Wednesday, 27 May 2009
Snow White and the Saline Curse
A play staged by The Creative Arts at the Max Muller Bhavan in Kolkata, Snow White and the Saline Curse could be the first to fuse enchantment with pressing environmental issues. Snow White and the seven dwarfs are now in the Sunderbans. The inhabitants grapple with the problem of rising salinity of the waters there and the loss of vegetation. The animals and the villagers including the village gypsy woman, woodcutters, honey collectors, the prince and the wicked queen make for a colourful play. Quite a task getting children from the age group 4 to 15 years to take acting seriously, but it was done and well. The live music was an added bonus and put life to the show. The script was by Sangeeta Bapuli and direction by Ramanjit Kaur.
Monday, 4 May 2009
Ranan’s staging of Equus
Peter Shaffer’s dark and brutal play Equus was staged by the theatre group Ranan at Gyan Manch. I am glad I did not give this a miss. The rave reviews Equus received in London where the central character was played by Daniel Radcliff had me fascinated.
Ranan has presented the play a little differently in its visual aspect, experimenting with classical dance making it all the more intriguing.
Alan Strang, the 17-year-old boy, torn between his passion, his beliefs, family pressure and the adolescent conflict held his place wonderfully. The psychiatrist had the toughest role, I believe. She was a bundle of conflicts herself, coming to realize by the end of the play, the futility of categorization of normalcy from the societal view point and asks herself, What dark is this?
It was evident that besides two of the characters, the others were not comfortable with English and this does jar at times. Nevertheless, the dances, the costumes and the lights made up for it. Vikram Iyengar has really done a commendable job.
Armenian Genocide
On April 24, I was given to recite a poem for stage, and this is a first for me. The occasion – The Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide at Gorky Sadan. I recited the English translation of Siamanto’s poem, The Dance. This was the first time I had any association with the Armenians, though I have always been curious about the church and the school. My friend Kamal teaches at the Armenian school on Mirza Ghalib Street, Kolkata, and it is she who put in my name for this piece. Two pretty students enacted the poem as I recited it from the wings of the stage. The poem depicts a ghastly scene during the genocide in 1915 where 20 young brides are beaten up, made to dance and then burnt to death, all this witnessed by a woman looking through a window. Thanks to Father Oshagan Gulgulian for giving me an idea about how the poem needed to be emoted. To this day, Armenian all over the world await justice hoping Turkey will apologize for the genocide of 1915.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Sun, sand, dolphins, temples …
The trip to Orissa came about suddenly as all good things do. A chance discussion with friends while out on a walk, and we had decided to join up on this trip. Left on March 26 and returned four days later. Our train reservations weren’t confirmed until the time we boarded, but that’s a given and we are used to traveling on RAC. Our hotel, Samudra is on the beach but away from the Chowpaty area of Puri. It’s quite an exclusive area and we were enjoying the waves at 5.30 am.
We visited Puri, Bhuvaneshwar, Konark and Chilka. Anyone who has been there knows that temples dominate skyline here. For me, the architecture held a special attraction, being unique in design. The Jagannath temple is the centre of Puri. Everything seems to revolve around it. It is said that pilgrims come to this temple mainly to eat, and if you haven’t made a meal of the prasad here, you should do so at once. Not only because it is a good thing to do so, but also because the meal is too delicious to miss. This included three preparations of Basmati rice (plain rice with ghee and salt, pulao, sweet rice), dal, mixed vegetables, vegetable in mustard, rabri and malpua.) Too good to miss, huh? I also had my fill of Orissa sweet specialties - Chhana Pora (baked cottage cheese) and Khaaja (deep fried sweetened longish fritters). The evening ceremony of flag changing is fascinating. Two men climb up to the temple top on to the 12 foot spire and replace the red flag everyday.
All would have been fine had the priests (pandas) left us alone. At the Gundecha temple and the Jagannath temple, we were almost forced to pay up for each and every deity there! We then decided to go through the temples at a run.
In Bhuvaneshwar, the Lingaraj temple complex is quite rightly known as the Varanasi of the east because of the amazing number of Shiva temples within the walls. The suns had baked the stones so we had quite a game of hopscotch while trying to negotiate our way from one shaded area to the next. The Udaygiri and Khandgiri caves were a marvel and these caves for Jain students always amaze me. The utter starkness of it! A raised area cut out on the floor served as pillows! Small vents provided air and I suppose they studied by daylight.
Konark was heart wrenching for me. To think that I was seeing almost nothing of the original was too much to swallow. The main temple was no longer standing. The magnet placed at the apex was removed by the British when it was found that ships passing through the area crashed because of its interference. Once the magnet was removed, the huge iron pillars that held the temple straight together lost balance and the inevitable happened. The only structure remaining in stuffed with sand and stone and closed to public. Even the positions of the four sun (Surya) sculpures are no longer appropriate. The Wheels are indeed fascinating in the way they kept time based on prahar. The less said about the sculptures and engravings the better since I will be unable to do justice to them.
I was glad to notice that my daughters were also saddened by the loss of such craftsmanship. Since Malavika plans to study architecture, she needs to feel for these artifacts.
Chilka was reserved for the last day and the Irrawady dolphins did not disappoint us nor did the red crabs. What disappointed was the number of pearls that were produced by the fisher folk there. They simply asked for the pearl colour of our choice, then smashed open a clam shell and presto, a pearl. They were selling it for as cheap as Rs 10!!! I really do not know what to make of it.
Our return tickets were on the wait list and we left it all to Lord Jagannath. And sure enough we were given three berths!! So a satisfying end to this quick trip.
We visited Puri, Bhuvaneshwar, Konark and Chilka. Anyone who has been there knows that temples dominate skyline here. For me, the architecture held a special attraction, being unique in design. The Jagannath temple is the centre of Puri. Everything seems to revolve around it. It is said that pilgrims come to this temple mainly to eat, and if you haven’t made a meal of the prasad here, you should do so at once. Not only because it is a good thing to do so, but also because the meal is too delicious to miss. This included three preparations of Basmati rice (plain rice with ghee and salt, pulao, sweet rice), dal, mixed vegetables, vegetable in mustard, rabri and malpua.) Too good to miss, huh? I also had my fill of Orissa sweet specialties - Chhana Pora (baked cottage cheese) and Khaaja (deep fried sweetened longish fritters). The evening ceremony of flag changing is fascinating. Two men climb up to the temple top on to the 12 foot spire and replace the red flag everyday.
All would have been fine had the priests (pandas) left us alone. At the Gundecha temple and the Jagannath temple, we were almost forced to pay up for each and every deity there! We then decided to go through the temples at a run.
In Bhuvaneshwar, the Lingaraj temple complex is quite rightly known as the Varanasi of the east because of the amazing number of Shiva temples within the walls. The suns had baked the stones so we had quite a game of hopscotch while trying to negotiate our way from one shaded area to the next. The Udaygiri and Khandgiri caves were a marvel and these caves for Jain students always amaze me. The utter starkness of it! A raised area cut out on the floor served as pillows! Small vents provided air and I suppose they studied by daylight.
Konark was heart wrenching for me. To think that I was seeing almost nothing of the original was too much to swallow. The main temple was no longer standing. The magnet placed at the apex was removed by the British when it was found that ships passing through the area crashed because of its interference. Once the magnet was removed, the huge iron pillars that held the temple straight together lost balance and the inevitable happened. The only structure remaining in stuffed with sand and stone and closed to public. Even the positions of the four sun (Surya) sculpures are no longer appropriate. The Wheels are indeed fascinating in the way they kept time based on prahar. The less said about the sculptures and engravings the better since I will be unable to do justice to them.
I was glad to notice that my daughters were also saddened by the loss of such craftsmanship. Since Malavika plans to study architecture, she needs to feel for these artifacts.
Chilka was reserved for the last day and the Irrawady dolphins did not disappoint us nor did the red crabs. What disappointed was the number of pearls that were produced by the fisher folk there. They simply asked for the pearl colour of our choice, then smashed open a clam shell and presto, a pearl. They were selling it for as cheap as Rs 10!!! I really do not know what to make of it.
Our return tickets were on the wait list and we left it all to Lord Jagannath. And sure enough we were given three berths!! So a satisfying end to this quick trip.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Dilli 6
I meant to write about this earlier. In fact, quite unlike me, I saw Dilli 6 on the second day of its release seated in the front row at the left. My spine took quite a twist. Thanks to Rahman's music, I happily endured my physical discomfort. Without doubt, he is at his best. If Slumdog M won the Oscars, this movie's soundtrack must be heard by the Americans. The movie opened beautifully but somewhere in the second half things got a bit mixed up with the kala bander and communalism and the moralising. I felt a bit let down but thanks to Sonam and her extended family, the cinematography and the editing, the film worked for me.
Calcutta Walks
Yesterday I took a walk through the bylanes of North Kolkata. I have been meaning to do this for quite sometime now. So when the opprtunity presented itself in the form of Iftekar and his Calcutta Walks, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I took in all the beautiful architecture of the old buildings, in the Sovabazar area, to my heart's content and captured them on film, and I decided to do a piece on Cal Walks for Kindle. Iftekar with his two other buddies are genuinely in love with their work and that really made all the difference. The enthusiasm was palpable and I learnt a lot. I was treated to a fabulous lunch at Anand (best South Indian restaurant in Kolkata, they say) and got to taste sweets at Chittaranjan, one of the best sweet shops of Kolkata. I hope to do the other walks sometime soon.
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