Thursday 23 June 2011

Chori...my sons holiday homework

My son has got a homework to twist a known tale. He thought of this idea. My contribution...well the grammer especially the tense, uploading and but of course maaa ki jhaad....tabhi to usne sochna shuru kiya. Ben ten ki duniya se nikalne main waqt jo lagta hai!
And my reward.....a self motivated genuine bear hug...from a guy who hardly does that....with a peck on the cheek, would have started crying like nirupa roy but resisted the emotion lest he feels I am like the coco(nut.)..just the shell looks tough!
Feel free to comment!
Title of the story: IPL RAMAYAN
Once upon a time, a beautiful lady, who was the wife of a famous king called Ram was kidnapped by another king called Ravan. When Ram called Ravan to fight, Ravan threw the proposal to have a cricket match. Whoever wins the match will get Sita. Ram accepted the challenge. The day and date of the cricket battle was decided and Ram 11 and Ravan 11 met on the field. Vibhishan was the umpire and Ram won the toss and chose to bat. Ram scored a century and his team made 280 runs.
In the second innings, the first over was bowled by Laxman and Indrajit  was on the strike. Indrajit hit a six at the first ball, followed by a dot ball and then the first wicket was taken. The best overs were bowled by Ram himself and Hanuman fielded with great enthusiasm and saved many runs. After 5 wickets were down Kumbhakaran came to bat and he scored many runs along with Tataka , the raakshasa. Meghnath on the other end. Their partnership was broken by Jambuvan, the valiant monkey. Last came RAVAN, who just would not get out . In the last over, Ravan had to score 20 runs. He was able to make 14 runs in 5 balls.  Vibhishan told Ram that Ravan is weak on the leg-side and he cannot deal with reverse swing. Ram bowled reverse swing and Ravan got out on the last ball. Ram won the match and Ravan accepted the defeat like a true sportsman.

Friday 17 June 2011

WHEN ALL THAT YOU FEEL IS IN VERSE!



I wish to thank the sky and the stars
And Him
Who made me close to perfection
Yet do imperfect things

I wish to thank the river and the ocean
And him
Who taught me how love flows
Yet leave me alone to drown

I wish to thank the shrubs and the trees
And him
Who showed me the power of movement
Yet himself remains unmoved

I wish to thank the wind and the leaves
And him
Who taught me patience
Yet let my impatience rustle

I wish to thank the birds and the bees
And him
Who knew the essence of friendship
But could never be my friend

I wish to thank the mines and the rocks
And him
Who taught me how to love machines
Yet make me love the human more

I wish to thank the thunder and the storm
And him
Who came unexpectedly
To make me see the ‘me ‘ that I was

I wish to thank the cosmos and ether
And him
Whom I hug, who shrugs
And says
“ma, don’t hug me so tight”
And makes a part of me
Complete!


Saturday 11 June 2011

Dilemma of a jampacked house !

The cattle and the connoisseur. 
The winds are hot!...the roads..sparsely occupied ….add to that the heat of the crusade , the desire to revel in the nuances of a ‘play’ called ‘Begum ka takiya’. And you have made it to the location in mid afternoon.
 What does one see? People swarming in.
How does it feel? At this point, very nice because you believe theatre is catching up amongst the ‘mass’.
For a while its been not about the oughts…….but  about the ‘foughts’ and the ‘thoughts’ in regards to making a visit to an auditorium.  I am sure people fight their gym schedules and their TV shows and their lunches and the gossip and whatever…. that should not be compared to this divine habit of reveling as the audience.
Baharhal……..
Begum ka Takia is a story of two brothers; one is a simpleton and the other ambitious. It is directed by Ranjit Kapoor’s and is an adaptation of Anand Kumar’s novel.
The oughts have me puzzled.
When was clapping within a play, after every act a tradition? Is it like a kavi sammelan? I remember that the finest of artists would resist the temptation of applause after reaching every ‘sam’. ( I know of classical dance so will restrict my conviction to that). It obstructs the connect that an artist has with himself. It is a misnomer that art is a consumable practice. Applause is to aplaud and not obstruct the conduct. ( wow a toungue twister!)
Was the ‘mass’ there to revisit the ramlila experience? 
Well, how would I know……cause I might have the ‘mass’ but am not part of the ‘maans’ (meat , flesh of humankind).
How about a ‘theatre appreciation’ course?  They run some things for girls when they get married called polishing (finishing) schools. Wonder what they polish because most of them after marriage will loose their gloss and sheen…(not sadism..its called sarcasm) and most I said not ‘all’. And the ones who retain it aint wanting to go to any finishing school. They were sent on the planet ‘finished’. Back to the begum and the takiya.
Why was it called a comedy? It was so potent as social satire. Comic , I disagree…I might not have even smiled on most of it if the others were not laughing and falling out of their chairs. Every statement had such deep rooted imprint of the human mind. Very enjoyable not laughable.
The knots were incredible. The sheer length in time of the play allowed characters to develop, take root in the mind and the heart. The central character the good natured naïve brother peera was implemented perfectly. Made one think if there were more peera’s around !...the simplicity of understanding basic human attributes….the not so needed knots…..overall a mixed emotion. The audience OUGHT to have been more mature in interpretation, the KNOTS that unfolded in the mind will need to be interpreted over days and especially hot afternoons of silence.

Thursday 9 June 2011

HERE I GO!

Here I go! Sharing has never been easy for me though ‘gyan’ has always been natural to my existence.  When you are fluttering between food for the soul and food for the tummy, and suddenly you decide to put your views in oughts and knots, you are basically quite screwed up! The struggle for answers has just got a little more complicated…
Is it exciting?
Absolutely, its intoxicating!...every bump actually gives you a high! And also the hangover……
Oughts and knots is my way to look at life. You live all your life with someone on your head telling you do this ….do that . and then you arrive…when? .. noone can predict but everyone sure does! And when you are there, the trivials don’t matter anymore, its big game and big stakes. And there is hunger to know more ..know what you always wanted to, spend time on what you always wanted to. My mother, her mother, my aunts their aunts, my cousin sister, their cousin sisters….all might have wanted to do the same…the difference is they never did!...but I wish to …
My arrival I surely cant discuss in public, but my hunger for answers had begun way back. The best way to look for them, I read books and watch art…anything plays, photography, cinema and mind you not moviez ( the experience which is directly associated with popcorn…) . So I have apart from my goals decided to see the oughts and knots around me !
Considering the last time I felt like writing a blog was when I came back from a torturous screening of a sort of film called ‘luck’…I wish I had done it then. I would have been able t o sleep for the next three nights by blurting it out.  Obviously everything shouldn’t be said like a=b, lets unlearn that. What I implied was that I didn’t sleep three nights after that experience. Kept wondering I wish I had 25% of that budget ….selfishness, right?  That all we care for these days don’t we? Please read the WE as minus me ….ought and the knot! Complication just began.
Where do I begin?
A play…called Blood wedding*, at Kamani.  Not that I can call myself a connoisseur on theatre, but was on the merry go round of assessment.  The oughts :-
Should ( a frequently used word of the human race ..should )  a play be so infested with properties that it starts telling the story with things than with people?
Should people of that medium actually want to compete with the film experience?
Two jerks behind me actually helped me endorse the view, for every beautiful moment in the play they said ..kya shot hai? right next to my ear. It actually went reverb in my psyche…kya shot hai, kya shot hai
Should a medium like the play which builds as much edifice with sound actually have the liberty to move at one point into Bengal and the next to punjabi shaadi de geet? Wasn’t music or sound included in creation of milieu and misc en scene?  
Since I don’t belong to theatre, I will only pose questions.  I will (did I hear should) keep to my film making side.
The knots and there were so many of them, each with its own significance. The concept of the shadow, the duality, the contradiction, the hidden, the unsaid, the presumed, the not to be expected was presented in the most subtle yet ‘on your face’ manner. Two actors for one character, one the visible, other the thought, like ether not seen yet felt. It felt cathartic, what if there was a bit of you. What if the ‘ought’ was not what you wanted but the( k)not  was what you fascinate about.
Enough hard work for an introductory piece.  My mind wants to now work without the bits and the bytes.
NOTE :* Blood Wedding is a tragedy by the Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. It was written in 1932. The main themes of the play are death, individualism vs. society as well as women's role in society. The significance of death in the play is directly linked to the mother in two ways, first that death is not only the inevitable ending of life and the death of someone in a physical and mental form but also the death they experience in their relationships with other human beings.