the decision-makers of what the public want is wrong. We must not drive the market in the wrong direction for our own personal ends. IT IS NOT REALLY A DOG-EAT-DOG-Survival world out there. Well, at least, dogs are not greedy. Anyway, we must, as practitioners and responsible decision-makers observe what needs to be done to keep the society on the right track.

Needless to say, we cannot change the society, as Brecht believed, by portraying the wrongs on stage. But theatre needs to voice out opinions. This is what happens in every part of the world where theatre is said to be alive. This is what WOOD is all about. This is what Theatre Nisha's recent show of SATHE was about. And this is what even Dummies' VISHWAROOPAM is all about. Holding more than a mirror to the society as it were!

Theatre as a voice of community may be marginal compared to the so-called mainstream theatre that receive more attention, attract bigger sponsorships and subsequently has the muscle to pull more audiences. But again as some C.S Neville (or is it C.A?) said in his treatise "Democracy and the Individual", it is actually all about the Might of the Right over the Right of the Might. Quantity or majority need not always be right. This is where the need for smaller theatre companies or what are called community theatres become important. This is also where works such as an Anna Weiss, Oleanna, Final Solutions, Sathe, Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, The Zoo Story, etc matter. They are not irrelevant to the consumptive public because they are art or they speak in a language different from what the entertainment-seeking juntaa understand.

The argument that these plays simply do not or cannot speak to numbers or satisfy sponsors' need for footfalls make them untenable or ill-required is stupid and corrosive in the long run for the existence of theatre itself. While mass entertainment 'speaks' offhand and shows an escapist illusion that their audience can consume alongside their Coke and Popcorn, in the same breath, without having to carry the hangover, these plays 'address' issues that are apparently irrelevant to a materialist consumerist society. These works are born out of a deeper need.

Artists who produce these works do so out of a deeply felt need to voice out rather than for money or fame or passion to perform in front of people. There is no exhibitionist narcissism of the number-theory booting mainstream commercial theatre here. This is perhaps why they are small. They believe that somehow the rot that is setting in the mindset of a McSociety can still be stemmed. If entire Chennai had only Spencers and Reliance Freshes or Cineplexes and Multiplexes, the city would get boring. The smaller neighborhood shops have their own charm and reason for existence.

What must be applauded of these theatrical oevures is their ability time and again to come up to the public viewing for less than the price of a cinema ticket at multiplexes and Mayajaals. Since their recipient audiences are equally smaller in draw, they are produced in smaller, comparatively lesser appealing theatre houses, knowing fully well they would not in Eight out of Ten cases break the red barrier vis-a-vis finance. However, they continue to break fresh grounds. And we would see in the future, that these minimalist but well-planned theatres would grow in numbers, especially among the youth. Of course, some youth subvert even that. There are weeds in every field of crop. But...

In Youth lies idealism, vision and energy. In youth does one discard the fear of the unknown. Whether out of curiosity, impulse, impetuosity or visionary zealotry, youth is what takes risk. These theatres are all about taking risks, not only financial, but also in several other ways. Hopefully, the Chennai youth would get out of the current malaise and veer towards a theatre that shows its disenchantment with bedroom farces and conservative trends; that fights against non-dynamic, safer form of theatre that does not provoke the audience into uneasy thoughts.

There does seem to be a mushrooming of newer groups. This is either due to a feeling of rejection by existing companies or disenchantment with lack of real opportunities, or even because of a certain need to be 'one's own'. Whatever the reason, the basis is that the founders often have their own ideas. Where there is idea, there is hope. Hence one expects and hopes that there is a certain hidden belief in the hearts of these young and idealistic theatre wannabes that theatre has an innate power to change, if not transform. After hope comes prayer.

We who believe in smaller and community efforts just have to pray these newer groups do not fall prey to the need to fill houses. Once one falls into the clutches of the need to have audiences to fill their seats, one ends up doing exactly what those who pay, patronise or sponsor want. Already a few such have been lost, am afraid, for good!

Shit-agone at Mirpur

2007-05-27T23:20:00.001+05:30

Requiem to the series that happened

Now that the plaudits have spoken and the pundits have been puzzled as to how on God's own strip of land (that was more caked and parched and scarred than a hapless yeoman skinned by a heartless zamindar in those feudal movies of yore) did India managed to score 610 in under two days and skittle Deshis out twice for a little above half that score, it is time to take a per-chance. Because: what has happened to India is a happened circumstance, a happenstance. Zak's eight wicket haul is sheer happenstance, the record-making top-four batsmen scoring hundreds is sheer happenstance. What were not circumstantial were Tendulkar's 37th Ton and Kumble's 5 wkt test haul as was VVS's ignominy.

Tendulkar at one point did a Sunny Gavaskar. Took a catch without breaking a sweat, looked around impishly, pocketed the ball. Only, he was not standing in the slips as Sunny used to. It showed how relaxed Sachin was. He was enjoying his game after such a loooong time. Not because he had scored a ton in both tests, but he has proved his point: I can continue to **** around with Indian cricket as long as I like, I have the credentials and the claims for I have toiled too long for it. At no point did Sachin look dominating throughout this series. He did not need to. But scratch the surface, he was dominating. What is dominating but being in control of the proceedings? Is it necessary that it must be lethal or vociferous like Lara or Ponting or Gilchrist or Symonds do? Not for a higher mortal such as Sachin. His record of 37 may become 42... or 45... and he may retire as did people before him. His record may be surpassed by Ponting and in turn and in turn... But that is only the law of nature. The point of the post is this: The 7th best team in the world beat the 11th best team in the world. And in the middle of all this, Antonio Salieri's "Mediorcity all over the world, I bow to you" rung clear. Only one man managed to mock and rise above all these - Mashrafe Bin Mortaza. Sad, he had to be on the losing side. One man got lucky for once, justifying all his hardships and as many comebacks as Jimmy Amarnath has done - Zaheer "Zak" Khan.

Let us quickly go backwards to the Chittagong test. See what happened. How frustrating it is to be Zaheer? I do not for a moment claim that he is the fittest cricketer or super fielder. If may I say so from observed newspaper and internet sports site reports, there is no second slouch than Zaheer behind Saurav Ganguly this side of Inzamam (and I still admire all these 3 men). But let's not take the talent and class away. And Dravid all but undid it in the First Test against B-desh at Chittagong.

Dravid may be a dependable bat, but a very non-aggressive and unimaginative captain as well as a post-match speaker. Sometimes he just lets things drift more than necessary. Does he wait for creative spark to alight on him on these occasions? What Ponting or Smith would have done in the situation India found itself while bowling at 149 - 8? (or for that matter at 11-4 that nearly was 11 - 6 but for two greased catches by Dravid and Karthik in the Bangladeshi first innings of the second test). How I missed the presence of Wasim Akram the Captain or Waqar Younis the tail-wiper! Total aggro was the need of the hour.

The first test had already seen bad batting displays, inspite of centuries, by both Sachin and Saurav (the same was also said in the media and we saw it too, during Sachin's second test century. But for Dhoni's pyrotechnics and Mortaza & Ashraful's heroics, the overall batting in the second test was insipid to say the least!); tactless scoring by Indian later order to reduce a healthy 295 - 3 at the end of Day 1 to 387 - 8 by noon of Day 4! But what beats this is the bowling... or perhaps the fielding display.

149 - 8 was Bangladesh. Mashrafe Mortaza - a decent bat with lot of determination, pride, gumption and self-esteem - pushes the score to 170 in the company of Shahadat Hossain, who's not even a decent agrarian cricketer in the first place.

If India did not go on to win a match at a canter and by an innings, the blame for that must squarely be shared between an inept captain and a not-more-than-average Mumbai spinner. I really do not understand why Ramesh Powar must be in the team. Forget the wickets he took in the Bangladeshi second innings. I could have taken wickets on that pitch with more cracks than a discarded piss-pot! He's got one talent. To hold the ball in mid-air, defying gravity. Other than that, nothing else. In comparison, I just loved the way Shakid Al Hasan bowled in both the tests. Here's a man who's gonna grow in stature as he plays more, but more of him elsewhere. Ramesh Powar!

Ramesh Powar: highly inept as a spin bowler (from a land with a huge tradition of spinners behind him) and no better or worse (thankfully) than any other currently playing spinner for India, he's not agile nor is there any remorse in him when he misses a four or greases a catch or is whacked around the ground. I wonder how he's turned those so many Ranji matches for Mumbai. That speaks for the standard of Ranji games. Powar, at the end of First Test at Chittagong against B-desh, has come to symbolise the spineless, gutless, thoughtless, unimaginative and mechanised display Indian cricket has come to represent. Else how do you explain the ineptness of letting Mortaza and Shahadat score that 70+ partnershi to take their team beyond follow-on and past 200 after having been reduced themselves to 149 - 8?

It was disgusting to see Powar not being able to hold on to a regulation dive. Perhaps not as bad as when Dinesh Karthik came witlessly in the way of Dravid in 3rd Slip at 11-4 (2nd Test). But then, Karthik had done his work as a batsman. Poor Zaheer!!! How much harder must he try? How many comebacks has he to make to prove himself? Letting a 9th wicket partnership that is not worth more than a double figure under normal circumstances, to beyond 50 runs is something for which the entire Indian team must be shoot. Even after seeing Mortaza play short balls without though or plan, so predeterminedly, Dravid the Wall did nothing. The Wall's immovability for once was more a liability than an asset.

In a matter of minutes B-desh raced from 170 - 8 to 200 and beyond. Within the space of 10 balls the Indians bowled it had happened. After a mindless R.P.Singh over in which two fours were conceded, that was to become a pointer for things to come, Zak was brought on. His first ball was a regulation dive catch from Mashrafe to Powar. Dropped. Then followed a Shahadat blinder to the slips. Nobody to blame. A typical flailing shot that fetched a reprieve and a four. And still the captain does nothing for the next THREE overs. And then it had to be Sachin "Man Friday" Tendulkar to show how to take breakthrough wickets. And why would Sachin not laugh? Not that it changed history or the fate of the series that was a foregone conclusion before India left its borders to Bangladesh.

The win would not probably have enhanced India's claim to the top of test cricketing world, but it definitely would have made a difference to the Second Test, had things not happened the way they happened after Habibul Bashar made the mistake of reading the pitch wrong. Especially after the weathermen had predicted two out of five days of rain! It was a lucky thing in the end that Habibul Bashar was not in form both with the bat as well as with his cap.

Woe begone. Ravi Shastri was as lucky as an interim coach as he was during that watershed series when Kris Srikant was captain, referred to in an earlier post on Wright, Greg and Whatmore. Let's see how we fare in England. Welcome Dav!

Day-lights of Indeea

2007-05-27T22:47:00.000+05:30

Foreword:The following post is a loud-thinking to myself. I am not sure if I am politically correct because I don't in this issue really understand what exactly a Dalit-identity is. Several people claim several things and the existing corpus of Dalit-literature, created by self-proclaimed Dalit writers themselves, does little to clarify too! So, rather than taking an angry stance, if any comments, please try and clarify than taking cudgels and arms against the post. - Author

News: Dalits among Muslims and Christians must also be considered for Reservation.

Post: I have a serious doubt. Are the Dalits of India (pronounced by my foreign connections as Day-lights of Indeea!) a religious lot or a community (which I interpret as caste-based) or a class (economy based)?

If they claim to distance themselves - like the Dravidians of Tamil Nadu do - from Hinduism by such expressive means as "Name conversion ceremony from Hindu (and hence Aryan) to a Dravidian or Neutral Non-Hindu Language-based Name" (Eg: Srinivasan or Seshadri or Vinayakamurthi becoming Thamaraikannan, Ezhilazhagan etc etc), then Dalit movement by itself becomes a religious affliction. For, any scattered bunch of people who happen to be brought together or who happen to come together upon commonly identified and accepted code of so-called guiding principles or tenets or ideals of belief to conduct a certain way of life is a religion. It has been the case of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Santeria, etc etc... irrespective whether it is pagan or heathen or genteel school of belief. Then, there can be no Hindu Dalits or Christian Dalits or Islamic Dalits and hence the news above is just another politicisation for someone's ballotry gains.

If they are a community or a caste, then they automatically become Hindus, since according to anti-Hindu believers, caste system is a Hindu evil, which nevertheless they aim to for their vote-banks. According to those who harbour the grudge theory that caste is a Manu-invention (originally based on the type of labour one did) and is discriminatory, caste is a Hindu subventive theory. Then, those who call themselves Dalits and still seek to identify with a certain section of Hindu sentiment, belief, whatchumight call it (the boundaries being very thin!), are not dissimilar to the so-called Christians by religion (right to conversion of belief) but constitutionally Hindus by community or caste (this is one time they never derecognise the Constitution); which idea is the most dubious notion of existence one can have. I have always wanted to ask this question to someone to seek an appropriate answer: how can one be a Christian Nadar or Muslim Mudaliar. Nadar and Mudaliar are Hindu casteist denomination which have only managed to vanish from the Road signposts! You can't technically belong to two places - neither physically nor in terms of identity. We know those terms Asian American or Afro-American are only classifications brought about for convenience. Those terms do not fetch anyone any special status.

Although technically you can belong to two spaces, to use it for profit means is sheer exploitation or manipulation or taking advantage of a system. This cannot be considered being contributive to the country's common good. And, in 9 out of 10 cases this is what is happening in India today: EXPLOITATION OF THE SYSTEM and MANIPULATION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL GUIDING PRINCIPLES IN THE NAME OF INTERPRETATION.

Once upon a bluemoon, our national leaders and politicians sought to erase casteism. Today's politicians are self-styled national leaders and decision as well as law-makers (and -breakers), who in turn are anyway nothing but a bunch of goondahs and criminals seeking to further casteism and further divide the society to kingdom come and thrive on discrimination. We have eschewed the policy of "We are all God's children and are part of an Ekta-Nation" in order to embrace and engender an Ekta Kapoorish nation that believes in revenge and betrayals, bent on building a revanchist country compartmentalised by communal differences. And the train of Bharat continues to rush through a Kafka-esque tunnel towards some blood-thirsty landscape, God help it!

I am terribly convinced that today if we draw a guideline map of India, we can easily start dividing it with white plot-boundary marker stones that can very smoothly fall into areas of community concentration. Anyway, back to issue at hand. If these Dalits are a community then why divide them into Hindus, Muslims and Christianity? If they are entitled to their own beliefs as well as literature, not to mention songs of ode as well as lullabies, then they are entitled to their own existence. As a self-respecting individual, any person who has consciously decided to shirk the binding cord to one -ism and break the so-called oppressive shackles of a way of life or path of belief so thrust upon one must seek to identiy one's own uniqueness. It must be clear cut. Not borrow the best of both to convenience.

I just am not able to fathom this duality. Do we call it a corporatising of community in today's adaptive world of best practise theories!!! For soon when the day comes that all Day-lights of Indeea realise the need for a separate sun and moon and stars to behold and their own Cauverys and Gangeses, they would want to convene en messe under their own blue skies unsullied by other blue skies, unaided by a Dyer or a James Custer. Then there would be a Dalit Nadu or Dalit Pradesh or Dalitchal or Dalitistan or Dalitland, depending on how they congregate where. Would we probably also have Dalit-Deras? What use is having divided conferences and branch offices? Else the Dalit National Identity would suffer, as so many other identities have. (As such we have a IOK and POK and an independent J&K. We are already marching towards Chinese claims to Indian Occupied Arunachal Pradesh and vice-versa) Then you cannot seek a separatist country status as did the Khalistanis of the 80s, the Baloch of Pakistan, the Nagas of Nagaland etc, etc. Then I cannot seek a visa to go to these lands, so near and yet foreign countries within the sub-continent.

India is the next EU in the making. We soon shall have an Indian Union - a continental sub-continent with 50 country states and neighbouring Bangla as well as Nepal, Kashmir etc seeking I.U.Status. Especially Kashmir! And there would soon rise an Orhan Pamuk of the Kashmir. And etc, etc... And this year we are celebrating 60 years of Indian independence!

The point is: why do we need a centralised governing body in the name of a county that is so pseudo-secular. Secular in spirit but not in body? What is this Indian-ness that I must cling to? And why the once in four years tamasha called elections? Call back the Pommies. We were more united under them before 1947 and had a better sense of oneness.

Cry, my beloved country!

On Acting - II

2007-05-14T12:35:00.000+05:30

Mime, Movement, Music & (E)motion

I am not the first.
I will not be the last.
But it is sure... there is a lot of consonance between the spoken word and the expressed emotion. It is motion captured in eternity. Perhaps that explains why it is an emotion. But the eternal question is: did the sound derive from the action or vice-versa, whichever the language. My conjecture is, they are independent, but interdependent and symbiotic.

It is true that without sound, movement can exist. For, sound followed silence and still does. Through the movement is the noise born, as an object - organ or not - cuts through the wind space of time. Still, sound can be found in silence. Do not we say that silence after a while gets deafening? But, but...

The talk here is more about rhythmic sound also called music, rather than noise. How does it belong to the realm of speech?

We breathe. Therefore we are. Is breath not the same to speech as punctuation to syntax? Whereas the collusion of two alphabets categorised as a vowel and a consonant give birth to smoother breathing of a word, two apparently perfect bed-mates such as hard consonants produce a louder (in quality) sound. I consciously use the word collusion. Is it not experiential that the unhindered sound of a vowel and the laboured production of a consonant are opposing parties? And yet when they combine they implicitly produce rhythmic sounds? Also, the consonancy arises because of the consonants. They are the Zeroes to the Ones that are Vowels (again, that oxymoron 'One...are'!). Without this marriage, the life of language cannot go on.

Anyway, music is, after all, a certain rhythm pattern of sound. Instrumental rhythm is made understandable to lesser mortals requiring (or in obstinate and polemical cases, even 'demanding') codification and structural logic through notations and textualised grammar. It takes a higher level of implicit honesty in a mind to understand the inherent grammar of music that is experienced than analysed. Blessed are such emotinally sensitised souls. These are the true jazz musicians, who understand those hundreds of rigid grammatical rules inside the science of sound production and yet do not make a beeline for it consciously. In fact, it is ridiculous to even describe grammar as rigid since the concept of grammar was invented in the first place to help bring about an organised approach to achieve the ultimate quest of the soul - perfection, fluidity and grace. It is the same with words. So, then, the duty of an actor becomes it to sensitize oneself towards this task. To become a jazz master of the spoken word. To seek to express effortlessly and gracefully that the speech brings joy to the ears of the listener. In some case, the master of technique is there. The elocution powers of some actors far surpass a great orator that speech just remains a thing to marvel at and not empathise with.

What use is a speech that just touches the aesthetics and has not social effect? The same as a torrent of emotional confabulation that is not well enunciated. The attempt of the actor must be to bring about the poetry and rhythm of the word and the psychological connection to the context. It is then that the body that expressed those spoken words, the mind that motorised it and the meaning that the recipient audience received combine to make a holistic experience. Consequently, the word receives a communicative value in the context of the speaker-listener relationship. This is the true purpose of the spoken word.

Now, having said that, the whole trick (not a parlour trick, mind you!) is in giving the silence before the spoken moment its due space. The recipient audience as well as the uttering voice 'must' experience this space of silence before the utterance.

Why?

Because........... in this space does the body go through what the to-be-spoken word feels like; what the yet-to-be-voiced sound does to its (the body's) existence. That is why reaction becomes a key factor in exchange of dialogues in life as in stage. Else, acting whether in life or on stage would be one long spiel of improvisation. There is a lot of freshness in that because it keeps each person guessing. But it gets boring after a while like the characters in Horovitz's Line. They don't quite become Vladimirs and Estragons even after 25 years!

I am not an advocate of 'Naturalism' or the 'as is what is or where is' school of theatre and acting. I do, nevertheless, contradictorily, believe in the passage of an actor to a character. You may ask how! There be some who believe acting is a craft and solely a craft. NO... NO... NO! You can't mechanise your body to search for a certain moment of truthful movement. Without sensitising the muscles how can one 'feel' the movement.
Assuming the brain can be trained to 'detect' the movement twitches the muscles can perform, how would it connect to the spoken word on stage? If it cannot, how does communication between actor and spectator occur, what use is a text but an excuse for these two figures to meet from either side of the fence that is the fourth wall? Therefore...

An actor, I believe is an instrument of the state. (I use the word instrument consciously, in the full knowledge that it belongs to the area of technology and not of sense) A State of Mind. An actor in front of an audience or a group of audiences has the job of conveying the emotions of the character s/he is playing truthful to the body's experience. The body that s/he inhabits. Although the body is devoid of pain, and emotions are the visiting cards of psychological impressions (that are in turn results of the mind's recognition of grammatised and codified structures created by us, the civilised animals), these truthfully belong to the region called brain functions. That is why an actor is the instrument of a state of mind at a given time in a specific mental space represented or presented on stage through sets, backdrops or sceneries... or sometimes just furns or objects... or blocks of wood that homogenise and neutralise the naturalistic creation of a bedroom or garden.

You may think, as a result, if you followed the rationale behind my argument, that Stanislavskian 'method mumble' and Meyerhold's 'physics of speech' are no different. Lecoq and Strasberg are merely the obverse sides of a classical coin of acting; that all these talk about realism and naturalism, representationalism and presentationalism, impressionism and expressionism are just corollaries and theories of the same belief. Yes. There is only one Truth. It is not out there... but in here. The truth lies in the tooth. And the tooth is out there... in the way of our breath, which the body experiences.

This perhaps, then, is why the art of acting originated in mime (or acts without sounds), movement, rhythm and in course of time, orchestrated rhythm, appended through percussion and wind instruments. My credo is, an actor must learn to breathe and breathe properly with the sole focus being to fill the body... in a yogic sort of way. When one breathes deep and in total concentration, oblivious to external impressions, one's body goes through an experience that is truly exhilarating, revealing and releasing. That is when we de-mechanise and defamiliarise ourselves to the sensory experiences that have come to clutter out modern and day-to-day lives. That is when the sounds really connect to meanings civilisations have attached to them. That is when a sound becomes a word, a verbal symbol of a pictoral object such as rose or lemon or violence or Kafka or sky.

In the last 300 odd years since the Industrial revolution, we have de-centralised the sounds and individualised the noises to the noise of a scooter or the noise of a baby in need of diapers or the noise of the commode flush or the noise of amplified and mic-ed voice et al. But we have not thought about the capability of the brain to store and retrieve when required all these noises. We go about our hurly burly daily existence forgetful of the complexity we have webbed us in. An actor suffers as a result of this, because an actor has ceased to realise the specialness of oneself and has gone about becoming another zombie on the move in the traffic of daily life. Time we helped break an actor's un-trance.

Let's start breathing genuinely.

On Acting - I

2007-05-07T22:26:00.000+05:30

Acting is a process, they say. To me, acting is a journey. It is, to borrow a term from Lecoq, the transposition of one's accrued experiences into characterisation. The accrual never stops and the characterisation only gets better with more experience. Few people realise the difference between playing a character and putting their own personality on parade. In a movie or in front of a camera this may be required, for the medium has come to need star branding to sell. Theatre, on the other hand, is until today largely untouched by this vice. But soon, soon... and I dread that day!

Perhaps, in order to avoid that, actor-trainers and directors who work on process-oriented input must need focus on instilling the essence of acting: to show the difference in enabling an actor be sensitized to elemental emotions and how that could facilitate an actor portray another persona with an entirely different manner of presence.

Actor training and preparing to act involves much the same ritualistic process as a Religious Medium takes to go into a trance. Acting too is a state of trance. In this sense, acting is no different from religion, which partially explains the abundant presence of the element of performance in the Bhakti movement. Be it an Abhang singer, a Bhajan singer of the Meera and Andal variety or an Arayar dancer, the levels of involvement is of a quality that defies earthly proportion. They are totally surrendered in body and soul to the transcendental and unconscious of their physical this and here. An actor playing a role must aim for this. When the trip comes to an end, there is exhaustion but peace and harmony with oneself. And the tools an actor needs to be endowed with must become the equivalent of the drums the facilitators use to help the Religious Medium trance into one, the lines spoken the theatrical counterpart of the ululations that accompany the 'parai'. But...

If an actor consciously and conscientiously does not seek to build an armoury of this sort, it cannot happen. Trainers and directors striving to bring this to an actor does not suffice. It takes two to light the candle. These tools would never turn into a tuning fork or a percussive presence to be put to use to take the step beyond the mundane threshold for a magical journey into that illusive world of creation. If an actor gets there, then what the audience could get is sheer magic. An actor must seek to become the flying carpet on which the audience can travel into elsewhere. An actor must work hard to achieve this. For, does it not take hard work and more for an artisan to weave the perfect carpet! This flight of course, does not require air to launch the carpet like a balloon. It needs music to elevate. This music is the actor's internal oneness with the emotions of the role s/he is playing. And, to be able to achieve this oneness, one needs to connect to the character's individuality as well as the cultural and sociological belonging either in a community or time or both. For, we are all products of social structures, of time, space, civilisation etc.

Hence it follows, anyone wishing to act must spend time thinking the role out before committing the lines to memory. The key physical and psychological vocabulary of the character must first be learnt by the body before the verbal requirements, because everything begins with the body and ends with it.

The mind has pain, not the body. The mind only directs, but the body it is that acts. The body is the actor, and we only know too well that once the actor goes on public, the director just cannot intervene. Therefore the mind work must necessarily happen before performance and thoroughly at that. And let the body then do its work. Not for nothing that the mind is the capitalistic and managerial head of the hierarchy and the body the toiling bourgeoise labourer. But if the labourer does not work, capitalism would come to a standstill. Same theory applies in theatre too.

We, unfortunately, rarely let the body do its work on stage. Instead, we keep interrupting it by thinking. But letting the element of play come in consciously rather than just letting it happen as practised. That is not a successful trance. It is not even a successful attempt to fake a trance. In movies it is different. To me, the difference between theatre acting and camera acting is like the difference between going into a trance and day-dreaming. The latter can and often gets broken and is continual, not continuous. The former is a single, unstoppable stream like a non-stop, long-haul flight. If it is faked, the audience would see through the veil. So what is the solution? How do we complete our commitment to ensure a total experience for the audience?

Train the mind. Train the body. In the sequence.

Train the mind to let the body listen and store so that these can be implemented later. For, as someone said, education is not the mere accumulation of knowledge, but the successful application of it. Today in Chennai, given our imposed hurly-burly existence, as in life so in theatre, we have forgotten the habit of observation and listening. We do not bother about other presences around us and flitter about glibly like a cascade of words from a stand-up comedian's mouth. Time to stop that and pay attention to the greater teacher of all - Life. Let's start at the basics - the mother of all theatre - Life and pay attention to the real actors, the people around us. Did not the Bard say All the world's a stage, etc etc...?

Wright, Greg.... What more in store?

2007-05-05T21:53:00.000+05:30

News: Dav Whatmore top contender for India's new cricket coach
Reality Byte: There is no one else in the fray!
Hypothesis: By this time all probable foreign coaches have decided it is not worth being the coach of a country of losers who believe in politics, corruption and dishonesty... and of course money, money, money!!!

I have always felt, to be a coach who can survive successfully in Indian scenario, you have to be a politician more than a capable cricket administrator on and off field: you have to be a political and on-field tactician who can shove the crowbar suavely. To shove the crowbar is an act (not art) any Indian can do. But to be suave and diplomatic about it - we have to look upto a White foreigner.

England disqualifies itself, having not been able to set its own house in order. Australians used to look down upon even playing India that for a while we never played them enough or were never accorded the same amount of grudging respect they accord to West Indies even today and in these times of bad times for the latter's cricket. They did not realise that a monetarily successful stint to ensure an out-of-cricket, retired life is what a coach should look for and that India with its cricket-obsession could afford that. It took a Kiwi - an average cricketer with soft-talk PR skills, white skin and strategy as well as a cricketing brain presumed by most to be more than average - to show the Aussies where the mother lode in cricket lies; how much money can be made with a little more than mediocre output. Not just India, but the sub-continent in general.

Given the Indian think-tank's rightful aversion for Indian coaches (the logic I would presume being who to select and who not to hurt!... so shop elsewhere), also, at that point the craze all round being to have an outsider for a coach (be it soccer, hockey, volleyball... be it Brazil, England, Pakistan...), Wright became by default the right man. But he soon became, as inevitability would suggest, Mr. Wrong.

Soon came the Testament according to Greg. If Sourav was Wright's downfall, Sachin became Chappell's Waterloo. Now, Tom apparently being a demanding, lay it down ('eat it or I'll cram it down your throat!'), tough West Australian Moody person, we have to look at a man who for the better part of his on-field cricketing career was part of the Aussie touring 15 more because there was no better 15th person. Actually if you look at the scenario, most Aussies on the bench are uncapped and raw but highly touted talent. When it comes down to resting the regulars to give the bench a shot in an inconsequential B&H, it shows in just about average light. The reason it looks remarkable or has looked remarkable is because all other cricketing nations are even worse. We saw what happened without Warne, Lee and McGrath a bit before WC. And during WC, although Shaun Tait took wickets he was very expensive, bettered only by Dilhara in that department. Come to accept it... Brad Hogg is not in the league of spinners as Warne or MacGill. He's just an average hard-working Aussie like Damien Fleming was, Jason Gillespie was, Simon O'Donnell was, like many was-es... So, back to our Coach-to-be... Basically here is a man who may succeed where Greg didn't and Wright reasonably did. Why? he's been the last decade or so anchoring his little dinghy of coaching skills in the sub-continent. From Sri Lanka to Bangladesh and now where more Dave?

Dav Whatmore (to be pronounced Dave but according TIMES NOW as Daav, perhaps to rhyme with Pau) has to ask himself if it is even worth it! He's been sallying forth from a smaller (hence less corrupt) island nation to a smaller beak-point of the subcontinent that has probably seen more floods than Cherrapunji receives rainfall and famines than Sub-Sahara gets drought. He should draw a lesson from the Late Woolmer's book (not the one the latter was to have brought out before he became late like a cold latte) before he becomes if not Bob-bed at least Chappall-ed. The same simple theory that politically works for Island nations such as Sri Lanka or Singapore is relevant to their cricket and sports too. By the sheer size of the country and the administrative network and hence the several divisonal, state, regional and zonal wranglings, it is hazardous to be an Indian coach. The pitfalls are too many that no amount of monetary incentive is worth one's self-esteem.

The biggest joke of'em all is that he is going to be monitored by another dime-a-dozen all-rounder (of the nuts and bolts variety) whose ODI strike-rate average is only better than Sunil Gavaskar's 36 not out of 60 overs on that fateful WC match in the 70s. This man is like many an Indian cricketers who were touted brilliant personified during their heydays - like Jadeja and even Azharuddin. One look at their strike-rates you can tell they wouldn't make the 30 probables for pre-tour camp today. These people were the ones who would slow down the match intensity with their limited and dour skills and play ODIs like 5-day matches, who brought glory to the rotate-the-strike if you can't strike theory, because they can't really accelerate when it matters. And these people go on television morning shows and talk about Viru not being consistent or Dinesh Mongia not slogging or Raina not pushing the consistency levels. Of course now, the Monitor in question is, granted, a shrewd and cerebral survivor who saved his skin with a timely century in his last innings on that memorable tour to Pakistan under Kris Srikanth's captaincy. Actually the team achieved pretty crucial cookie points on the tour, but the captain got axed because he is plain-talking mercurial player whose talk was unfortunately not backed by willow-wield. Anyway, quite a few skeletons fell off the cupboard and our cerebral Monitor escaped, being a survivor Mumbaikar and has gone on to more pitch report and post-match pre-award announcements filled with successful platitudes borrowed from all over the world. May be Whatmore only deserves someone of his ilk, of his same quality. Average meets average in the context of an average cricket-playing country whose cricketing ability is being over-valued by the cricket-frenzy mob, which has above-average delusions that their cricketing heroes are supermen and übermenschen; and of course, super-abundant myopia for what makes Australia a champion side it is. By hiring a Roman you cannot build a Colleseum. May be not even make a pizza!

I do understand that to be a successful coach one need not have been a successful cricketer. But come, come... you can't all become John Buchanans. Even he had to take a lot of flak from time to time. The fact of the matter is this: whether it is cricket or soccer or hockey, coaches don't take the field. When it comes to dealing with on-field issues, the playing 11 must give it all. Classic example was Gillie's 149 in the WC-2007 Finals. To pull that last bit of 'hmmph' from your resources deep within is what winners are made of.

Foreign coaches must shirk away from Indian moolah and let Indian cricket either stew in its own fire or rise like the proverbial phoenix and reassert its delusive superior abilities. A few individual knocks to be recalled in times of gloom to lift the spirit is a thing of past. Indian cricket has forgotten the idiom that winning is a habit cultivated through self-motivation, overwhelming ambition & burning desire to assert one's belief in walking out with head held up in pride. McGrath coming back from injury to walk proud into the sunset will be remembered more than as an example. Those are stuff lores and legends are made of! To take a leaf out of Sidhuism, "You can't buy success off the rack".

Everyone keeps saying the hackneyed television monotone "Crucial time for Indian cricket". We've been saying this since 1987. Only the loudness of the byte has gone up. Two decades of crucial time is ICCCCCCU and BCCCCCCI must hang up its boot by probably outsourcing the BCCI to some Australian sports management company or American NBA panel of think-tanks. Add to it, these billionaire cricketers are squabbling over payments and salaries with their Board. The fact that 'There aren't many in the fray for Indian coach's job' shows the level of interest shown by foreigners towards Indian cricket's prestigious job. Whatmore must be mad. And, I think the Indian Cricket Union (if there be one) deserves a Euthanasia rather than ICU treatement before it slides down in rankings below Ireland and Scotland.

I am frustrated everytime this topic comes up. What more, yaar?

Enga Area : Subversion, subterfuge and substitution in Democratic Art

2007-04-28T14:30:00.000+05:30

Domaru...Dapsaa...Dhommai....Kumaaru....Kokki Kumaaru !!

Hey Padicha Naaye Kitta Varathey
Enga Area Ulla Varaathey !!
Pudupettai, Kasimodu, Ennoru, Vyasarpaadi Enga Area
Anna Nagar, KK Nagar, T Nagar, Boat Club-u Unga Area
Padicha Naaye Kitta Varathey
Enga Area Ulla Varaathey !!

Vaada Poda Vella tholu
Naanga Ellam Karuppu
Beachukkilla Adip-p-potta parappu
Padikkira Ponnallam unnathaan Paakum
Enga Area ponnu maatum Ennath-thaan paakum

Thabaal Potti Trouser oola potta pasanga
Thanni Vandi Laari kitta sanda podum Ponnunga
Dhinam Dhinam Kudichittu Malaierum Perisu
Thenavetta Karavaetti Kattivarum Ravusu
Kadalila Veyilia Uppeduppom Naanga

Thayir Saadham Saapida Uppu Kekkiringa
Kaalarai pakkathile vaazharom Naanga
Paada katti pinam pona mookka pothureenga

A/C Potta Bathroomil Enna Varum Ponga
Thandavaalam Kitta Othunguvom Naanga
Nethu Vecha Meenkozhambu Kaathula Pesum
Malli Poovum Inga Pootha Meen Vaasam Veesum !!

Oru Naal povar
Oru Naal varuvar

Enga Area Ulla Varaadhe
Ulla Pugundhu kadalile odarom naanga
Thoppaikku kadalile odureenga
Kaasu panam saerthu vachu
Kanja thaanam yaenga?
Puttu kittal panaththaal enna pannuveenga?
Enga Area ulla varaadhe

I saw a video of this song recently on one of the music channels. And I thought.... subversion in art has plummetted to new depths and nadirs of application.

Subversion in art is such a beautiful tool.

The trend in democratic media such as Bolly- and Kollywood is disturbing to say the least. In the case of Bollywood the amount of skin that is left unexposed is only as itsy bitsy as the area that the water particles poured as a poor excuse for rain has left undrenched. That is to say, nothing much. Probably some of Bollywood movies are just nano-millimeters away from being termed soft-porn. Well, when item dancers and sex symbols of current times don't mind doing tease acts live on New Year and Special Party stages, you can't expect the reel to be left behind. And that is nothing to me. I don't care. But Tamil cinema, I am disturbed, has lost all subtlety.

I still am one of those firm believers that Tamil Cinema has on and off managed to interest people in a more redeeming way. But the glorification of violence and perpetration of communal hatred and clan-nification of movies is not good as a trend. Instead of those times when we would watch prototypes and stereotypes being boo-ed from a section of society or community, now we have movies that you can actually classify as regional and hence in most cases caste centric.

Critics of repute who follow and study movies and sociological, folk-lore as well as demographic and culture-study trends may say am an illiterate. But as an audience who pays to watch movies, I am entitled to my sentiments. I know it sounds ridiculous to show two flowers kissing or a bee sucking out of a flower to use as innuendos instead of braving a censor-scissoring. But that was done out of necessity in those days. So we have lost the need to define necessity and made most luxuries necessities in real life. And the reel life is but a mirror of real, say most assertive directors who want to pass the buck of blame back when pointed finger at for showing something too blatantly.

Subtlety is in underplaying to a greater effect. Openness is required only when subtlety is to be lost upon a viewer. But in a pervasively reactionary society where you run across an autorickshaw driver who is so clearly karmic enough to assert that what Rajani Kanth does in Baatcha or Kamal Haasan did in Indian or Arjun in Gentleman... is only good for entertainment, you do accept the fatal Tamil dictum "Aettu Suraikkai Kootukku Udhavaadhu" (You can't cook a pictorial representation of any gourd!). But again, if that is so, nothing is going to be achieved by showing things openly to impress upon dullard or sophisticates (on either end of the spectrum), why waste? Art is all about aesthetics.

Also, some movies tend to delight in deliberately taunting the feelings of certain sections of people when it is not really warranted. Are directors and producers becoming bigots instead of underlining the social ills in a bid to bring about social alleviation, unlike their forbears of direction and production of yesteryears? Are they trying to actually buoy the vote banks of some pretenders and contenders to the MLA and MP thrones of future who base their politics on communal grounds? And why this unnecessary vilification and conscious glorification of caste and class while the actual attempt must be to try and make films that show ways to erase these boundaries. Instead, in the name of realism and voicing of the victim's viewpoint and that unique Indian word Yadhaartha or Yadhaartham or common-place normal realistic, why offput people's sensibilities. If we keep talking and showing the hunter and the hunted swapping places, the cycle would only continue.

One such example is the song reproduced above. The song, the video as well as the movie - in the name of realism and naturalism - has an effect of overkill. Instead, what not could have been achieved through Subversion. But probably we are witnessing examples of our times where there are no niceties and the city itself has been mofussilised. Abuse of environment, Blaring horns of Share Vans, Share Autos, Yellow-number plated tourist and BPO-dedicated vans and cars that carry a verbiage that says "If such and such a vehicle is found for rash driving, call...", which has no use whatsoever! I think Chennai deserves a huge land-slide or earthquake to clean up the city such as what Hiroshima and other such places underwent. It means that you and I may have to die in the process. But the land-lubbing and -grabbing would stop. The consumerist blow-jobbing of Mammon would stop. The crowds would decrease. Pollution would abate. Rebuilding would engender a new and hopefully responsible community consciousness. This division of Us and Them, Mine and Yours, Areas and Domains, Castes and Classes would vanish. But... am not just a dreamer, rather an idealist. A few of the breed left who believes in drawing lines of contentment. An anamoly... a sore-spot in the map of materialist nouveau riche i-kill-you-before-you-kill-me-first generation. Hmmmph!

Ji, Behanji !

2007-04-27T20:14:00.000+05:30

This post is subtitled: Theatre? You mean Sathyam... Abirami, Inox...?!!

It's disgusting as well as distressing how degeneration happens in theatre. We all know that this city virtually has no serious pursuit of theatre but only as just another channel for live entertainment.

What's wrong with theatre as a form of entertainment?

Nothing wrong; but then if it stops there then what's its uniqueness! Theatre must make people take notice, care and become better human beings. Even assuming you set out to do comedies, there has to be something more to it than just becoming a log-in place for imbeciles with no inclination to use up their brains but money to spend. We are breeding a culture here in Chennai that is so far removed from a Chennai so steeped in knowledgeable people appreciating intelligent art. This city and especially its live event spaces are becoming space for mere exchange of visiting cards and business or social networking. Isn't that what all these Am-way and other MLM meetings are supposed to do? So... has theatre become a place for consumerism? What happened to the days of society and community driven theatre activities? The other day I saw the KB movie Server Sundaram and saw the play within the movie and wondered why don't we produce such stuff anymore... even in Tamil.

So... theatre as practised outside the region of urban, elite, exclusive, vonly english-ispeaking Chennai-ites will never be understood by 'this my city of mass destructors of culture.' This was once again recently vindicated to me.

I had recently done a play. And day next, I got this call from a reporter writing for byline and language-improvement from the features section of one of the feeder-line english dailies.

"Ah... this pley you put up last night..."

"Yes!" - I.

"Ah, could you teh me a li'l about the pley...?" - a little hesistancy hanging at the butte end of the dusty mesa.

"Well, you did come, right?" - a brash I, who by this point had started casting aspersions.

"Yes yes. But you know, this in and out of roles, characters, airport drama, epics, myths... it was a bit unclear."

"Oh...oh! If you can explain tersely..." I even stopped to wonder at my oxymoron. How can anyone explain tersely? "...what precise info you want, I can tell you," sez an increasintly irritated I.

"Could you tell something about the story?" There was an ecstatic silence of relief from the other end of the instrument.

"!?!*!" - surmise I internally and convince myself that only their photographer had perhaps come. That is a common sight these days, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I told the story, plot, subtext and all for what it's worth, not given to openly discouraging aspiring writers. I anyway don't care for reviews because 'in Chennai there are no reviews!' I was just curious to see what doctoring is done to my proverbial dice and if at least the depth of language is there to re-word my bytes.

It's an alarming trend to notice that anything even such as "Shoor-Shakuni" play is considered heavy-weight in Chennai. How would these people react to "Long Day's Journey Into Night" by O'Neill or "Street Car" by Tennessee Williams or "Sakharam" by Tendulkar? Just reminds me of Jennie Malone's lines for Chapter Two: "I'm going to read all the classics starting with Agamemnon. Ok, Catch-22, we're going to try it one more time" to which Faye Medwick answers: "You see, to tackle heavy-weight material is not what you should be doing right now!" CATCH-22! Heavy-weight!! What about Bernard Malamud and Updike then?

One lady apparently actually called my cast member and asked "Why don't you people just do comedies?" What the...! The question arises. How relevant is the term theatre except in the context of the title of this post? One thing is very clear; I now understand why up North they don't recognise Chennai as a theatre center. Do we deserve anything more?

We are ourselves to be blamed. We sell our theatre. To the sponsors. The fact appears that it's high time we erased the word sponsor. Who goes after sponsorship? Someone who does not want to risk their own money. Someone who does not believe in their own work seriously or believe in the efficacy and the quality of ther work to drive audience at least in the long run. It's not wisdom or being smart... to not putting one's money in the frontline. It's just treating one's work as pure commerce or pursuing hobbies and passion with someone else's money and time. Manipulation, exploitation, euphemistic begging.

Now, don't get offended saying just because one seeks sponsorship there's no self-belief. On the contrary, one might say 'only because there is quality the work sells or the sponsors support or both!" But no! The people who put up money into a show in Chennai (I can't talk of other cities) do it for various other reasons which make up a huge list in itself.

Theatre in Chennai - at least English theatre - is purely a hip or fashionable hobby or passion to pursue. It does nothing to stimulate the intellect or challenge the minds. In fact, most audience are already challenged and special enough that if the cost of laughing gas were to be cheaper our comedies would not attract crowd. Honestly, this craving for light theatre entertainment is scaring me. You need not agree with me. YOU... NEED... NOT... AGREE... WITH... ME!!! I do not personally care two ways, continuing to do plays I think raise voices, if not of dissent, at the least of difference. There are people - besides me - who are attempting different and even financially risky shows, and if one can't write proper and informed REVIEWS, one must at the very minimum just use up the invite and remain silent... Instead of filling precious ad-space with their by-line earning junk. Either the newspaper must profit or the theatre doers. But when the mistake lies with our theatre groups who are bent upon building branding how can we blame two-bit hacks with PG-Diplomas!

There is such a thing called community consciousness. But what can one say when majority of the four-wheelers are yellow-number plates with surrogates behind steering-wheels who don't have concepts of ownership. The trouble is Chennai has no more pride and accountability to its environment. How can one expect its theatre to be community conscious. We can have mindless flautulence on stage in the name of laughter. Even Ji, Behanji on SAB TV is funny. But it does have some excuse for social responsibility with Behanji's frequent sallies to the Police Stations and Judiciaries!!!

In fact, I am frightfully optimistic that Ji Behanji is already on its way to emulate its predecessor Priya Tendulkar shows and other such of the past on DD. That's another sad lament of mine. Why don't Chennai channels come up with decent sit-coms. There's a huge lacunae in that area and a great need for it! But that's for another day and another blog.

Something Funny at the cemetery....

2007-04-27T01:13:00.001+05:30

My Classification:
AUTHOR: CARL MULLER
TITLE : A funny thing happened on the way to the cemetery
GENRE : Short Stories
Publisher: Penguin Books
Price : Rs. 150/- (First Edition, 1995)
Penguin Website Classification:
• Published by Penguin Books India
• Imprint: Penguin
• Special Price: Rs 225.00
• Cover Price: Rs 225.00
• ISBN: 0140382631
• Edition: Paperback
• Extent: 200pp
• Classification: Fiction
• Rights: World
Journalism is a delightful art and an ingenious profession... in the hands of an intelligent writer (not half-baked info providing reporters who sleep through a performance of Twelfth Night and report it the next day as As You Like It!). And a journalist worth his salt, desperate for proper work and writes his way through rather than having the proverbial nose for sensational news is a rare breed who deserves more Bookers and Pulitzers, Nobels and Sahitya Akademis than those iconic fiction writers who live by the virtue of a one-and-half chartbusting quasi-literary works. For, such writers as these quick-witted journalists are blessed with more than the gift of a glib-gab.
One such writer I found out in my biblio-copic dusty shelf just recently is the Sri Lankan writer Carl Muller, the author of what to me is a super-documentary semi-fictional biography of that brilliant eponymous city, titled, COLOMBO - A Novel.
I had read COLOMBO about five years back and in its feverish wake had gone and purchased his collection of short writings entitled 'a funny thing happened on the way to the cemetery: Scenes from a Sri Lankan Life'. I had also promptly forgotten its existence in my exclusive six-foot five-shelved exclusive non-refridgerated Godrej for Penguins. I must at this point confess that I have this addiction for hoarding books whether I have the time to make love to them with my fingers or not. Time Present I may not. Though, I believe in a Future filled with my tired body occupying the traditional Easy-chair on the proverbial verandah, while on one side a cup of the home-made coffee gets cold oblivious to my presence and on the other a pile of eager books yellow next to me, awaiting its karmic turn for this Reading Ram to give salvation to those Patient Ahalyas who queue up vertically! Come to think of it, the metaphor is contradictory. Unlike Ram of the Yana,I am not confined to one book. More his father's ilk, moi!
Digressions apart, Carl Muller is a hilarious writer with more eyes than a dragonfly for details and a sense of humour that the British writers of his plumage would be proud of. I shall just quote a couple of Kohi-Noors of his humungous prowess for humour and leave you to be convinced that this writer truly belongs to any choosy reader's shelf. The following is from the essay God Equals Claud, recalling his experiences working for Gulf News:
"It was the general pattern. Many Arabs, even today feel that a European should be General Manager or hold top post. Thus, they feel that they have given their business 'a touch of class'. Abu did just this. In the lower echelons were the Asians. The editorial department was the preserve of the whites...

At the top were the pukka sahibs who even had their own pubs in Dubai and Sharjah and did a 'Rupert Brooke' wherever they went. They clung grimly to the concept that they had been lords and masters of the Gulf not long ago and should be treated thus ad nauseum. It would not be wrong to sum up these European operations thus: 'Get that mountain moving. We shall take it to Mohammed!'

Safaris to the Middle East were deployed along old familiar lines: a quick weekend to Teheran to soak the then Shah for a few millions; drop in on the King of Saudi Arabia and give him some expensive advice; and those Bedouin in the UAE distribute money and watch to everyone - should be an interesting day or two... these Arabs have money and it's a bit of shame, what if we don't take as much of it away from them as possible! "

Later in the same article he writes about his Chief Sub-Ed Malcolm he of the title Claud. I quote:

"Malcolm Claud had no idea that Abu sub-consciously considered himself by far the superior being. Claud made the cardinal mistake of thinking that no newspaper in Dubai could run without his expertise He was, after all, the 'great white father' of the Gulf News. He had already let slip the interesting fact that Jim Headgear was no editor at all. 'The closest he's been to a newspaper is to put on a dressing gown over his jammies and go to the landing to collect the Mirror,' he said. And then he would say with some complacence, 'Don't any of you forget it. I'm the hot-shot here and what I say goes.'

We decided otherwise. The 23rd was fast approaching and Claud had made no indication that there would be a Gulf News. Abu was getting worried. Claud had his own escape route planned.'I cannot produce a newspaper with a bunch of incompetent Sri Lankans,' he said. He was obviously missing his crew of wangers who had wrecked the newspaper in the first place. Having to kow-tow with Asians went much against his grain. There was some talk about rearranging his face but this was frowned on.

Eventually matters came to a head. With the finesse of a very block-headed bull in the main outlet of a China shop, Claud marched upon Abu with the breathless news that the paper should be recalled to life on, say, 23 December. Abu hit the roof. He had, he said, lost a lot of sympathy for ginger moustaches. Also, he was mathematically competent enough to know that he would have to sit and watch his staff lounging around and making innumberable trips to the coffee dispenser while he was bereft of earnings."

What is alluring about this book is its disarming honesty and the self-effacing personality the writer as a survivor-victim who laughs at the face of trials and tribulations. There is a definitive Ahabian quality to his existential status in the Bedouin land. And this pervades the other essays as well. Rather than the promised couple let me leave you with one more, lest you confine the book as a one-article humour anamoly. He can get down-right poetical with his business of irritation. Like this one about his descent into Delhi:

"We landed with a thud. Coasting the tarmac was like riding the noon stage into Dakota. Even the seat-belt juddered the diaphragm. I was not heavy laden. Just a beat-up suitcase, briefcase and camera. I walked into a sea of humanity that, at five-thirty in the morning, was positively unnerving."

Oh! While you are at it, if by now convinced that he may probably not worth a whole 200 bucks, but definitely worth a trip to Oxford or Crossword Bookstore where they sit and let you read the whole book, then also check the other essays titled Ups and Downs, Guide Me, I'm a Tourist as well as A Crack at The Mirror.

Subaltern forays

2007-03-05T12:06:00.000+05:30

I've had too many things happening and too little time to surf decent for anything other than work. Hence no yadda yadda yadda from me till now. To think that this is my first post in 2 months and more...well,well,well...you know now!

Anyway, been doing a lot of researching and reading as part of my latest work. YES, I said it. My next production is coming up and soon...

I've been reading from Racism to Aryan Race Theory to Game Theory and beyond and finally to terrorism, subaltern studies... am too cramped in brain with info, can't exactly decide what to put and what not!

The image you see above is an artwork design done by M.Siva (known for his mask works and as brother to Palani of Koothu-p-pattarai, sadly enough, coz he's such a good artist himself!) for the forthcoming show.

It's actually more an event than a show. There are two parts to the event.

One is the theatre play produced by Masquerade and directed by Moi (KK), it's Poile Sen Gupta's THUS SPAKE SHOORPANAKHA, SO SAID SHAKUNI - a contemporary take on history, myth, terrorism, love, war, revenge... righting the historical wrongs and restoring unrepresented and alternate, albeit truthful, voices to their rightful positions in the annals. Whew! If that's confusing, let me make it simple. It's a beautiful play, not as complex and heavy as it sounds. It is simple, interesting and very contemporary. But in order to make it interesting for you ppl who'll (definitely you're not gonna miss this one!) watch this, I had to go into so much reading and research.

Two is the unique art exhibition titled SUBALTERN FOOTPRINTS featuring works created by five of Chennai's contemporary and young artists - Asma Menon (there we go Asma, you're young!), Jacob Jebaraj, B.O.Shailesh, M.Siva and Benita Perciyal - works that are inspired by this play specifically for this occasion.

The Overall Reason and Cause.... Reason - a 9-day WORLD THEATRE WEEK CELEBRATION. WORLD THEATRE DAY is March 27th (the last night of the theatre performance). March 26th is the first day and inauguration of the exhibition that will run till March 31. CAUSE - The Theatre Play is a tribute to Bagyam (Bhagirathi Narayanan under whom this was my first production in the capacity of Technical Director) and the Exhibition is a Fund-Raiser for a Theatre House (Institution cum Training space - Manram as we call it in Tamil) to be constructed at Purisai - 120 kms away from Chennai - to nurture Theru-k-koothu. The proceeds from the sale of art works and from the gate collection of the play would go towards this cause.

SO PLEASE PLEASE LAND UP. Also, we gonna have a great inauguration on 26th at 6 pm, followed by the play at 8 pm. The performance only lasts 60 minutes. So it doesn't go on and on!

For further details about exact dates, show timings, tickets availability... further posts about my research and readings of the play... keep glued to this spot. Regular post for the next month would bore you to death about this play and contemporary issues the play throws up!

Adieu for the moment!

Requiem for the year that would soon 'was' be!

2006-12-20T12:51:00.001+05:30

In the beginning was January...

and at the end... December of course! I don't want to stand on the Night of Dec 31 and write a Janus-faced post. That's too passé. So I jump the gun.

Of course I am sad that Michael Schumacher, Martina Navratilova, Andre Agassi all retired and Shane has Warned he would soon. But there are other things, on the more personal front that I am not so happy about! I just tried counting the amount of work I had put in Theatre as well as elsewhere. It shocks me to realise that I had done about 15 productions and events of various sorts in theatre in 2006 alone. It makes me happy, of course, to see that that involves a wide repertoire of what ranges from acting in other's production to figure in the scheme of other banners too! But 15??? That is worse than The Meaning of Life (which is 12 !!!)

So what am I proud of that I did in 2k6 that I would cherish in 2k7 and could possibly relish cherishing further than 2k7? Perhaps... Three@Twenty. When at a time other groups are thinking of figuring out what can be done to the future course of theatre in Chennai, I think we started doing something. It makes me happy to think that we were able to associate Masquerade (here I mean the folks who stood by Masquerade throughout the year, out of sheer conviction and commitment) with several new and first time playwrights. I am sure that spark of ignition would definitely make them look back and draw inspiration to write further works. Also, am glad that the year 2k6 was not solely a KK-walk at Masquerade, but others who took responsibilities in all walks of a production - through all the mainstream as well as Three@Twenty readings. And the planning is just about complete for 2k7.

I can tell you, it is going to be a very different year of presentations from Masquerade. If we don't end up redefining art or theatre in Chennai, we would be redefining ourselves. And I thank "small Medium @ Large" for that. It made us realise we are better off not doing those comedies. That I also feel is the current problem in theatre in Chennai. Every one seems to be convinced that comedy is the only way to go, if one wants to see better populated houses. Even when it is not one of thsoe western made to order box comedies, it still is a comic or light-hearted play. Why? I remember fondly Mitran's Anna Weiss and Bagyam's Senora Carrar among several other shows. Do we have to ham for our sausage and bread?

I wrote this little 600 word guest column in Simply Chennai recently. I had said some things that I accept are truths about the current trends in Chennai. But in retrospect, I realise why we are stagnating continually and are constantly unnecessarily soul-searching as to the Status Quo of Chennai Theatre. It is a syndrome that is part and parcel of contemporary liberalised India. Any thing that comes new to India... it takes a while to warm up. But once it catches up... it's like wild fire. No stopping, unless, having destroyed everything around itself, being left with itself, it consumes itself. Unfortunately, unlike the Phoenix, it never rises out of its own ashes. Take the case of Photocopying (or Xerox in familiar parlance), Electronic Data Processing, DTP, Colour Printouts, STD ISD PCOs, Pagers, Mobile phones... you see a saturation resulting from watering down of availability. I guess theatre is going through the same phase. By sheer unmoderated enthusiasm, we have watered down the quality of productions in Chennai. Every so-called actor as well as director is gotten greedy to perform, we have created a scenario of plentiness of performance that we hardly do what the classical musicians would call 'sadagam'. To quote Ranjani and Gayatri from their interview today in the Music Festival Supplement to The Hindu: Though we know the value of this festival, we are beginning to wonder if this kind of excess and performance orientation is the only way of preserving and nurturing our music. With so many concerts during the Season, how can any artiste do justice to every one of them? Similarly, if we perform so much, how can there be qualitative energy? I am surprised that even such a quality conscious person as Bala (for whose conceptions I have a high adoration!) has been too prolific in 2k6!

Also, I feel, instead of casting aspersions on the public's craving for entertainment as the public's craving for comedy on stage, if we start giving tighter and better narrative productions (that are not necessarily comedies), it would help us revision our audience for the years to come, vis-a-vis Theatre in Chennai. I am very convinced that all any entertainment-seeker wants is an entertainment that helps him/her forget the world he/she personally inhabits. The world on stage can be a familiar serious world, doesn't matter, but it has to be presented in such a manner without distracting the narration with unnecessary frills or comedy. So, for me, 2k7 is going to be all about evolving a definitive individual style of presentation and choice of scripts. Also to strive for tighter and well-honed productions than hamming comedies or going for numbers.

On the personal side - 2k6 was productive in its own way. I added quite a few new chapters to my Book of Life - how to gauge people better, who to keep distances and how to keep distances, how to not be politically correct at the risk of losing people, places, work, etc. Well, it does help to be honest and open even if one is branded as being rude or disparaging or whatever. And I managed to post little of my fiction than I have written. Only those I thought are absolutely read for public consumption has gone into Web-publication here. And I have met some nice and decent people both on the web/blogosphere as well as real-time. Hope their acquaintances blossom into something more worthy.

To end the post on the same note as it began, I would be sad to see several people retire after the 2k7 Cricket World Cup. But then, when it's time to go, one just has to go. Better to get out before fading ignominiously into a murky sunset.

The Lobotomy of Theatre

2006-12-20T12:51:00.000+05:30

Having recently come through a full circle of what I consider to be my first incarnation as a theatre director, after 15 years of work, I ask myself what I have learnt.

One can take up art as a casual or desultory hobby; or as an intensely passionate pursuit. One can embrace art as an amateur or as a professional. It can be a paid vocation or obsessive pursuit involving satisfaction as the goal. In whatever form, once we take up to it, we are artists at some level or other. And we have duties.

First, whatever be the plane of involvement, we are bound by some rules and codes, ethics and etiquettes. Theatre especially is a team game always and ever. Part of the team is an actor. What defines ones frame of mind as regards amateur or professional is this recognition of oneself as a part than the dominant pie. An actor, to put it bluntly, is the most dispensable but most inclusive part of a production. We are not even talking about a performance in terms of a show. A work of production becomes a show only when the audience-factor gets involved. To an artist who is more concerned about the creative process of a production, the audience is/are dispensable as much as an actor. The fact of the matter is an actor could be created. An actor can be developed. Any body could be trained to act. But imparting - self or to other - the foundations or the basic underlying approach to perform a specific role alone does not create a complete actor.

What or who then is a complete actor? Not anyone who can perform, surely. Someone who understands his/her inclusivity, respects the ethics and etiquettes, adheres to the demands made on oneself in the team performance. I am not talking any management therapy here. All that is pure junk and gimmick talked aloud to cheat people into parting with their money in a suave way. If each sets his/her personal agenda secondary and within the group's primary objective, that is the beginning of commitment. The unfortunate part of theatre in most cases from wherever I have observed, especially one hundred percent in the circuit I work, is that personal agenda is so much more important that the primary objective is only impotent. Rather, is rendered impotent.

Should an artist work according to the desires of a director or impose oneself on the character or role that is being essayed? There are some truths which cannot open up to the conception of two schools of thought at all. There is the truth and it is the only one. In this case: an actor is being cast by the director out of various considerations and in Chennai, also out of various constraints. The director's comfort level in working with a person, the person's comfort level with his/her co-actor(s), comfort level in being expected to do certain actions or wear certain costumes, not to mention the importance of the role, which in most cases is defined as quantity of presence. That also shows the shallowness of the pursuit in Chennai. After the casting stage, after one has accepted a character, after one has decided not to desert the production ever till the last curtain call is taken after the first run, begins the actor's responsitbilities towards the play.

The play is all. The playwright is the creator. If the playwright intended the character to be performed in any which way, no one would write. Every piece of writing is born out of a need to express something, however frivolous it could have been conceived, it could turn out to be or it is. That being God's own truth, is an actor justified to change the way the role is played. Yes and No.

Who in the first place decides how to play a role? How flashy or less conspicuous... what right amount of admixture of emotions? Well, irrespective of the nomenclature of the play as a comedy or drama, what is being performed is a narration of sorts. A story is being told. And that is the paramount feature of arts. Everything contains a story, however abstract or real. If the story is not told first and foremost in the way the playwright intended it, then it is no more his. What right have we to tamper on someone's propriety?

When we build a house we do not first fix the chandelier or a sauna. Those are luxurious items that MUST come only after the basic electricity as well as water and sewage connection are provided. Similarly, to the No part of playing a role the way an actor wants, one must realise that the role has to be understood and the role's basic existence conveyed to the audience. To that extent, the actors are carriers and couriers of someone's message. There is no question of rephrasing the message or repackaging the acceptability levels of the luggage.

Once the basic allegiance and obeisance to the original plan of architecture is paid, then an actor can look to make the role his own. Even there, the work is to get into the skin of the role and become it than impose a certain way of playing so as to mislead the audience to think of the role in a particular way. Most actors do this. But then, most actors are not trained. Even those who are trained - self or by someone - are not trained to think a role. They are mechanised in alleged workshop atmosphere to practise exercises to tune (warm-up as the popular term goes) the body, breathe and speak through regulated and robotised inhaling and exhalation patterns. Learning to warm up or improvise or breathe and speak is only the technical part. What about the emotional sensitising of an actor? There is also a certain management-style theatre practise creeeping in some instances. If a person is sensitive enough to think of oneself as part of the whole, or - even if coldly stated - even begins to think I have given my time, let me go through it meaningfully and get out, having contributed what is expected of me, these so-called team-building exercises would not be required. This only shows how much amateurish is our thinking and why we still stagnate qualitatively even if lot of stuff is happening. An individual emotional sensibility is lacking.

At the end of the day, we are dealing with flesh and blood emotions on stage. And what of the cultural, political or social understanding, not to mention the economic and gender status of the character. Do we not have the sacred duty to create a verisimilitude of someone else on stage? Unfortunately one means people choose is to grow or cut hirsute appendages of the body and use make-up or costume to show a change from their real looks. Transformation is internal and not outwardly. All these cost time and energy. And all these are very much in paucity right now because of the cost factor than anything else. The cost to be paid for most people translates into party time or earning time. Since either the mind set more upon social jamming up before and after rehearsals or working in another job (career or not) which monetarily pays more than theatre could possibly afford, we have less trained actors and more mannequins whose brains have been lobotomised by hormonic surges 3 feet vertically to the bottom from their seat of thinking.

Theatre in Chennai may be a place of plentiful happenings, but in the wrong areas of performance. So what should one do to change this, you might want to ask! Nothing. Change must happen internally with every individual. They must think that life is not always one huge celebration of adolescence and that life has its share of responsibilities and commitments to whatever is done. And commitment, like trust, belief or love is 100 percent. You can't half-believe someone. You either do or not. Similarly, one must either do theatre or not. Rather not waste other's time. It is the responsibility of anyone who wants to do theatre in Chennai at the moment, given how much is suddenly happening. Do you hear? Stop backslapping and kissing frogs, seek the real Prince with or without the Kiss. Start now. Or quit.

Of Coffee, Cafés and Culture

2006-12-18T20:40:00.000+05:30

Well, as Keats would have loved to Ode, ‘Tis the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’! Not exactly mellow fruits! But definitely a bit of mist instead of dew on the grass on these early Marghazhi mornings would be romantic! And of course…. This is the season of music and coffee and culture. So I decided to pull this one up – I wrote this about three years ago for a local daily. I have touched it up to belong to this day and time. It’s about the inevitable coffee.

When you get to spell out the ABC’s of culture and the happening cities, C is for Chennai; definitely so without ambiguity now that Calcutta has become Kolkatta. Although considered by many aboard Planet India to be C for Conservative, C for Chennai and even C during December for Cutchery Season (Music Festival)… on the positive side C for Coffee and C for Chennai come up as well. And that is something the rest of India has to give it to Chennai, even if grudgingly. Somehow Culture, Coffee and Chennai have always been intertwined together.

I had this friend of mine from Mumbai, back a few years ago when I was in Germany, referring to my German friends who were going to travel down to Chennai with me… that I should take them to India Coffee House if they wanted to drive in, sit around like they do back in the West in the pubs and coffee houses. I was surprised. India Coffee House? We sure have our share of Murudi’s and Hari Nivases and other Udupi Bhavans famous for their coffee after Idli, Vadai and Pongals, to sign off, be it a morning breakfast or evening tiffin. We even had our share - between the late 70s to late 80s – of Irani Tea Shops ruling the roost and scoring over the famous South Indian Coffee and almost replacing the coffee drinking habit of Chennaiites. But India Coffee?

Being born and growing up as part of a generation that is always at the crossroads of cultural changes in the ever-bourgeoning social climate of India, I had heard about the practices of the 50s-60s generation of youths bringing their discussion times at coffee houses and Woodlands… May be my Mumbai friend, being a decade older than me knew it! I searched. And I came up a little to know of this so-called India Coffee House. Rather of this culture, not of this House.

I knew of all those vintage landmarks that once existed to give Chennai that unique personality: cinema theatres such as Globe, Ashok, New Elphinstone, Minerva, Paragon (and have seen the metamorphosing of some of them such as Melody) and have seen the shutting down or falling into bad times of those old favourites of ours such as the Casino, Pilot, Safire complex, Anand complex, Chitra, Rajkumari, not to mention the long list of those North Madras cinema halls that have vanished to give place to hi-rise commercial or residential complexes thanks to real-estate mania; I remember the time when Chellarams and Kuralagam used to be the watchwords in clothing merchandise; when Shanti Vihar and Rita Ice-cream factory were equally synonymous with Mylapore as much as Kapaaleeswarar Temple and Kamadhenu & Kabali (the Gemini-twins of Mylai’s cinema halls).

However, India Coffee House? Unless any ol’ timer responds to this article with the history of one such place, I am stumped. All that I know is this: there is one at the left hand corner of Burkit Road merging with Usman Road, opposite the T.Nagar Bus Terminus. But am sure that is not the one. If that is, well, it has fallen in bad times now.

That was yesterday, as the popular song goes. All you had to do a couple of years back was to just stroll by G.N. Chetty Road: you had both the Qwikys T.Nagar and the Café Coffee Day. Not too far away, at what has come to be known as IC (Ispahani Centre) another Coffee Day. Right next door at the Ebony, a Qwikys Island. Now of course neither Ebony nor those two GNC Road joints exist. But to show that the power center of Coffee Houses has shifted, we have KNK (Khader Nawaz Khan Road) housing the Barista and Mocha (that bordello-feel red building); and within a kilometer, in the road off Peters Road, the independent and unique Café Moca of the Amethyst. Driving down Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai (Cathedral Road for ol’ timers!), opposite Stella Maris College, Coffee? has another little location besides the one at Adyar; then another 200 meters or so we have Café Nescafe. Drive another kilometer and half down TTK Road (again, Mowbrays Road for Madrasis!), you have another Qwikys Island at Lifestyle! Just take a qwik - sorry, quick - turn through Eldams Road and hit G.N.Chetty Road back, you have come a full circle of about 3 kms radius and you have experienced more caffeine down your streams than ever in the history of Chennai.

Not enough… drive down to Besant Nagar. A little range war is shaping up. Café Coffee Day, in what I divine to be a-la Starbucks model, are already up with two outlets on both sides of Bessie Barista… and are apparently planning a huge outlet right next to Barista… to lynch, dry-gulch, what you may the competition. I presume it is the building coming up next to the Sri Krishna (or is it Ananda Bhavan?) overlooking the Bessie Beach, across Cozee corner. And the other Coffee Days at Indira Nagar or Cenotaph Road aren’t too far either. But none of these can take the cake come December. The beehive of activity among Chennai-ites would be Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha, MFAC, R.R. Sabha and other little havens of Classical Music and Dance. I know of a bagful of rasikas who not necessarily always land up at these sabhas to listen to Cutcheries… but to let their palate loose on the canteens run by Sakthis, Arusuvais and others…

What is this phenomenon? Chennai, Culture, Coffee… and now Cafés seem inevitably woven into the lives of Chennaiites and nostalgic Madrasis! In more ways than one, tracing the coffee roots of Chennai to its Tamil culture would not be wrong. The current in-term Coffee Pub is not far off target from the term they use back in Tanjavur for hotels – Coffee Clubs! And who can forget the mother of ‘em South Indian degree coffees all – The Kumbakonam or Thanjavur Degree Coffee. Now, one place people this side of Mylapore stretching towards Adyar go to today, to get their Kumbakonam degree coffee is the Sangeetha in Raja Annamalai Puram (known to young ones as RAP). And who can forget the coffee of Rayar’s Café of Cutchery Road, Mylapore.

Rightly so, given the conservative tag that has stuck to this city, Coffee seems to be the panacea and the redeeming equivalent of outgoing Chennaiites that Beer and Pubs are to Bangaloreans. Now in a way, Chennai’s fascination for Coffee has come in the form of Cafés to help the citizens shake their conservative, homeward bound label. Talk about our belief in rebirth and reincarnation.

May be some coffee outlets do not report as enthusiastic a crowd inflow at their outlets. But each of them – from the Qwikys of Sterling Road (Q I as it is known) through the Barista of KNK Road in Nungambakkam and Coffee Day of IC to the Coffee? and CCDs of Adyar, the outlets all have their customers, regular clients, loyalists, hangabouts and time-killers!

Inhabiting a Coffee House is not only a semi-fashion statement, but also an essential get-away for some from the younger generation. There is so much more to Cafés and Coffee Pubs of Chennai than just a Qjam or sound machine or a book corner or groups of youths. A whole horde of information could be gleaned and gathered. One could, upon haunting these pubs, develop a whole new network of business cards or friendships. One could even fine one’s life-partner, as I have good observed reasons to believe. The Coffee Pubs are Chennai’s equivalent of the book bazaars of the ancient Cordoba in Spain. The Coffee Pubs are also fast becoming haunts of some of Chennai’s musicians, artists, DJs, television stars and sportspersons. They are becoming quite ubiquitous and happening places… making them a far cry today from the hangout of raucous teens and young adults of a year or so back. And quite a lot of coffee is being consumed too.

Say Cheers to Coffee!!! And let’s not forget that haven of Coffee and Culture talk of yesteryears… it still rocks and is my fav place when I need to meet someone or kill time before an engagement in the vicinity – DRIVE IN WOODLANDS. May be not the best coffee, but a place Queen Anne of the 17th century Coffee Houses of England-fame would be proud of. I am starting to feel the itch for beans in my throat. Let me vamos.

As old as Isolde - TRISTAN+ISOLDE

2006-12-17T22:22:00.000+05:30

This is a review I sent to somewhere where it never got published due to various reasons of which length definitely was not one! Anyway, read on!

Movie Review:

TRISTAN & ISOLDE – Reynolds gets it Wrong!!!

Title: Tristan+Isolde
Director: Kevin Reynolds
Cast: James Franco, Sophia Myles, Rufus Sewell…

The Dark Ages of England’s historic past has held very many stories of war and intrigue. There are several that celebrate the war-lords and the feuds betwixt warring tribes across the English Isles – between the Welsh, Saxons, the Irish, the English, the Normans and the Brits! These have intermittently lent themselves to some sweeping productions on both sides of the Atlantic pond and also within the American continent.

All these films have some template gestures to them: a sweeping landscape, usually shot in the Scottish regions; Celtic and Ren-faire music to adorn the quiet richness of the romantic feeling evoked by the misty spread of mountains and the verdant woods through which many a horse or mule drawn wagon has clattered through, and arrows have whizzed past if they hadn’t found their human targets; muddy and slushy habitation areas which are a mere cluster of hutments and wooden buildings all encompassed with a huge wall with a chief who is the claimant to the title of Lord; a man of sword skill who in the course of time becomes stuff of which legends are made, achieved mainly through setting aside personal likes and dislikes and ambitions and desires for the sake of defending either the county or the honour of the chieftain Lord; period costumes, grimy faced support cast in the role of warriors, a pretty heroine. And there are several other more.

Then there are others. Several more. Some like the Lord of the Rings. Saga in the epic mould. Some such as Arthurian legends. But the recent trend English epic cinema (more as a lingual classification) has taken is to subjugate the Romance (meaning the Fantastic war and love of epic proportions where the nation comes first) to the romance (implying the personal and psychological side of the personae involved). King Arthur was one. The movie showed, more than the political, the human side of Arthur of Camelot; the film focused not on his rise to the throne, but on his struggle to keep his beloved spouse Guinvere and of the latter’s affair with Launcelot, Arthur’s second. On the heels comes Tristan+Isolde – another Kevin Reynolds directed movie (for all those who still adore Bryan Adam’s “Everything I do…” the name may ring a bell as the director of ‘Robin Hood – the Prince of Thieves’ or the other Kevin Costner starrer “Waterworld”). Strangely enough, the movie is titled more straightforward in the USA as Tristan & Isolde. The subtitle reads: Before Romeo and Juliet, there was… TRISTAN+ISOLDE. But that is all there is to it. The romance starts with warm bodies and ends in the title.

Responses to the movie have been wide-ranging from “Reynolds has again delivered a lavish adventure for audiences who like their entertainment earnest and their storytelling straightforward” by romance-o-philes who just go emotional over every movie of its ilk and genre to “A tepid, tinny modernist recasting of the epic romance...something like a WB Network twentysomething soap opera in medieval dress.”

If you’re not convinced, try this contrast: “Intensely romantic and artistically photographed, 'Tristan & Isolde' is a welcome quality release during the January movie doldrums,” feels the critic of Reeltalk Movie Reviews while another critic asks, “Do we really want less magic in our legends? And if these stories are stripped of their mythic aspects, are they even very interesting anymore?” Now, that is T+I’s problem. The heart of these legends is their mythic proportion of saga-making, which is their soul as well. Accepted, T+I is touted as the precursor to R&J; but then again, what it lacks is the most vital aspect of a tale of love and passion – the selfsame heart! There is too much confusion in the mind of Reynolds as to what must dominate.

It is a dicey affair to take a war story and focus on the romance aspects. A quick shot at the story would probably help you figure out why our review is leading towards defining T+I as “yadda yadda yadda”! Just read the synopsis I conveniently took from somewhere to save effort.

‘After the fall of the Roman Empire, Irish King Donnchadh (David O’Hara) brutally subjugates tribal England. There, young orphaned Tristan (James Franco) is raised by family ally Lord Marke (Rufus Sewell). As a young man, the charismatic Tristan leads guerilla attacks on Irish occupying forces, ultimately defeating King Donnchadh's elite warriors. Believing himself to be mortally wounded, Tristan requests a funeral boat that eventually washes up on the Irish coast. Discovered by Irish Princess Isolde (Sophia Myles), the two fall passionately in love. All too soon Tristan must flee back to the safety of England. Meanwhile, King Donnchadh invites the English lords to contest for Isolde's hand, hoping to cause further discord among the bickering English barons. Unaware of Isolde's identity, Tristan fights in the tournament as Marke's champion. Tristan is victorious but is devastated to learn Isolde's true identity. Lord Marke weds Isolde and prepares to become King of the now united England, ruining Donnchadh's plan. Despite their best efforts to stay apart, Tristan and Isolde eventually resume their affair. When King Donnchadh arrives in England for Marke's coronation, he deviously unmasks the affair causing an English rebellion. Lord Marke forgives Tristan and Isolde as they defend Castle D'Or from Irish troops. Tristan leads a battle against the Irish but is fatally wounded. As Lord Marke leads the reunited English troops to drive out the Irish, Tristan dies peacefully in Isolde's arms.’ And what of Isolde? A caption before the credit titles intimates us that she just vanished into nowhere.

You may see that the story has scope enough for a spectacular movie on par with BRAVEHEART or TROY (forget its faults) or even TITANIC, especially when you find out the producer is Ridley Scott! But what a let down!! The movie tries to use the sweeping landscapes and other elements that make British medieval romance legends and myths as a backdrop to ride on. If the junta that sit in the front row don’t get enough skin and erotic spills since the movie is touted as the ‘romance of romances,’ they’d at least have their fill of Celtic pipes and Scottish trots to the tune of swaying folk rhythms of England while getting cloyed of the brilliant camera pans of those never-enough landscapes and from-the-top of the mountain distant view of the oceans. But Kevin Reynolds gets it wrong. Where he does get it right is his casting. The top four are absolutely brilliant, even if their soul is found missing at times. James Franco delivers a wonderfully unruly lock of hair that would definitely get the teenage girls in the audience skip a few heartbeats even if the grown-ups would notice him struggling to get the British accent right.

Sophia Myles… ah, I watched my DVD three times and I couldn’t get enough of her! And then I watched Scene Selections where Myles is dominant. Could still not get enough of her!! Infinitely superior to even the recently crowned unredoubtable queen of beauty and acting Keira Knightley, Ms. Myles would provoke an in-the-grave dinosaur fossil back to virility. And her acting is in the classic British mould. Early years of interning on stage and television show as she eats the rest of the cast hands down with her acting. A face that could topple several cameras, she’s worth watching the movie for, as Seattle Times review concludes thus: While Tristan & Isolde, a competent but uninspired film version of the legendary medieval romance, will likely fade from theaters and memories quickly, Myles' lovely face and spirited performance should linger!

If only for Myles, my vote for the best actor in T+I would go 9 out of 10 to Rufus Sewell. I would definitely like to see him as one of the Nominees for Best Supporting Actor for 2006. As the warlord Marke, Rufus Sewell is everything I would die to be in a role. Suave, confident, vulnerable during intense moments of personal conflicts and eyes that act to define the word expressiveness, he holds the movie even when the second half starts sagging. Every movie has its moment of high that may come midway or three-quarters. Herein, it comes soon after the mid-point – Marke and Isolde get married and we are left to wonder what’s left of the movie, what of Tristan. From this point Rufus Sewell’s Marke takes over. Minimal in his verbal dialogues, we fear of an accumulating anger seething within, waiting to burst out melodramatically when the cheating lovers are bound to be caught red-handed… thereby spoiling what has been a very respectable presence… but - all Sewell’s Marke says is “Seize him” as he turns his horse away. And in the scene after… that single “why” preceded by his quotation of Franco’s earlier comment about Myles’ (Isolde) commitment to him (Sewell) seals the issue that if Kevin Reynolds the director didn’t get the movie right, he got his main cast to the tee!

To make a long story short, it may not be a bad idea checking Tristan+Isolde for what it’s worth. It’s not as bad as what is bound to happen when it is released in Chennai – a quicker than faster exit from whichever multiplex it would get released in! And the music, as always lingering to lend substance to the tale of passion, adultery, illegal love between the Queen and the King’s second… to quote Duke Orsino in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: “PLAY ON!” Admirable are the support cast – in this case they being photography, editing, mixing of colours, costume and make-up. If ever a movie there was where I was so aware of make-up, what it can do to enhance a story-telling, TRISTAN & ISOLDE it is! After all, as one review on the web summed it, “The boys get the action (and Sophia Myles); the girls get some solid tragic romance (and James Franco); the movie geeks will enjoy the cinematography and Rufus Sewell's excellent supporting performance.” But Tristan & Isolde would always remain a movie that could have been excellent!

IT'S TIME FOR SOME HILARIOUS LAUGHS

2006-11-30T11:23:00.000+05:30

COMING UP Next...

from MASQUERADE - the performance group

small
Medium
@
LARGE

Three Short Hilarious Bedroom Farces of varying lengths

In the cast: Amit Singh, Karan Ram, Gitanjali Raman, Tara Raman, Krishna, Abhinav & Gayathri

Directed by KK

Venue: TOP STOREY, Alliance Francaise, Chennai
Dates: 9th & 10th December, 2006
Time: 3.30 pm & 7.15 pm

Tickets - Rs. 100/- available at
Alliance Francaise (Reception - 28279803/28271477)
Landmark (Nungambakkam)
Hippocampus (Abiramapuram, next to Sony World - 24661544)
Words & Worth (Besant Nagar)

Upon Advance Direct Purchase:
Rs. 80/- only upon purchase done before 5th December
Email masquerade@vsnl.net with Subject: Tix for SML
or call Masquerade Hotline at 93802 86129 RIGHT NOW!

Brief about the show: SML brings to you a package of three light-hearted plays that take a dig at Dating, Marriage, Divorce, Suicide... the women & men who cause it... and the average Joe's like us who try and help people and go through the third-party agony.

Damn...damn...damn...
WOMEN - you can't live with them... you can't live without them
Damn...damn...damn!!!

* - Performance not advisable for person below 16 years. We've warned you, it's upto you!

Ada-yaaaaru? Where is Aday-aru?

2006-11-11T00:20:00.000+05:30

This one I wrote upon Karthik Ganesh's request for his Vivartha city-based tabloid that wants to "Be the Change!" You can access the original publication at www.vivartha.com

I have always maintained that the late Rajiv Gandhi was the greatest thing that happened to this country this side of the MISA-Emergency of the 70s. What was that side of MISA? Of course, our Independence. But for the late Rajiv Gandhi, India would probably have maintained the status quo in this global village of liberal economy and new consumerism. Whether it is good or bad, don’t ask me yet! And what has that got to do with this pretense of an Op-Ed in a tabloid that does not have a very wide reach as yet? Well, read on!

Somebody asked me what I was going to do for Madras Day. As a so-called responsible citizen who has been born and brought up in the city and lived virtually all my life here, and now that I am also a socially responsive theatre-activist who talks activism, I set about the deed. The first step was thinking. What was I thinking? What is it that we could give back to this city, irrespective of people who hate calling it Chennai or people who like to remember it as Madras? Therein lay my egg of Columbus.

A line from a play I once did (in 1995, I think) called Romulus the Great came to my mind hard and clear. It goes thus: “[sic] Rome has become old; it has become an old hag; it has become a den of thieves and murderers…” And Rome is not very far from Madras either. It is time we gave a face-lift and physical makeover to this 269-year-old hag. So what is the solution? First change Madras to Chennai (that happened in 1995, right?). Then… wait for the world to realize that Dilli, Mumbai and Kolkata are bursting at their seams in their own ways and let’s move South! And then? Declare Madras as legacy and heritage, clarion Chennai as IT Park, package our heritage and call it Brand Madras. And have the first settlement day at Fort St. George that day in 1637 as Madras Day!!

Rajiv Gandhi’s liberalization of the economy, Narasimha Rao’s freewheeling of commerce and Manmohan Singh’s globalization of the nation… A congressional aggression. It has led to cities going turbo on becoming metro so much so that heterosexuals have become metrosexuals, men have become unisexed and women have become psychologically androgynised. Gyms are thriving, boutiques are flourishing, coffee pubs and other sort of bars are nourishing (of course, themselves). Only the Adyar River is languishing. There’s no point even talking of River Cooum or Buckingham Canal.

A trivia: Do you know Madraspatnam of yore used to have three rivers called River Cooum, Buckingham Canal and Adyar Estuary that we also had our triveni-sangam? Alas… Pondicherry can package its water, Kovai can package its Siruvani, but we?

There is this little joke among the Brits and the Americans who lived on either side of the Atlantic. They fondly call it the Pond and themselves as people on both sides of the pond. The First world – I am reminded of Arundati Roy, who points to how ‘the rich are always called the First’ – has risen so vertically that the vast ocean that separated these land masses has started resembling a little pond from those heights.

Chennai is no stranger to this phenomenon. We are losing ground; soil and earth hook line and sinker. And the rainwater has nowhere to go because the Pride of Madras, Adyar River has been serenaded into slush… thanks to the land-lubbing greed of the Realty. And the sea has grown sick of coming back inland even on Full Moon these days, what is left of the River has gone bone-dry on days when it is not slushy. Since the birds don’t come anymore to their habitat on the estuary, buffaloes find natural haven! Do ye hear? We have shut the Cooum totally and now are slowly killing Adyar water-space as well!

Shocking but true! Adyar has become a virtual pond. I had the shock of my life the other day when I saw a herd of buffaloes wading through the Adyar slush towards the stagnant heap of plastics, bottles, covers and god knows what or who else is rotting inside for the last few months. Of course, I am used to the sight of rich people coming in their SUVs and parking it for a few seconds to quickly dump their plastic bags full of garbage into the river, but buffaloes soldiering into the slush of what used to be Adyar River!!! That is the pit of Brand Madras-isation!

I cringe at the possibility of having to cross the Adyar Bridge each day at least thrice and empathize with all those who wear duppatta-balaclava to keep their nostrils from the stench that emanates as you pass by towards the Greenways Road signal. And whose fault is it? Chennai today stands at the edge of a total implosion that we really don’t need any tsunami or earthquake on the Richter of 7 or other natural calamities. We are killing ourselves by hoarding ourselves more and more into our vertical slums. There was a time I used to travel on the ECR and be able to see the sea crystal clear, occasionally impeded by those tall conifers that peppered the sands un-humanised (pardon my painful coinage!). And today? Lines from Yeats’ poem flash across my memory: “The center cannot hold, things fall apart…”. Let’s stop this space-mania and contribute our bit towards creation of little green spaces in the city.

It is a very laudable effort that the previous state government started utilizing wasted spaces in the middle of the trafficked city to create little parks. It is very appreciable that the present government did not think otherwise and continues with those efforts. Let us create soil and earth where we can instead of concretizing and mortaring what is left of the city. Instead of squabbling over to drink Pepsi or not because of pesticides (which anyway comes from the groundwater they use to make these beverages), let us look at the cost we are paying to embrace globalization. We are not only embracing the entrepreneurship of the First World in a hurry to get short-term material benefits, but are also killing our body-clock by working to American and British and Australian time shifts. Let’s get back to our own country and city and in the process restore normalcy of life for both the flora and fauna as well as for us.

Revolutions lead to a change of life, with pain. Evolution is gentle, slow but not painful. Let us learn to take things slow. Let us live by the needs of our local than the requirements of the global. Let us do things one by one, for everything starts at 1 (for it is better to add the zero at the end than at the beginning) and 1 is an individual.

North Korea's Nuke Test: "Das Kapital" or The Capitol?

2006-10-09T23:39:00.000+05:30

This is the great dilemma for the world now. And now is the moment... we all realise, but... of Epiphany or Apocalypse... is the confusion!

North Korea has timed it to perfection. A classic espionage fiction clincher of a climax it was - their Nuke Test. When the world is too busy concerning itself with the appointment of Ban Ki-Moon, the South Korean for the UN Secy General post, the charge comes.

I am fresh out of an analytical reading of "Brandenburg" by Henry Porter and I am convinced I have perhaps read one of the landmark fictions of all time. It rekindled in me the sights and experiences of the building and atmosphere in Leipzig, Magdeburg, Halle and other erstwhile GDR towns and of my hearsay of their past. I have often heard the old men of the good old commie faith in GDR's socialist system quatsch over their sausages and bier around the hangout kiosks about how the young have become lazy etc etc; I have sometimes wondered when I saw those apparatchik looking women if they were the Büro workers of the past Germany was desperately trying to bury just as they still are trying to dissociate themselves with anything that happened between 1927 and 1945. And the book also showed me a broader spectrum of what it must have been in a socialist state. How many malnourished... how many skeletal lives... how much depression resulting from suppression... well, my manys and muches haven't ceased to exist and they make quite a beeline in the roster! But the point is not that.

Couple with this my media-followings and readings in newspapers and magazines of the new Latin American Left combine, I read a lot more into the fallouts of this Nuke thingie. Let's take a quick check of what has happened and what was observed, shown, commented upon by media and leaders from The Capitol to our own Pranabji and one Mr. Hamid Gul. What does this mean and what does this portend?

First of all, I am all in awe and appreciation of the gumption, the guts and perseverance of North Korea even if I may not be a supporter of a world full of Nuclear Warheads (does not matter who holds them). It just goes out to show if you can have it, so can I. It also points, if you don't use it, I won't. More than that, this has come as a timely shot in arm for Iran's own nuclear ambitions. It has also probably emboldened the stance taken by states (such as Venezuela, Chile, Cuba... ) with legitimate anti-American feelings.

And poor China is only caught in the middle. They can't overnight step out of North Korean relationship, they can't fully tow the UNSC and Big 5's "anti-NKorea, impose sanction outright" line of argument. As for Pakistan, well, Mush in now between Bush and the Fire because somewhere at the substrata level Pak has been supporting NKorean enrichment programs and suddenly they have to wake up to the reality that it wasn't a case of patronising a malnourished commie state to feel "we can also be benefactors", but it is a case of their own Angel and Venture Capitalist US casting an apprehensive eye. Especially when all the western world are clearly and categorically saying "India cannot be compared with North Korea" and "India's case is different". Well, it is turning out to be quite a fun ride.

Hope NK doesn't suddenly retract and apologise and tank up. Else this happenstance would merely appear a serendipitous freak of an errant anamoly. And smaller meeker but righteous nations would have to continue to seek morsels of pitiful dole from the self-righteous US.

400 Blows

2006-08-31T00:08:00.000+05:30

We are back to school. Not in the literal sense, but yes... the amount of rows that've been happening, or perhaps the media has chosen to focus on... it makes one touch upon the efficacy of education.

First, Headlines Today (or was it CNN-IBN?) ran a story on Educated Illiterates or Literate but Uneducated - about how kids at school these days are being dumbed through dumping of information in the name of knowledge so that they get educated, acquire degrees and hit the job market as successful whatevers! But do they really know their math or the three Rs effectively? In the research poll they showed... some of the so called forward states such as Tamil Nadu (ranked 4th) were not so literate inspite of being educated and the traditional boon-dog Bihar was *surprise surprise* one of the top most literate state. What does this show?

And then we had the girls college in Chandigarh in news (is still!). A teacher slapped a girl for using mobile phone in the class. The former defended it is within the spirit and letter of educational institutional law. The girls protested saying they were not anymore in school, but are adults since they are in college. Any logic in that? And the girls won the struggle and used the media to talk about all this even while saying the media blew the issue up and it was essentially an intra-college affair that must have been settled so! What sense??

Of course, we had a Professor in Ujjain being killed by Students! Whither education??? Latest news... the perpetrators have surrendered in police station, meaning which we can deduce they have found someone to bail them out. And 21 more involved people arrested. Does it matter? Did it matter in the case of Stanes or Jessica or umpteen others? This country requires more than 400 Blows.

Then it was the turn of Meerut. Appalling news when we learnt that the University exam papers were routed by the VC of Charan Singh College (or whatever) to be corrected by unqualified, young 5th and 7th grade school students. The students of the college of course protested. But the protest drew shit. And the TV showed three girls (aptly and conveniently) named 3 musketeers jumping the tall iron gates of the VC's house and demolishing and destroying anything in their path ending up with bashing the VC's scooter to smithereens before being taken into custody. It melt my heart with warmth to see one of the girls - Monica - shouting "today his property, tomorrow him!" What love between the educators and the educated!

So where does this all lead to? Shout your piece in the comments!

Oh by the way, did I tell you? There was this other news about an Indian Muslim going to US for MBA via UK, detained at Heathrow!!!

And that still leaves two more education-related incidents to discuss: 1) a minority muslim institution in Kerala - Kozhikode to be precise - refusing the students to celebrate a festival that has been traditionally considered pan-Kerala secular event. Suddenly, in the name of religious sentiments the students of a Muslim college cannot celebrate ONAM in their campus. Stuff and non-sense. 2) BJP warming up to electoral manifestoes for the future - VANDE MATARAM must be sung mandatorily in all schools, colleges and institutions including places of worship, irrespective of religious beliefs! A very honorable motto!! After all, it used to be front runner for our national anthem and perhaps if the Bongs had taken the Prime ministership back then, VM would be sharing podium with JGM for being the National Anthem and India would have been the only country to have two anthems being played. What an aural experience it would have been to hear them at sports championships if we won! Of course, to think what would have happened at the recent SAF Games where we returned with 118 Gold Medals is another conjecture!!!

Question is: If this is a secular country, then irrespective of religious beliefs, one must uphold the principal tenets of the country and sing national song. But the Muslims see it other way. For them it is against religious principles. Again! My question is, if the religious sentiments are so water-tight and more important to the minorities (whatever be their religion), then should they seriously not consider migrating to a climate where the religious tenets are primary and welcomed than manipulating the Minority card expecting the majority to keep bending down and keep getting bumped on the head? The day this country becomes minority Hindu state like how TN has been made completely minority Brahmin state... they will be happy. But there is no guarantee that the non-Hindu minority turned majority would stop ill-treating majority turned minority Hindu. Am neither for nor against, but this be the truth... as is vindicated in the perpetual anti-Brahmin sentiment. Talk of secularism is just another VoteBank jargon. And we are suckers, all us voters!

Fresh from a production of FINAL SOLUTIONS by Mahesh Dattani, it stirs up in me both nationalistic feelings as well as rational based arguments. But since they go also beyond the confines of educational focus, we take these things in a separate post!

Until later!

Masquerade - the performance group: NATAK...

2006-08-24T10:50:00.000+05:30

NATAK is back... NATAK 2007. Click the link below!

Masquerade - the performance group: NATAK...

Please Right click to open in new window!

FINAL SOLUTIONS by Mahesh Dattani

2006-08-22T10:45:00.000+05:30

MASQUERADE
the performance group

presents

FINAL SOLUTIONS
an edited dramatized reading in English

by
Mahesh Dattani

Directed by Krishna Kumar. S

Sunday, 27th August 2006 - 7.15 pm
Top Storey, Alliance Francaise
Performance duration – 1 hr. 15mins.
ADMISSION FREE - ALL ARE WELCOME

Join us as we take this opportunity as a farewell token to Mr. Jean-Pascal Elbaz, the Director of Alliance Francaise de Madras.
---------------------------------------------------------
Directed by Krishna Kumar. S, Masquerade – the performance group brings before you a dramatized reading of one of the watershed plays in contemporary Indian theatre – FINAL SOLUTIONS by Mahesh Dattani – in a gesture of thanks and bidding farewell to Mr. Jean-Pascal Elbaz, Director, Alliance Francaise de Madras, who after his tenure at Chennai, is moving to his next place of office.

The cast for the evening: Mohd. Yusuf, Krishna, Abhinav Suresh, Vandana Rangarajan, Prema Venkat, Tara Raman, Sonali Ranjit, Karan Ram, Abhishek & Nishad.

The performance runs to approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Please visit the show and join us in our farewell gesture. Do spread the word around and bring one and all!
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We thank Mahesh for his kind gesture to stage this performance.

The Hindu Festival Minus Metro

2006-08-16T23:29:00.000+05:30

Blogging after a long time, but blogging because am internally impelled to write.

It has been a hectic but very edifying and entertaining day.

A chance brush, strange encounter and amusing meeting is more like what would sum up the day's events.

First I ran into an old-time acquaintance - Uncle Sudhakar as we call him! And what I consider to be finally an encounter with a person - an intriguing artist - whom I have met before thrice, but finally got to spend some serious personal moments with: Valsan Kolleri. Both happened at Lalith Kala Akademi as I went to visit Siva-Benitha-Prasan's exhibition TRILOGY. Some very amusing conversation resulted in disturbing me to think seriously! Valsan is truly a remarkable guy who prefers to create and believes he can't talk, but manages to pour out wise-cracks trois-ed with quick one-liners to quote in an interview as well as ideas that truly ring of seriousness. But more of Valsan and TRILOGY separately later, for they merit separate posts!

SO then... eventually to wind up the day: a call from a journalist friend of mine asking me to land up around 6 pm at The Screening Room, The Park - apparently a debrief meeting between the organisers and participant directors that ended up with more others than directors. One truth rang as I left the discussion which moved stolidly on to its ultimate watering session. For once I played an absolute silent spectator, literally sitting on the peripheries, the virtual last seat. What an Olympian view! But back to the truth before we go into the details: the closing lines from AMADEUS kept ringing in my mind through the d-elevation (going down the elevator from the venue!), "Mediocrity everywhere, I bow to you!" (or something to that effect). I bow not in reverence, but conceding defeat, at the mindset of 'most' gathered there to accept and quit that 'We indeed are celebrating the mediocrity of amateur theatre in Chennai and are content not to raise the bar truly'. I guess the only soul rebelling that refused to accept the concessions was Bala. Hang in there, am really proud to know you!

My question is, like Sunill of EVAM asked, what is the purpose? I ask: If this is a festival, what are we celebrating? Are we trying to do this to promote the theatre culture in Chennai? If so, are we trying to support the groups doing theatre in Chennai? Or are we doing this to raise the critical appreciative standards of the Chennai theatre going audience? If the former, then why this cynicism at local groups. If local groups do not get exposure, then how will they add that extra edge to their work? If they don't get to be featured in a festival of their own city, then who's it for? If they don't brush shoulders in the same festival with so-called qualitative groups from other parts of the country (that are supposedly better), then are they just to be reduced to mere ticket buyers who learn others by watching? I am under the presumption that the the more you do it, the better it gets. Correct me if I am under a delusion! Also, going by the feedbacks about this year's festival, it seems 3 out of 9 shows were rank bad - the firang, the mega-Tantric and the Kolkatta ones, 3 out of the rest 6 were from Chennai and acquitted themselves decently and out of the other 3 two were very commendable. About the Q show I don't have feedback, so I can't write! And this considering none of the 3 Chennai shows had a tech.

If on the other hand, the festival attempts to bring the best of english theatre in India, then the logic must be to provide the audience with quality entertainment on one hand and show them the difference between the good, the bad and the ugly so that the next time they watch a local show they know the difference and hence, we believe, the bar of aesthetics would be raised (if not... at least the aesthetics of their respective bars would be enhanced with better brands of booze!). Anyway, overlooking that unnecessary but irresistable aside, what the audience were treated to was a democratic levelling view of both sides. Going by the feedbacks, the green grass outside the bounds of Chennai theatre also had septic tanks underneath, only the packaging and the gloss kind of made the thought bearable. I guess the whole ferris wheel of the festival is aimed at some other agenda I am unable to fathom. I mean, the chief organisers anyway do not have presence in parts of India where the others came from and do not look to seek presence either. So why? Is this some kind of a masochistic attempt to proclaim the mediocrity of amateur theatre mentality???

The quality dished out only shows that we rank as equally in qualitative amateurishness to other parts of India and that at least we boast of more groups and more active stage-boarders than traditionally theatrical bastions such as Kolkatta where from the only active group had to be invited to complete the zonal quota! Either way, theatre in Chennai doesn't seem to have benefited and if at all anything the festival only brings to surface our embedded cynical attitude at our own selves. I don't blame such an attitude or the carriers of such an attitude. Everyone is entitled to opinions and have the liberty to grumble! We artists have not made any attempts to produce quality that just stuns the organisers into quit inviting outsiders!

One inspired suggestion that came to sort out the quandary we have led ourselves into went like this: combine the best or the cream of Chennai's acting talents, bring an outside director to direct them so that Chennai theatre could produce qualitative work! Are we now conceding our inability to be creative? True, someone remarked, groups won't come together. True true! Because, as I had said elsewhere, there are no groups. What groups? Just fancy names... only banners and brandnames. The oldest group doesn't have an artistic group, but only an administrative body, four ageing actors (the best perhaps in business) and no young artists to lead forward. The youngest group is not able to create fresh artists. And yours faithfully is fighting a losing war to create a recognisably individual identity for myself and my handful of believers. Perhaps the only group that has an identity of its own and manages to do its productions without borrowing heavily (well, we still are at the stage where older age group actors are to be borrowed!) and is self-sustaining is EVAM and kudos to them for that. Leave other things aside for the moment. I have not seen their actor training sessions so I cannot talk of it. In any case, they manage by themselves. And that is one of the hallmark of a group steering towards professional existence. (P.S.: It's not that am suddenly turning pro-Evam or anything, let's just recognise commendable things and criticise opposable things! I would still reserve my opinion on productions!!)

The problem with theatre in Chennai is that groups are mere names with no significant identity of their own. Like I said earlier in another post, one is solo performer, two is partnership, three still doesn't make a group (even if it's idiomatic crowd!). Until we evolve to that stage where groups are identifiable, no definitive style of work would evolve. The reason: if we don't have artists trained in a particular style or belief of acting, there is no individuality to the group. If actors are constantly horsed around fording every stream, they cannot develop acting. They are only moving from director to director, assuming roles and rehearsing lines as a routine. Directors in Chennai must decide to seek identifiable group of actors and work strictly inside themselves in order to evolve a strong approach to acting and performance. And then we would have a body of actors who are literate if not educated, in the essentials of performance. For, every strong performance evolves out of a cultural politics and understanding of the role one is doing and the holistic stance of the work being produced. The success behind OTHELLO by Royston Abel is mainly due to its interpretation. And interpretation cannot occur without analysing the cultural, social and sometimes racial politics. The point about racial politics was so well illustrated by Runa's VALLEY SONG. Of course, on the same count, it was also proved what overturning the fundamental idea behind a play such as MACBETH in order to make it entertaining could lead to! Am not saying this, ask the attendant public!

We all saw what a sad case of adaptation a recent production of BLACK COMEDY turned out to be. Peter Shaffer created the work and the characters out of a cultural milieu and social environment, just as much as AMADEUS was a play about racial discrimination and Germanic inability to accept foriegners. You see, every work stems from a cultural and social standpoint. By just changing the names and the location and moving to Mumbai the show (Black Comedy) elicited mere laughs at some caricatures. That is not respecting the audience. Merely giving them voyeuristic pleasure. So first the directors must show some purpose than just taking up works because it is amusing or witty or appealing to their passionate creative skills. Of course we need not, as directors, foist our process upon the audience. We can continue to produce slapsticks and farces and romantic comedies and entertain the audience and have our cash registers ringing, and can still have our work steeped in a deeper understanding of the needs of theatre. I wonder what it would be if The Theatre wakes up one fine day to confront the doers of theatre in Chennai, in a Pirandellian way! It would really either become Narashimha and tear us apart for the sacrilege we are committing in its name, or pull the cyanide capsule and die! This is why a director is a very critical ingredient in the making of a play.

A director trained (in an institution or auto-didactic doesn't matter!) in the craft and is capable of creating sensitised artists can go a very long way to creating a strong group that believes in its identity (a while back a very active Magic Lantern was just that. Pity they have gone less active!). This in turn can lead into a good production worthy of holding our heads about. It is time-consuming, but we need to build it brick by brick patiently. We need to create artists through training. That day Chennai theatre need not vie with morsels of slots in a theatre festival curated, conducted and organised by local patrons of that selfsame art!

Until then... we keep borrowing and bickering and reduce ourselves to the level of letting ourselves into depths of lack of self-belief. Is this a trip to unite the struggling and in-fighting artists of theatre in Chennai? If we have more than 100 odd people who do theatre in some fashion passion or hobby, can't they be trained? A trained actor is not restricted to roles. An actor who is just doing roles or hop-scotching amid directors and groups is not serious about the work, but is only diluting whatever meaningfulness that exists. Of course, there is nothing wrong in trading horses because most theatre is not livelihood theatre but serious hobby. But then, this can only lead to the status we seem to be in... the status of lack of self-belief to produce a quality work that walks into a festival rather than be condescendingly invited! Not for nothing goes the idiom VANDHAARAI VAAZHA VAIKKUM THAMIZHAGAM (the Tamilnadu that lets others live at the expense of its own!). The need of the hour is to be ourselves and create distinct identities before we even produce... be it good or bad. But who cares, let's fish around, because everyone's around for a good romp. But thanks to the organisers of The Hindu Metro Plus Theatre Festival for bringing outside groups to show us where we stand!

Gautam among other things...

2006-06-25T08:42:00.000+05:30

OK... it's been a pretty long time... and to think my last post was about something that happened two months back! That's awful. But tooooo challenged for time and patience with Gautam's Three breathing down to snuff me out. I just got my stage coordinator confirmed, ok. And the last few OSTs arrive from GD only tonight. It's been too tough. Anyways... among other things I am fixing a pix card of GAUTAM's THREE. Hope you make it to all three performances. And letting a cat out of the bag... we are launching sometime this month unofficially and next month officially The Bear and Beanbag project. It would later extend to include both the M4Kids that we have been doing and my dream JANOSCH PROJECT once MMB moves to its new venue early 2007. Until then...

Outrageous and Heights of Insecurity

2006-05-17T15:29:00.000+05:30

Now tell me how are you all gonna respond to this! I don't really know whether they are talking about India outsourcing work to other countries? Or they are saying by taking too much work outsourced by other countries we are not focussing on work back here? That sounds illogical. Because anyway they don't work. Someone who is aware of the financial sector please clarify!

The Little Clarification I got from my wife who works in the Insurance sector and specifically deals with the financial and capital market for the Little Shop is this:

1) Internal outsourcing. Example: Citibank outsourcing the maintenance, tracking and collection of Credit Card related issues to local Call Centres

2) Mobile companies outsourcing stuff to Call Centres. Am sure all of us would at some point have received phone from our own respective network where they offer you another airtel/aircel/hutch connection. Stupid. They aren't from the Network Operators, but their little stupid call centres that are tucked in all over chennai. I have visited some of them. It's pathetic how they look. They look like a dunghole of some printing press' cutting section.

3) Companies in the insurance sector outsourcing maintenance etc of bonds debentures etc for backoffice work. Actually there is a mega company in Chennai called CAMS whose main work is handling backoffice work for most of the stock/insurance such like companies. You can imagine the amount of backoffice work required these days and you can imagine how much of outsourcing is required because no company can finish these chores even if they worked dutifully their full 9 hours at 6 days a week and some overtime. Work has got cluttered and unnecessarily complicated in the name of division of labour and creation of employment so much. It is pretty interesting how we are fighting internal outsourcing even while there is such a brouhaha about India as the prime destination of Outsourcing for US and Europe and Australia. India as the key competitor with an English-speaking edge over China etc. Imagine why the foreigners from the respective countries are right about grumbling about some little twerp Indian attending their queries posing as Jill or Bill!

ART QUOTE OF THE DAY

2006-05-17T14:51:00.000+05:30

Always make the audience suffer as much as possible - ALFRED HITCHCOCK

I don't need to expand on that!

Getting into the Skin

2006-05-07T20:27:00.000+05:30

Getting into the Skin
an introduction to acting essentials

May 22 – 30, 2006
(Weekends excluded)
10.00 am to 1.30 pm

· Age Requirement: 16 years and above
· Casual and stretchable cotton clothing is mandatory
· No denims nor jeans
· Max. 24 participants only
· Last date for submission 15th May, 2006 (MONDAY)
· For Application Forms & further details email masquerade@vsnl.net
with Subject: "Getting Into The Skin" or call 98840 29865

WORKSHOP DESC. & OBJECTIVE:

"A trained actor can make a huge difference to a production even beyond the director's inputs... Because acting is more a craft than an art"

This is the first workshop that Masquerade brings to a participant outside the repertory. Until 2005, Masquerade has been offering Summer Theatre Workshops solely concentrated on the teens and youth between 13 and 19 years, through Landing Stage Youth Theatre Group. With the need to train oneself as a good actor increasing among the existing young crop of theatre aspirants, Masquerade realises the time has come to open the doors beyond the teen and youth segment.

The Workshop attempts to train anyone who is 16 years and above and is interested in discovering how deep their perception towards acting goes. The workshop would seek to open a whole new way of approaching acting rather than just taking up a role and memorising lines and rehearsing. At the workshop, as a participant, one would get opportunities to play with the given material like a child with a spoon and discover new approaches.

One would get to learn the upkeep of an actor's most precious possession - oneself. One would soon realise the power of the body, the gesture, the space and movements beyond words can explain!

The workshop is contingent to a minimum of 15 participants. Otherwise cancelled. The workshop would be conducted by Krishna Kumar. S & Pritam Chakravarthy.

A Lab for the Future of Theatre for Children and Youth

2006-04-29T16:45:00.000+05:30

The following is a translated version of a news item I came across in Rheinische Post, to which I subscribe online. In the light of some comments and discussions we have been having here famously, I thought this news article merits a reproduction (in full as is normal the courtesy to be adhered to when one reproduces something) to show what we are not doing in our own backyard.

* * * * *

Düsseldorf (dto). “We only want to play!“ is the title of the 22nd N(orth) R(hine) W(estphalian) Children’s and Youth Theatre Seminar that is happening this Saturday (Apr 29) in Düsseldorf. The future of youth would be thematised in the form of several seminars, theatre performances, and discussions. The campaign is supported by Artistic Director Sönke Wortmann and the Junior Soccer Team of Fortuna Düsseldorf.

Theatre artists across the entire NRW are currently experimenting with the Language, Presentation, and Aesthetics in the area of contemporary theatre for children and youth. The proposed project revolves around a sensory Culinary Experience of the stage, movement in public space, the “aimless idling in an empty space”, fairy tales, Biblical stories and societal changes. Three public seminars with their focal points on the themes “Economising of Living Conditions,” “Attitudes of Generations” and “Images of Cultural Hostility” are the crux of this Lab about the Future.

The official festive opening takes place in Düsseldorf on Sunday (Apr 30). The key figures of attraction include the main patron of this event Hans-Heinrich Grosse-Brockhoff, Heinz Winterwerber (Mayor of Düsseldorf), Wolfgang Schneider (President of the International Union for Children’s and Youth Theatre), Artistic Director Sönke Wortmann, Theatre author Lutz Hübner, Felicitas Loewe (Chief Dramaturge of the Theater Junge Generation [Theatre of the Young Generation] in Dresden) and Film director Rolf Losansky; the high point would be the appearance of the Youth Soccer Team of Fortuna Düsseldorf.

On the opening night on April 30, the currently running theatre production “The Last Show” would be performed. The musical play deals with Performance Pressure and the cult of Beauty Obsession, and is aimed at 14+ age group. In the following five days, there would be further performances at Datteln, Bonn, Cologne, Essen, Moers, Hagen, Gelsenkirchen, Bad Münstereifel und Oberhausen.

On the last day of the seminar, May 5, all the projects at the Lab for Future would be brought before public as open performances at the Children’s and Youth Theatre space. In every room and corner these artistic experiments would be exhibited. The audience would be able to go through the entire theatre house and meet finally at the main auditorium. The 22nd N(orth) R(hine) W(estphalian) Children’s and Youth Theatre Seminar would eventually conclude with a prize distribution.

* * * * *End of Article* * * * *

What is happening in Chennai in theatre in general is: people are doing too much arbitrary performance work and unnecessarily putting pressure on each other by raising the commercial stakes. One might say that we need to be really extra-sensory with sponsors. This is my take. From “beggars for sponsorship” days we have just progressed to “glorified beggars for sponsorship.” By pushing ourselves unnecessarily into packaging and project proposals and statistics and presentations of power-points in cds and laptops, we are moving theatre into an unrequired area of management culture.

I am not speaking thus because am lazy or cannot meet up with the corporates and produce an hour of their own jargonizing… but because we are artists… people who can do what they cannot… people who bring relaxation and refreshment and rejuvenation to their workaholic lives. We must not seek them, they must seek us. If we commercialize art too much to the level of consumerism, the moneyed people would take (and have already started taking) advantage of our position.

I shall explain: if you looked at it, because people come to watch us perform, the product owners have a direct marketing reach through theatre. One might claim that there is more mileage in an ad in The Hindu because it reaches so many million people. One might claim that there is so much visibility in airing a video ad. True and false. Truth be told, advertisement only proposes to campaign, doesn’t promise to sell. And when has advertisers actually come to our doors asking us to buy. Those are the salesmen. So what guarantee is it that the ads are being noticed? Not every ad. Touch your heart and tell me: do you really go through all the ads in the daily each day… or collect each and every sheet that is tucked into your newspaper? You shake them off and read the news item! Whereas in theatre the visibility is concentrated and high. So, theatre has a better reach and power of sustenance. As a result we must be approached where we quote the price, not us approaching. We push ourselves to unnecessary desperation when we don’t need to. When so much theatre is happening and so many people watching theatre than before, corporates and product owners must consider it a privilege to reach out to their public through us.

How the hell does this relate to this post? I hear you! If we spend half our time on packaging and another quarter on publicizing the show, where is the time to produce meritoriously? Add to it, we are so bifurcated and divided that no three groups have identifiable incumbency of more than 3 people. So where is the question of having separate units inside the company that takes care of admin, tech, management, logistics and artistic areas? The same person has to do everything. That definitely brings down the quality and quantity of time one could put at rehearsals. And we are perennially producing and performing that we are not replenishing ourselves with newer ways of performing. As a result art is no more fresh. Just commoditised package of laughter or drama or musical!

Instead, we must stop spending too much time on chasing sponsors, start doing shows and more shows within given resources. If the quality of the story-telling is good, what need for people to notice the costume one wears or the colour filters one uses to wash the backdrop or the quality of the sets and backdrops? What did our forefathers rely on? Body, voice, gestures, movements, and playing space! But today all is topsy-turvy. Actor has vanished. Performer has been closeted, theatre has been pushed to background, and instead the proletarian need for crass entertainment has taken over the minds of those who do theatre more than those who come to watch. As a result we are giving stupid stuff that would safely meet the footfall requirement of the sponsor. The sponsor has stealthily started deciding what we do. It must stop!

If this be today, where do we have time to train new people, whet youth and teens to do the right kind of art? They are uninformed or less informed or misinformed because the informants don’t have a clue about what information to give. If theatre has to get professional, we need to start focusing on our youth theatre scenario, create a cultural climate by catching them in their teens before adolescence over-enthusiasm takes them over to think performance, going on stage and speaking lines and changing colorful costumes and taking curtain calls are the only things that count about theatre.

Now of course, there is this new found craze to do backstage… it means, less rehearsal time, more dating opportunities and getting drunk at cast parties at someone else’s expense. Of course, there are some cast parties that don’t happen or happen late or tepid or insanely boring, where you're even required to come in dress codes. But that’s not in our purview. The long and the short of the matter is we are losing the happiness of doing theatre and falling prey to bureaucratic work patterns rather than artistic passion.

What must happen in Theatre in Chennai:

People must speak honestly and work with integrity. One can be truthful and honest and yet carry on with life. After all, we come from the great country which bore the great person who said: “Hate a person’s action, not the person” – Mahatma Gandhi. I am sure we are all capable of speaking our minds. Except, we speak it only when we have decided we are ready to lose something. We must speak and act truthfully to retain a thing for its real value. WHAT WE REALLY NEED IS MORE HONESTY WITH OUR ART, MORE INTEGRITY TO OUR WORK AND MORE SELF-RESPECT. And we must develop the strength to say no to any and every work. More than work, we must stop encouraging passers-by with desultory attitude to someone else’s production money by refusing to work with them whether in our own shows or someone else’s.

That is the statement for the season.

Free Willy or What You Will or What Will Really Is!

2006-04-19T22:30:00.001+05:30

P.S: This post has been necessitated by a little exchange of comments to the previous post between Srini and myself. What started as a small exchange about favourite Romantics ended in this. I always knew this one was coming some day, because it has been occupying my mind for a long while now, only it needed the right stimulus, I guess!

Ok, off with preludes... this one's about The Bard. About how Indians view him, sycophantically revere him and shamelessly venerate him, putting on the pedestals of academic sanctum sanctorums. He's definitely worth it, I must admit with unabashed submission of my higher cerebral functions to his genius. But do Indians - at least the academia and the macademia, literati and the cognoscenti, glitterati and the media-tors - know The Real Bard? Do the teachers teach The Real Shakespeare? I doubt it.

What is:

Like Wordsworth, Shakespeare is the most abused among poets of any age, clime or culture. They are taught for all the wrong reasons. Poetry, lyrical qualities, rhyme, meter... Stuff and non-sense. I don't say these don't exist in their works. But the way academics and teachers make it look or sound, it is as though this is the reality. Why? All our teachers are High Priests and Priestesses of the Morality Brigade who have been evangelised to sing Hosannas and shoot roses through the barrels of their guns at prepubescent children, lest they become Romeos and Juliets at 15 and elope. They are self-styled Montagues and Capulets warring against anyone who claim Love is Shakespeare.

I don't want to, given the current scenario, teach Shakespeare in an academic setup and classroom atmosphere. You can't talk about something without touching the root of it. People who would have witnessed the recent Tim Supple's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT's DREAM would have proofed the pudding. He is raw, war, love, hate, envy, jealousy, fear, tear, lust... Shakespeare is PRIMAL. The man lived such a life. He was a lover, scholar in the learn-by-tribulations mould, philanderer, gay, go for broke stock-trader, struggling two-bit actor... everything that morality brigade would love to sweep under the carpet. And they have. Remember what they taught you in school? Daffodils... The Solitary Reaper... The Trial of Shylock... Caliban and Prospero... anything else? Oh, occasionally they would talk about The Taming of the Shrew because it is all about male chauvinism and sexism of the paternalistic pig variety that shows the conquest of a shrew by a shrew-d guy! But what is the real Shakespeare? The REAL SHAKESPEARE was what a lot of parents who had come (armed with their many children and their 50s University educated Shakespearean poetry and erudition) to watch Supple's Midsummer and walked half-way through at the sight of physicality is all about.

TWELFTH NIGHT: Siblings - Siamese Twins? - get parted in a shipwreck. The girl lands on alien shores. In order to protect her identity (virginity?) she dresses as the page to the Duke of the Island who is in love with a certain Countess Olivia. Soon the page becomes the Duke's confidante and is sent to woo the Countess. The Countess falls in love with the page boy who is actually a woman. The actually a woman page-boy hermself (term courtesy Sarah Kane, "4.48 Psychosis") is secretly in love with Duke. Meanwhile there is Malvolio - the dirty old Puritan who is all passion and love inside - desires the Countess, his Mistress. Uncle Toby to Count Olivia is secretly pimping his niece to the moneyed ass Sir Andrew Agueface... and also desires the governess Maria of the house. What do we have? A story of love, lech and cross-dressing. But what do the schools and colleges teach? Iambic Pentameter and Poetry.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: A certain Duke has vanquished the Queen of Amazons and brought her as booty to swive her botty. A father wishes his daughter on his favourite man. The daughter is in love with another MAN. Another girl is in love with the father's favourite man who has already swived her botty too much. And the paternalia decrees she either turns her rich flower of virginity to the father's favourite man or turn in the direction of the convent to perhaps find a Holy Father who shall probably pass Holy Water before he shows the Holy Spirit! And the besotted lovers flee, the beseeching lovers pursue. In the forest, under the moonlight, on a full moon day, infested with fairies and magic flowers with potions amorous they meet. Meanwhile the Fairy God and his Fiery Feisty Queen are at loggerheads over a boy. Oberon is a Bugger, Titania's little boy is being sought by Obi to be swived in HIS BOTTY! Gosh. Obi lulls Tit-ania into swyving with an ass... The greatest interpretation came from Jan Kott the Polish critic, I think. The scene where Titania stands behind Bottom, one-leg astride on the front of Bottom's torso and another behind, her betweens crushing the back of his neck even while she goes orgiastic over his two ears (it's all graphically in the script if you read between the lines), all the dirty faeries encircling... it is straight out of Mozartian excesses in bordellos of Vienna and Italy. Or is it the reverse? Anyway, in the Elizabethan England, Ass's head was considered a phallic symbol of plenty. So what do we have in MSND? And what of Puck? Whose lover is he? And what are we taught? Iambic Pentameter (Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania) or philosophic poetry (The course of true Love ne'er did run smooth). The only scenes any school chooses to perform on annual days or inter-house dramatics are the Puck scenes while the *uck scenes are cautiously expurgated.

ROMEO AND JULIET: Two star-crossed lovers in their 15s and 16s, at the heights of hormonic explosions, forbidden by the respective families to seek each other because of a family feud, try to elope because the itch overcomes all. Qayamat se Qayamat tak? And what are we taught? R&J is a sweet play about love and romance and hence of superior poetry. Well, love and romance leads to children not only to poetry!

THE TEMPEST: A Banished Duke who's also a magician lures his callous brother and his men to the island in which he has taken refuge. The Ruse? He makes his naive daughter fall in love with his brother's son. What are we taught? The Magic of Will's Poetry, the silliness of Caliban, the naughtiness of Ariel.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE: Ah, the teachers can heave a sigh of relief here. Safest of all Shakes. Because it is about Shylock's greed. Jew Bashing. Adolf would have been proud of the Arya Varga. How we assassinate Shylock's character. What do we have against Jews? Steve, you hearing? You must not shoot Munich, you must come here and do a Chennai. Sue the academics Steve, they are bashing Jews in the name of teaching Literature. Awright, shucks folks, I got a little sentimental there. Getting back... what do they teach MoV for? The Case of the Correct Casket... the Ingeunity of Portia... the True Friendship of the Genteel Males. You tell me! What of Jessica's lust? What of Portia's love? What of the basic servant's Love of Nerissa? What of dear Launcelot Gobbo? They don't talk about all that. The ship that sunk is more important in MoV than the ship that sunk carrying Kate Winslet and Di Caprio, man.!

Academia Nuts Tutty Frooty Fortune Cookie Harlequin Romance Mill & Boon (oh, I was just swearing folks!)

Listen, I don't want to make this post long because 1) it's already long and 2) the damn Will, Willy, Billy fella has written close to forty plays and hundred and bloody odd sonnets all about a certain Dark Lady who many infer actually to be either his Duke friend or De Vere or some such guy. Why am I not quoting the exact figures. Well, I know the precise number of plays and sonnets, but do we need those little details? Hardly the point of this post is it?

You explore the story of the rest of the plays and their intricate complex web of plots including KING LEAR with his excessive love for his three daughters at his old age and of PERICLES and TITUS ANDRONICUS who have other human aspects of their own, and come to a conclusion what Shakespeare is all about. And without explaining the varied richness of the tangles of emotions that are involved in Shakespeare how can one explain his poetry? Because Poetry at the very least is emotion recollected (read transcribed) in tranquility. At its best is the expression of man's innermost stirring of heart and feelings evoked in response to an event of happening.

Poetry is Direct Emotional Response

So... What Must Be:

Use Shakespeare to show kids how not to be stupid like R&J, how not to get desperate like Orsino and Viola, how to be smart like Portia, how to be human like Shylock, how to enjoy life like Falstaff, how not to be obsessively stupidly Tamil TV Serial-ish like Helena, how not to be Puritanically living a shadow life like Malvolio, how not to be psychologically defeated like Macbeth (hmmmph! that is the last straw. The guy is so dumb. He believes Witches and doesn't even realise that Conundrums and Riddles and Oracles are ambivalent. He must have read ANGELS AND DEMONS before getting scared of Birnam Woods to Dunsinane come! And what of Caesarian? Macbeth is dumb and dumber!), how not to go ego-massaged like Richard II with the caterpillars of his commonwealth, how not to suck up to your loyalty for two brothers as in As You Like It... and HOW TO BE STOICAL LIKE FESTE (my fav character in all of the Bard's creations!) You think I can impart all these to students inside a classroom without spelling out the intricacy of the web The Bard weaves?

Teachers, leave them kids alone... and away from William Shakespeare. Go teach Robert Frost.

Postman Nevermore Knocks Twice.... - HEY MY 50TH POST

2006-04-19T22:30:00.000+05:30

"Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life," said William Hazlitt.

I don't know how much the current generation of teens and youth out there remembers, poetry or not. After all, this is an age of Memory Chips and 100+ giga inexpensive hard-drives. So save as much as you can. Even dedicated drives for downloaded DivX movies. Ek Dum!

When I was a kid, there used to be this scheme run by the government to encourage savings at a young age, called Sanchayika, whereby your schools used to run a sort of Savings Bank and each child could credit to his/her account even 5 paisa - each day or whenever possible. And we were proud owners of pass books. When I quit school, from 7th std until 10th, I had saved 32 rupees painstakingly over 4 years and to receive it as hard cash!!! Rs. 32/- in 1981. How much is it worth now?

Well now, am not talking of that savings.

Save to Memory. The watch word of the day.

And thus computer does make Hoarders and Packrats of us all!

So, everything is available on the World Wide Web. There is no need to write notes, buy bazaar guides, burn midnight oil at the 11th hour. Visit one of the many essay and guide sites dot com and search and save.

In absolute contrast to the Nazi burning of the books where the watch word was "Search and Destroy", now we are witness to the age of Search and Save. In either case, we spare the world of paper. Thus Nazis and We are both contributive in our own ways to Save Trees, Conserve Ecology and all that jazz!

As an extension, we spend more and more time on the WWW. As a natural extension we start living out our lives in front of the Computer more than in real-time. Leaving aside the fact that we now consume more hydel energy instead of Bagasse, communication, exchange of messages, emails, opinion sharing all happen in this P2P world of give and take. I am going out there one of these days and go on a Friends of IPO (IPO Bachao Andolan) a-la Medha Patkar. May be I'll go on fast and get Saif 'Cyrus' Khan to endorse and probably have his movie banned at our own Q IS DEAD MOVIES!

I read the other day that postmen who used to go door to door to deliver post and parcels, of late have also started carrying stamps, money order forms et al so that now they are mobile post offices of the minidor sort. Yes, now that courier deliverers have taken over going door to door to deliver posts and packets and parcels, IPO-men have to move on. IPO ya BPO - ay, there's the rub! So anyway, these poor souls have no raison d'etre anymore. Even worse, no one writes to the postmen anymore. And the Postman Doesn't Even Knock Once.

Blame it all on the blog!

I must be getting past that age when I can't consider myself eligible anymore to be in the youth age-group. The newspapers who write about theatre in Chennai have done away with the youth tag on me. There are real youths (I mean 18 and 19) getting into theatre. My early theatre days was like the English cricket team of about until 5 years back. The average age of a theatre youth would be mid-20s. Chennai Theatre scenario isn't so anymore, it resembles the youth world of American tennis (15s and 16s), although the English Cricket team seems to be cruising on the mid-20s aver-age mode as ever (else how do you account for Shaun Udal!). So, forget me. Move on to real youth.

The youth seems to have its own ways, as it always have been through the ages. Except, we are entering or have already entered an absolutely new hi-fi age where high infidelity and low fidelity rates in relationships are the norms. But we are not talking that either. We are talking about the habits of keeping unearthly hours.

I normally fuzz out at 11.45 the latest in the night. Times were I used to crawl home at 2.20 and 3.10 am on my Titan Dial with an array of smells in my breath, enough to make the Fragnipanis and Baldinis of the world go dizzy with envy. Not any more. I cop out at 11.45 PERIOD

And the next morning I get up early (which is about 6ish) to check my mails (lest there are heavy downloads on my mail, since I belong to the primitive civilisation of Dial-up users) and surf the net for info I seek for any writing projects of mine. And what do I find? The comments to posts on some of the blogs I visit as well as the posts themselves bear the stamp of Interstate 1.00 am-ish to 3.00 am-ish. I got piqued and asked couple of my young gen acquaintances in theatre.

Well, apparently around 2.00 am is the time of maximum DivX Downloads since the broadband is relatively faster then. So while a six-hour download starts its life, the surfers all commune at the bloggers park and start posting and commenting.

It's Darkness in the Junge, Listen to the Night!

Wow! Who would have thought that a country that two decades back was pronounced as backward and developing and conservative as it went to sleep by 9 pm to wake up and start its day at 4.30 am to the sounds of cows named Radha and Lakshmi swinging their heads as they chaffed at the fresh grass, would today go to sleep at 4 and 5 am!! Who would have thought that a country divided by the plates that unite Vindhyas underground would get together in the night. After all this is the country that got its Freedom at Midnight!!!

And then there is Call Centre! So what's so unique about Call Centre life anymore. I scoff at all these yuppie Call Centre folks when these days they come and strut about their night life. I hear you Chetan, we are in sync. The whole nation is anyway awake and that is a whole new world, brave or not. We have started working and communicating and now even conversing to Western Time Zones.

What happened to the good old real-time meetings among friends and common-interest groups? What happened to all those days of arguments and debates and exchange of ideas and trading of opinions and formation of hypotheses over coffees and pakoras at Debate and Poetry and Literary Clubs? Everything happens on-line.

Coffee is Passe and Latte is In!

Even neighbours seem to communicate either through phones or emails. I mean, the traditional description of a neighbour is a person who lives next door. And even if Indians don't anymore live in wall-sharing street-houses, we all live in neighbouring flats. How can two neighbours who share the same floor of the same block of the same apartment complex not open the door in real-time and walk across to each other's interior to say something?

This incident happened to my brother, am not joking. My brother had gone to his headhunter at Bangalore to attend his overseas interview calls as he was poaching for a job to get back to US after a couple of year's break. Obvious, it was a call center. And he was attending interviews. According to records and some sidewinding done by his B'lore companpy, he was supposed to be attending an interview call from Nebraska or wherever. They do it regular if you didn't know. That's how Indian placement guys operate. You give them a CV they forward another to their headhunting clients... further doctored needless to say. In the first place, most of the job-seekers themselves partially doctor their CVs to reflect the latest in CSHARPs or DOTNETS or whatever, and show the most recent employment as until the other day even if they were not employed until the other decade!

So, coming back... suddenly the guy at the other end, apparently his prospective employer, interviewing him gets a bit fishy and decides to probe. Actually you're sitting in India right? Haaarrummmph! Well... things kind of work out! The thing in my brother's favour was that at least he was not putting up accent or disproving he's Indian who used to be Murugan or whatever turned Mark or whatever! And then he happens to adjourn to a near-by eating joint! Wonder of wonders... he runs into someone with whom he starts chatting to while time away... and that guy narrates the story of how he was sitting in a Bangalore Call Centre and happened to interview a guy who's supposed to be in Nebby or someplace... No joking, this happened a bit recently! So... we've reached a stage in the drainpipe where two guys sit in the same Indian town and behave like both are in another western country and interviewing each other! I SALUTE THE CONTEMPORARY FIBRE OPTIC INDIAN PREDICAMENT! What shall I say?!? That was just an example what we are leading ourselves into.

The cutting edge age of bytes mega and giga

We are witnessing - and some out there are being part as well of - a generation that has become unable to structure their thoughts seriously enough that they have started speaking in monosyllabic "Hey" or bi-syllabic "Howdy" (now that comes from Frontier Westerns originally) or "Hey You" or even better "Sup?" or "Wussup dude" irrespective of the gender of the addressee or addressant or whatever s/he is! And we have become inept in communicating spontaneously not because of our lack of language tool, but because we are losing touch with reality. We need to constantly update ourselves about what's up in the world of current affairs or movies or music or books only because the next time we visit any blog we need to be able to participate and leave comments so as not to make a total turd of ourselves. Who cares? No one even knows whether you visited or not. As the used to say in the Frontier West days... "If you don't leave yore corral, yore hoss don't leave no trail, sabe?" But we have also become info-exhibitionists that we feel impelled to impress others with our knowledge that was probably acquired as a result of nethunting for info on Wiki or Rottentomatoes or NYT or Salon.com or wherever just a couple of minutes back after reading other's comments. And so the bangwagon of insecure generation rolls on!

Was it Robert Frost who said, "Poetry is what gets lost in translation"? If that, and as a natural extension this current gen is Poetry as it is getting lost in translation from real-time to blog-time, then am I witnessing Poetry in Motion? With too much of verbal diarrhea, it is probably a bit too loose motion. And they now even have a new terminology based on blogging that should anytime get into the dictionary.

BLOGGER CANDIDATE. That's how TIME described a certain IRAQ War veteran who returned home and was spurred by a politician friend of his to run for the Democrats in the election. The candidate spoke about all things that never would mean anything in realtime to the voters. And he got outdone by a traditional Senator candidate from the same county because he knew the reality. That's what it is. Blogger Candidate. Too much of attitude and too little REAL info. How much of info that is being exchanged on the blog really is useful? "Well, it gets people to know each other better... these little little exchange of opinions". So what're you going to do? Is this a sort of about to be married candidates prospecting each other? Beat it!

Arre... wah wah... new to Blogging? Welcome to Blog World (or like I leave as my housewarming comment, W2BW).

Three @ Twenty

2006-04-04T09:19:00.000+05:30

Are you a playwright? And most playwrights are closet playwrights till they get read in public, because a play's not a thing... like they usually say. It is something to be lived, loudly read, performed (better still!). So if you have been doing some writing and being an Emily Dickinson, quietly hiding away your stuff... or if you know people FROM CHENNAI (on priority) and perhaps others who were from Chennai and working elsewhere or have migrated (all we need is a tenuous Chennai link)... spread the word.

REALLY S P R E A D the WORD. Masquerade is looking for new and exciting (young or old) talents who could write plays. We will give you a reading. Mail us at masquerade@vsnl.net with details, script whatever!

AND VISITORS PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COPY THIS POST IN ITS ENTIRETY AND POST ON YOUR BLOGS SO THAT PPL WHO DON'T KNOW MY BLOG (AND THERE ARE GAZILLIONS OUT THERE!) CAN ALSO BENEFIT!

Thanks and cheers

WORLD THEATRE DAY

2006-03-27T07:53:00.000+05:30

Hello and welcome to Theatre Today...

A VERY HAPPY WORLD THEATRE DAY - MARCH 27 -

to all ye who visit this blog and are into theatre bashing and praising if not theatre watching!

WORLD THEATRE DAY was created in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute (ITI). World Theatre Day is celebrated annually on the 27th March by ITI Centres and the international theatre community, various national and international theatre events being organized to mark this occasion. One of the most important of these is the circulation of the International Message traditionally written by a theatre personality of world stature at the invitation of the International Theatre Institute.

Usually at Masquerade we celebrate World Theatre Day by doing an extended weekend of silly comedies just to keep people happy and laughing while we otherwise do a little more serious work through the year. But since last year we have taken to launching our new annual theatre season. This year, originally our Launch Nite for 2006-07 was supposed to be today. Due to some extenuating circumstances we have moved to April 3. So if you're interested to catch up with our event... here goes the details:

Event: Masquerade's 2006-07 Theatre Season Launch Nite

Performance: ARTIFICIAL REALITIES - a 50 minute presentation of comedies

Place: CEDARS - the specialty Mediterranean Restaurant, Kotturpuram

Time: 7.30 PM

Date: April 3, 2006

Cover Charges Rs. 250/- apply.

Theatre performance to be preceded by Drinks and followed by Specialty Buffet.

You can Call Cedars - 2447 5073 or 5585 5111 for reservation. Limited Walk-ins as this is a private and press launch.

So what have we at Masquerade this season?

2 Mainstream Productions
An extended weekend of 3 full-length productions
A festival of Short Plays
A Festival of Youth Theatre
A year long New Writing in Theatre program…
Workshops, neighborhood theatre events, collaborative theatre events with schools… many more!

Right Click my title above to reach out a very unique site dedicated to Theatre. Incidentally it was also the organisation - International Theatre Institute - without whose backing and help I could not have had my theatre training in de Vaterland back in 1996. Each year a personality - a theatre personality - is chosen to represent and be awarded with prize for contribution to theatre by ITI and his/her World Theatre Day speech is published here. This year it is V í ctor Hugo Rascón-Banda.

Keep doing/supporting theatre. And don't listen to the umpteen entertainment reporters in town, they just write to fill their column centimeters with sound bytes and would write anything to distort reality, depending on who feeds their next meal and washes with their next cocktail. However, there are a couple of critics still left. Thank god for small mercies. As I quote my favourite tactician - the twentieth century Kautilya - and a certain Kerpener who races F-1: Too Much Mass and Too Little Class.

And to add to that, I state, TOO LITTLE CLASS AND TOO MEDIOCRE A CRITICAL MASS!

Between Nostalgia and Phantasy...

2006-03-14T20:25:00.000+05:30

Event: Theatre
Title: Rural Phantasy
Genre: Socio-political Satire
Author: Kalki Krishnamurthy
Adapted & Scripted: Gowri Ramnarayan
Language: English (original Tamil)
Venue: Museum Theatre, Chennai
Dates: 10 - 12 March 2006
Produced by The Madras Players in collaboration with Just Us Repertory

"I know that when I set about writing a comedy the idea presents itself to me first as a tragedy... If the characters were not qualified for tragedy there would be no comedy... (FRY, Christopher - "Comedy." Drama Review, 4,3 (Mar.1960): p. 78)

Set alongside this a statement by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, the Swiss-German playwright, "comedy is like a mouse trap." It traps the audience into laughing and as they laugh, nudges them into listening and before they realise, they are actually laughing at themselves.

There are two ways of looking at Rural Phantasy. As a play and as a production. It all depends on whether one wants to look at the text or the context. On the surface, after the first reading, yours faithfully shared the view with several others that it has a paper-thin plot and was very episodic and fragmented with patriotism and Bharatiyaar for fervid excuse. The characters were caricatures with perhaps the endocorp more meaty than the epicorp. This was a play within a play within a play.

There is the author of the original short story trying to tell us a tale of a village. Then there is the Narrator-Man telling it to the audience at the performative level. And then there is the Narrator-Woman along with the man telling us the current predicament of theatre in Chennai. Somewhere down the line, at the production level, the script also morphs into a post-modern self-reflexive meta-theatre wherein the Narrator-Woman also steps into the screen to become the "Pudhumai Pen" (The New/Neo/Neuve/Revolutionary Woman - not Picasso's but Bharatiyaar's) that she talks about in her prelexia (if they call the end Dyslexia, why not call the intro Prelexia. I hear you G. Why or how can they make fun of Dyslexia in the epilogue. But if we want to feel abrasive we have the right to. Only, it was not a medical or "challenged" dig. It further highlights our ineptitude and socail malaise in a very post-colonial, post-structural, post-modern world. So excuse the irreverence). And further to add to it, Bala who played the Narrator-Man also becomes minor roles in the course of the play within the play within the play's events. But those were roles that Andrea and Bala were originally cast for. What really made this Phantasy fantastically meta-theatre was what Bala did on Saturday afternoon show!

The costume changing was so tight before the first Ranganatham scene that guys who had gone for Bande Mataram dance were still dhoti-ing themselves in the scene... I was alone in the company of a topless Gandhi, courtesy The Hindu, 125th Anniversary issue sporting 1940s look. Shankar Sundaram was blissfully sleeping on stage. So Bala had to continue with ad-lib lines to occupy stage time because I cannot talk until I had co-actors to talk to. He ad-libbed and hung on as no one had managed to come on stage... and joined me. Moments like these go to make the genre of 'survivor tales'. From Sanjaya in Mahabharatha to Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man, 'survivor tales' of self-reflexive fiction would tell you that the narrator is invariably the one who had to go through a certain apocalypse and the ignominy of having to be present at the site of an event but could not participate or was marginal and hence subaltern as well... and survives to tell the tale. But these are the delighful characters that make up history worth listening to. Which is the core content of my post here.

Someone said in the comment to the previous post: "take away the music, the dance and the physical comedy, and what is left?" I aver. There would be nothing left as a story TO TELL; but give me also leave to disagree. The story is not about dance or music or physical comedy. It is all about the struggles our patriotic leaders of the past and freedom-fighters of colonial Bharat had gone through to get us where we are. Therein lies the strength as well as the weakness of the script. As "Kanayazhiyin Kanavu", as written by Kalki, it works. Well, now it works only as a good story. At the time it was written and perhaps for until a decade later it worked to inspire. But now... it just doesn't. Because we have too much freedom and democracy!

The fate of Gowri's "Rural Phantasy" is the same as Evam's "Evam Indrajit". Again... it doesn't question the efficacy or cast aspersion on the palpability of Kanayazhi or Indrajit. Like Jennie Malone (sorry to bring in Neil Simon in an Indian context, especially when at the beginning of "Rural Phantasy" the Woman says she's bored of english theatre from Shakespeare to Neil Simon. but then we are dealing with the same actress no? So, coincidences galore! Also we are discussing Rural Phantasy in comparison with Evam Indrajit vis-a-vis the fate of the production. So... so much more!)! Anyway, like Jennie Malone tells Leo in Chapter Two, "May be the timing was wrong!" Yes... YEs...

YES! The timing. Sure Thing. It's all in the timing, as David Ives says! A story such as Rural Phantasy does not relate to the youth following theatre today, as much as they could not relate to Evam Indrajit. The opening night was a rave. Of course we had three encore curtain call Namastes on the second night because we had the audience giving standing ovation in three waves... in three instalments... but still, IMHO, the opening night audience was the best in terms of response; simply because they were audience from the Kalki era. From the pre-independence era. You get the point? The mortality rate in Chennai is still high. Yes, it was an aged-audience and again IMHO they have turned up to listen to Carnatic music, get nostalgic about Kanayazhiyin Kanavu and see some good dancing of the traditional variety (which unfortunately was made shitty by a certain fly - yours faithfully! If you don't believe me, ask the cast around about my struggles with the Bilahari Swarajathi.) Cutting digressions, the play works only with people who can relate to the content of the story within the play. Like Gowri said during the curtain call on Saturday night, the cast knows nothing about Freedom struggle. C'mon... besides Shankar Sundaram, I was the oldest member of the cast and am just stuck with my mid-life blues! Our lighting manager who flashed the Indian tri-colour flag on the white cyclorama was not even born when I had completed my Bachelor's. So you can imagine our ignorance. Under such a condition how do you expect the quintessence of the script to percolate through the cast. And if you don't understand the script, how could you relate to it? Even if you understood, it would only be surface understanding, not felt experience. Also, we are dealing with a whole lot of cast and crew who are in it for the experience of doing theatre. I dare challenge anyone with total abrasion and armed with cannon-ball when I say this. Besides perhaps Bala pick me one member in my co-cast who has a theatrical ideology and does theatre out of a certain political belief?

All theatre - am making a sweeping gesture here - would continue to remain nicely put together piece of aesthetic junk if art is not practised out of conviction to communicate something. Even if the creator believes in his/her conviction, the ensemble must feel the same, else only artifacts. No artifice. No conceit. No art. No Theatre. Which explains why I am getting so many messages, posts and calls about the lack of depth in the performance (and I strictly mean the performance), when the euphoria has died down.

CLAIMANTS WHO DARE CHALLENGE ME RAISE YOUR HANDS AND WE'LL SETTLE THE ISSUE ANY WHICH WAY YOU LIKE!

So, to cut the long explanation short in response to EyeFry's statement that if you take away the music, the dance....blah blah, let me say, unfortunately what came through this production was only the music dance and physical caricature which you were tongue in cheek enough to qualify as comedy because the hall was resounding with echoing laughter. The play has a finer humour that never came out, unfortunately. IMHO it is a brilliant script. May be I prefer DARK HORSE for its tautness, but THIS IS A FINE SCRIPT. The priorities sadly on the production front were different. The accent was on the musical-ness of its genre than on the discourse about the freedom struggle, patriotism, independence and our political heritage. And despite the director's repeated attempts to inculcate us with Kalki's politics, we sadly could not rise above the basic muck of dishing out few aaahs and oohs and ahhhhaahahahas to the audience who paid 100 bucks to buy a piece of heritage.

This is a trend am getting scared about in Chennai Theatre right now. We have a generation of actors who either produce Call Center Theatre or another set of people who package nostalgia in the form of Heritage Theatre. At least, Heritage teaches us some inspiring moments, but Call Centers are threatening to make the Jayathirths into Jays, Srivatsans to Steves, Mariammas to Mary-Anns etc etc. We are getting evangelised to commodities of KFC culture. We need to go beyond the threshold of nicety and do a lot more 'in yer face' theatre to wake up an audience that is fast becoming addicted to I don't want to say what! Theatre should not be nice or packaged. It is an art that aims to edify through entertainment. We need to be hyper-critical and moon on each other if theatre here needs to satisfy beyond a few kicks. All right, let's now go empty our bladder. It's been a long 2 hours sans intermission :-))

Reality Bites....

2006-03-12T09:44:00.000+05:30

I have been discovering a phenomenal amount of circumspect, mistrust and apprehension among people these days. Not at me. No no... am good and in shape with most people. But most people I meet... I sense a sort of insecurity that gets manifest as aggression in their walk talk and body gestures, I feel very very moved at this inability of people to find peace in themselves. I am going to steal a line from Kurt "Nirvana" Cobain and say "I would rather be hated for what I am than being loved for what I am not!". And this "Rural Phantasy" is turning out to be a brilliant trip of expose for me... to learn people... most of my learning has actually come by less communication than more observation; but of course... I have been observing more than communicating and am glad of it. Well... it's not a personal post or polambals or anything, just that I felt like it. Also, it is interesting to see how people want to desperately connect with others but are not sure and hence they don't know when and what and how much to give or hold back! I am laughing inside watching all this. About the performance... well, what can I say! The public says it all. 3 shows done, 1 to go. 3 different responses, but not very radical as with some shows I have seen. That probably means, there is a certain amount of uniformity in the performance, as well as a certain measure of mediocrity. Of course, some people have condemned the show by saying they did not like it without spelling out... These people I know, but I refrain to elaborate more. As for my own self and my views on this show? Well, I will have to dig into the production process. I don't want to. Because then rather than being an actor my other facets of theatre artist would surface, not to mention the critic in me. And that may not me nice or ethical, since I am here primarily as an actor. I intend to do the job I am paid for and the rest shall be silence. Learning curve... ummm... I still can't dance and that doesn't mean I can't let loose my soul out there on the dance floor with gay abandon as they say. This is different. Probably my recent friends Tara Shreya and Swe were right in nailing it down: I still can't walk. You see, there is so much to learn in theatre even after soooo many years of being around. But what the heck, am enjoying my solitude at Rural Phantasy. Don't disturb it for another night. If you don't I shall do a proper "disinterested" - as Mathew Arnold would say in his "Tradition and Individual Talent" - attempt at a critique of the show.

Infant J and the Black Sea

2006-02-26T15:29:00.001+05:30

Retrospecting....

Play: On Account of Being A Woman
Script: Manasi Subramaniam
Direction: Yours Faithfully
Performed by: The J Theatre
Produced by: SIE Trust & JBAS College for Women
Rating: 2 and half stars (may be!).... out of.... PITY!

I survived. It was not as bad as I feared. Believe me, at one point, it just wasn't happening. Not especially when a key player drops out of the show on pretext of parental disapproval a week before the show and a new person - who has not been physically optimal - has to step in to all those lines and reblockings! We just barely scrapped through 2 run throughs before the show. And everyone except myself were optimistic the show is going to hit headlines for all the wrong reasons. Well... as for me, I was realistic that this is a still-born. And so we moved into the Tech day, where to further add value to my negative beliefs, a lighting rig and focus that normally takes 5 hours took 8 hours. It was not complete when we decided to stop the focus to bare minimum and get on with the tech as the players had to go home, each carrying an IPC 144 (read Parental for P) and curfews ranging from 5 pm back home to 8 pm. I went home blissfully sure that the infant J was headed for crucifixtion even before the wine and wafer day!

And then it all kind of came through on the opening night. I would attribute it mainly to a 400+ strong home crowd. It was like a local cricketer going into bat on home ground. Of course, the cast slipped and shlepped around initially. But once the initial jitters vanished and the crowd warmed up, they went through it smoothly. I wouldn't say this production is my crowning glory. It won't even get into my Top 20 productions, it won't! But no damage done. The tech areas worked pretty smooth. Since the set was unit and needed no change... since the props were not too many and the cast handled the same themselves... and we had focussed hands on sound and lights... things seemed a lot better than I sound. Had it been otherwise, the onstage performance would have looked bad. It had its draggy moments, to confess. I stand charged for this offense and accept the verdict.

It was amateur theatre, no doubt. Some of them have diction problems even. But again, considering the background of some in terms of their lineage, as well as their past institutions, it was like adult education programme in theatre. Add to it, couple of them are first generation college goers. Probably that was the most significant aspect of this. Early evening, before the show last night (24th), I was talking to a press friend of mine who had come to meet us. I told her precisely this. I may not have got the same satisfaction had I worked with any other college (that leave alone has a heritage and tradition in theatre) where some of the students come to do studies after having matriculated from some of the creme-de-la-creme schools in city and elsewhere.

I am not trying to make it sound like these are losers of the planets when it comes to education; but: there are some very bright kids. And pedigreed financially and/or culturally as well. I mean, these kids have basic theatre skill sets in them. This is one thing for which I am jealous at them. Some of them from the not so upper echelons of schools in Chennai have an active street theatre background or more zealous school-day-affairs, they come equipped with a good body language. Add to it, having been through life with a big L I F E at an early age, they are able to identify layers and subtexts in the script.

It is not an easy script. It may look straight-forward and black&white, but believe me, Manasi has done a pretty good job. The craft is pretty decent, the way the script swings between dealing with the issue seriously and providing comic thrust when the going gets a little too grave. And by design or accident, she has also provided enough scope for people to double up, get enough time to change costume, be in two places at the same time without making it sound obvious... etc. And it ends with solving the problem it started with. Not the core of the play's thesis is sorted out. Which is a good thing. You can only present problems on stage and leave the end ambivalently. Apparently, I was told, one newspaper that carried the story about the show yesterday (yes, story. Where do we get Reviews these days!!!) signed off saying the end left the audience puzzled. Can't the audience be given the liberty to conjecture? Have the comedies by the city theatre groups dullened the intellectuality of theatre going audience? I guess this is where my crusade in theatre is. Veer off those hard-core comedy only audience back to THEATRE.

This is a play within a play. A journalist whose ass is being hauled up now and for good, has to get a story to convince her editor-boss to get a stay on her job. It's a man's world. And she has a Jerry on her hands whose lazy-bone attitude stalls things. He is chill madi-ed so to speak your local teen lingo. In this situation, she stumbles on a group of women who have taken refuge inside an NRI woman's organisation and refuse to go home until their husbands sign legal contracts to treat them better. And the cops are having a tough time, being the only ones who are let in there because of their badges... but are let in to provide protection to these women who are striking against beings of their (read men) own ilk.

Talking of body work, the Act 4 interrogation scene of one of the victimised woman (a hallucinatory scene) I had designed as a mime on domestic violence with actors also doubling up as molesters and sadists. The afternoon 11.30 show for college students actually left a few girls genuinely crying at the sadism on stage. For all that, these girls didn't even put their finger nail on the victim, in the course of mime. I thought that was success with S for them. When your audience identify with your character and not just laugh...laugh...laugh... Anyone with a 8-bit memory in their backsides for timing could make any audience laugh!

Talking of laughter, the play turned out to have plenty more to laugh than we had expected. The performance was 1 hr and 2 mins long. Dealing with DV and Harassment. And when I cumulatively put together the audience reaction over three shows vis-a-vis laughter (hahaha sort, not just the grin on your face!), each show had an average 40% laughter. And that's not bad. The play was entertainment, gave people something to laugh at... no mere punch-bag foot-longs of one liners. And when the audience identified themselves with the script and hooted and jeered the men as well as clapped for the women who took aggressive stance at men... it was EMPOWERMENT all the way. This was one production that I have done till date that was entertainment cum empowerment, proving once again my belief that theatre is not just a 9-inch long battery operated gizmo that gives shocks of laughter-release for the unreleased, but a cutting edge tool that can truly respect and seek to elevate their higher cerebral functions even while providing them a certain emotional cathartic release. Would you believe: I made announcements to the crowd to put their mobiles on silent, not bring beverages or crush plastics while eating inside audi, etc etc... and also said "feel free to applaud or even whistle".

90% women... clad to the extent where I have never before seen such a densely concentrated assemblage of black clothes from the crown Jack broke to the heel Achilles got hurt, with an occasional flash of a pair of eyes and uncreased foreheads. I truly felt like that Doctor chap in Rushdie's Midnight's Children, having to get to know his patient (in my case, clientele) in EMIs through two holes in a bedsheet! But when my announcement went on air and the play started, I could see pairs of hands from inside these black hoods creeping up, flashing gleaming nails polished with flourescent reds and irridiscent blues, vanishing into their labio-dental openings! And what whistles we had! All in the secure knowledge of their anonymity insured by the darkness enveloping the audience part of the venue.

At the end, when the Feminist activist slaps her Superintendent husband, couple of older women actually stood up and gave a standing ovation. My god... Manasi you missed the afternoon show of your own script! It was, to get back to reality, not even a 70% good performance, as the cast was still groggy from the hangover of the previous night premiere. But the hysteria they whipped up! So, it was at the end, not a nightmare as I had thought earlier at all. It was not something I would get delirious over. As I said, I had done at least 20 more better shows than this. But for the sheer experience of realising what it is to be a woman... and a woman inside those mass of textiles with so much pent up... to be a first-generation learner getting empowered to speak for themselves... it was worth it. In the process, I became aware what it is to most of the times be a man (sometimes I felt like the sole survivor after the 7 day deluge left on Noah's Ark only the denizens of Amazonia and myself as I walked the last 2 months into that campus on MKB Road, connecting Mount Road on the West and TTK Road on the East)! How inspite of the fact that this Unicorn walking inside their secure precincts could throw discomfort. It was like Abimanyu creating chaos inside the Kuru Chakra Vyuha... only to be decimated to a higher realisation. POWER IS ALL ABOUT POSSESSION OF SPACE. SPACE THEORY IS REAL. MAN STILL HAS NOT LANDED ON MOON. Because when I searched for him in the moon in the light of the lamp held by the Lady in the Moon, I couldn't find him; but I found myself! A new dimension added to the artist in me.

Is this the reckoning?

2006-02-21T19:42:00.000+05:30

I stand poised... no, perched would be a better expression... best would be precariously perched... Anyway, I stand precariously perched on the precipitous edge of a momentous occasion.

I have always believed "the worst is yet to come". And I have always answered the query, "which is your best production?" with "my next one perhaps!". But now I know. This is apocalypse, now! Which is my worst production? My next one. Right now... in two days time.

If I were asked to sequence in whirlwind buzzer in KBC... Rate the recent theatre shows you saw in the order of bad worse worst... it would be A: KoF B: Antigone C: Chap 2... Now I have something coming up on my own doorstep and I am staring at the twin barrel with the bullet breathing on me in all its inherent deathly form: my immediate production of the J Theatre play I have been involved in directing over the last month and half... going public on 23rd and 24th at Rani Seethai Hall. "On Account of Being a Woman" (a title I have thrust upon the script much to the chagrin of the beleagured script-writer). It's an explosive script according to me. And in the hands of a good director... (add to it, with an excellent cast), it can stun the audience. Most things that could go wrong with it has gone wrong. But am not going to offer excuses because, as far as the audience is concerned, What you See is What you Got and Who cares What happened Behind the Scenes???

If KBC asked me to rate, it would be thus: KoF - Bad, Antigone - Worse, Chapter 2 - Worst, On Account of Being a Woman - Worsted (am not sure if I would be in a suiting, but am sure to be shot at the end of this show by the public and the theatre fraternity... if it doesn't pan out!). But there are three more immediate english productions coming up, let's see. Bala's directing The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht (in an adapted form) for Ethiraj College (24 and 25 at Museum Theatre) and Mike is doing a couple of Murray Schisgals - sometime early March (Schisgal is to Mike as John Patrick is to KK and Neil Simon is to Evam!) for LTS (Loyola Theatre Society) and some new company called Boulevard View Productions is doing Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn! At Alliance 24-26 Feb (Ever heard of it Simonites out there?). So plenty to hope for in Chennai's alternative Theatre, i.e., considering the oldest group is the only mainstream group in town.

God help the paying public!

Will let you all know what happened to my show, on 24th night in my follow-up blog!