No Urdu in Dilli, mian?

Garlands when you enter. Betel nuts in the interval. Dinanath's delicious chai and vada. The notes hit your ears even before the curtains rise. When they do, lights on the stage are dim. Colourful bottles hang over the performers, full of little fireflies. Sukhan takes centerstage.

In its easiest translation, Sukhan means words. A three-hour long show lauded with Urdu words honestly sounds scary when you first hear of it. I reached the show with some fever in me and after a long tiring day at work, sleep deprived, completely sure that I was helplessly going to doze off right in the beginning. Of course that's far from what happened.

The show began with a soulful rendition of Piyush Mishra's modern day classic Husna. "Popular Urdu songs?" My mind wondered immediately?
The singer in the spotlight was Jaydeep Vaidya, one third of the amazing band Misree. And sure enough, Devendra Bhome on the harmonium and Ketan Pawar on Table were there too! The trio are rockstars in the budding and I hope to spot them making it big soon. My faith in the show suddenly jumped. If nothing else, the next three hours meant listening to them.

Sukhan is a heartwarming mix of Urdu shayari, stories, ghazals, qawwalis and so much more. In essence, it's a throwback to old timey mushairas. It welcomes you warmly and makes sure you stay. Ghalib, Khusro, Meer, Faiz all trickle in and etch a beautiful book on your mind. Now, to be honest, my knowledge of the language and forms is limited. There are a lot of words I miss or fail to understand. But like we're told quite early on in the show, if you can't grasp the words, focus on the sound. Oh and how captivating is the sound with an adept orchestra and chorus!

The show has been curated and directed by the very talented Om Bhutkar. Om Bhutkar also wrote and directed the play Mi... Ghalib, so it's easy to spot his love for the language and literature. He also recites most of the poetry and this is where things get a little confusing. Bhutkar is loud and over-the-top but its hard to decide if that's a bad thing or just a gist of what the olden mushairas must have looked like. He keep calling out a favoured few in the audience, and this makes you feel alienated but his calls become oddly desirable. He fully plays with the fact that he's popular with the audience. He has a raw charm and that works for a while but it also starts to wear off. It takes time to adapt to his broody, quivering voice. But he invests himself completely in his recitation and that itself is a treat to watch. At various points in the show, he almost seems intoxicated. And the voice reminds you of Naseeruddin Shah, so that's a plus.

While you're unsure of what to feel about Bhutkar, Nachiket Devasthale makes quite an impression in contrast. He is sombre, wistful and yet, thoroughly enjoys what he does. There is no drama in the poems he performs and he enchants one and all with his calm telling.

But the real magic hits you when Avanti Patel starts singing. It's a good hour into the show and she barely has three songs. However, if there's one star in the show, it's the young girl. Every time she sings, even if it's just a single line, your heart beats faster (well, mine did). It's a pity the overall number of songs in the show is less, so even fewer come her way.

Sukhan ends too soon. Even after three hours of sitting in the cramped Dinanath, you're left desperate for more. The final qawwali which had people throwing their hats in the sky (they would've if they were wearing any), is a happy consolation.

I left the auditorium utterly mesmerized. When was the last time I felt like this? Oh right, it was after the overnight Natyasattak in Pune. And guess who had managed that night? Bhairavi and Kushal Khot, the managers on Sukhan. The two of them are fast becoming my idols with their solid work in the arts.

The plays hits a political note early in the first half but then mainly sticks to poems of love. However it is entire show itself that makes a strong political statement. And it takes me back to one of favorite poems, penned by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee:

You can’t write Urdu
On Dilli’s walls, Mian
There’s a saffron lock
On your zuban, Mian

Horsemen of all faith
Plundered Dilli’s rūḥ,
They only blame it on
Your ancestors, Mian

From Bīdel to Ghalib
Run rosaries in Urdu,
They embalm history
With rare attar, Mian

You outlaw a tongue
By policing the wall?
The gardens, the air,
Breathe Urdu, Mian

In the heart of Dilli
Graves speak Urdu,
Even parrots, dusk,
And my jigar, Mian

In a distant city, of a distant land: How a play narrated to me the perils of a neighbouring nation nobody else talks about.

When you say Pondicherry, one thinks mushrooms. And beer and beaches and sunsets. And Auro and colourful doors and French architecture.

So it comes as a lovely surprise when on a weekend to Pondi, you get treated to an evening of theatre.

Indianostrum Theatre in the east coast town is a special kind of theatre. There's Rangoli in the doorway, the seating is makeshift and a cat runs onstage in the middle of the show. Most of neither the performing team nor the audience is local. Nor is the story that they're telling with their current production. And yet, this play that you watch in a foreign town that tells the tale of a foreign land, is one that you take home because the pain becomes your own.

1/3 is a part of a trilogy and ironically, it's the third part. The play tells a woeful story of three siblings in the war-afflicted country of Sri Lanka. Senthuran , Amuthan and Shalu are orphans caught in the perils of the civil unrest. Senthuran has lost his arm in the war. Shalu could either end up an educated woman or lose her chance at life like so many girls her age. Amuthan must join the army, or will fleeing the country be an easier choice?

Most of the play is in Tamil with English subtitles projected below the stage. But it doesn't take long for one to completely abandon the subtitles for the action. There's not a single word that I understand in Tamil and yet, there I was - engrossed, absorbing every line. The set of the play is a delight. On paper it is backgrounds on wheels, something the Marathi stage recognises as a 'firta rangmanch' or 'rotating stage'. But the magic in 1/3 lies in how stage is utilised. Everytime a backdrop breaks down into pieces or comes together to compose a new scene, it adds humongously to the play. In one particle scene as the set of a bus gets dismantled on stage, my hand almost reached out directly hoping to stop it from getting destroyed. 

The ensemble of actors is fierce. While I believe that the space that Indianostrum is has a lot to do with the finesse the process recieves, every actors manages to shine on individually. Strong writing and stagecraft also does wonders to the storytelling.

It's only in the recent years that I have discovered the conditions Sri Lanka has been in. There's a part which narrates a story from the Holocaust is the part that I connected to instantly; we've been reading and watching about the Holocaust for years. But not a lot gets said about the trauma our southern neighbours faced for 27 years. The only references we get from our mainstream media is the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, glamourized villains from LTTE, 'breaking news' about Ravana's dead body and Jacqueline Fernandez. It is thanks to plays like 1/3 and Faezeh Jalali's 07/07/07 (based on an Iranian hanging) that you go home and Google these issues.

 (This play and two others by Indianostrum have been invited by Théâtre du Soleil (Paris) to perform in their theatre. They have been rehearsing intensely since the beginning of Jan and have started a crowdsourcing campaign to help them cover expenses. The campaign ends in 5 days and they aren't very close to the target. Will you be able to help? Please believe me when ai say that they truly deserve this chance. 

http://ket.to/indianostrum
Thanks.)

How a simple little Chitthi can give you three showcases full of awards.

Far far away, in a rural dusty village in Maharashtra, lives an innocent happy woman, quite satisfied with her life. That is, until one day a good looking city woman in a bright sari shows up at her door and leaves a note for her husband. To make it worse, the wife doesn't know how to read.

Off stage, the women are best friends. Lead actress Arpita Ghogardare and director Apurva Bhilare (who always plays the 'other woman') started their journey in theatre 7 years ago in the drama team at Indian Law School, Pune. Arpita launches herself on Apurva's sofa and tells me the house is like her own home. Apurva laughs at Arpita for finishing an entire orange by herself in the course of our interview. Together, the women create magic on stage.
Arpita and Apurva are a part of Chitthi, a play which made it to Thespo 17 and is coming back to Prithvi Theatre after more than a year. Chitthi was created in the final year of their law school and there's been no looking back ever since. It was also the play that helped them realise their dreams of becoming professional theatremakers. The play also went to a lot of competitions across the state, accolades from which crowd the showcases of both these women. They now spearhead their own production company - Theatre Dilse.

In an era where representation is such an important topic of discussion, it is curious to note that there aren't a lot of female directors on the Marathi stage and in the Intercollegiate Theatre Circuit in Mumbai and Pune. Hardly any. But of course, there's Apurva Bhilare.
On the other hand Arpita is the winner of the Pearl Padamsee Award For Outstanding Actress at Thespo. In reference to the award, director and Thespo founder Quasar once mentioned how this special gender based award for acting was necessary in the hopes that strong roles are written for women.
And in the recent years, if anything has lived up to that hope, it is the play Chitthi.

Plus - I forget to mention - it's one the best young plays I've ever seen. So of course I had a lot of questions. Excerpts below.

Let's talk about the play. What was the process like?

Apurva: Oh the process was absolutely the worst we've had. There were far too may issues popping up. The story wasn't working for us, some scenes weren't working. We even gave up a few times.

Arpita: But I strongly believe it was our friendship and the bond our team shared that put the play together. Only we know what the condition was like. It all only worked out because of the mutual understanding we all had.

Go on.

Arpita: Between Purushottam (where the play was first presented) and Thespo, we did about 25 shows and won a lot of prizes. So when we passed out of college, we had some prize money accumulated. We also had a great play on hand and a very fine team. It was this that gave us the confidence to dive into the cultural industry.

So how much has the play changed over the course of these 3 years?

Apurva: The play might be a comedy in it's genre but the humour in it is very light and honest. So much hasn't changed in the play itself but on the contrary we have to approach the play with a clean slate every time. The few times when we anticipated reaction and tried to 'crack' punchlines, it did not work. We also have to stay extremely fresh for every show.

And how does one do that?

Apurva: We never really practiced for the play. Instead we kept improvising new stories with the same characters and settings. Sometimes we just meet and play games.

Arpita: We're also the kind of people who feel quite ashamed after a bad show. I remember the first bad show we did was followed by a big tour of three cities and three competitions. And Chitthi won in all of them. It was utter madness. The sleeping hours were messed up, sets were constantly being loaded and unloaded but we gave three amazing shows.
And Bhilare isn't the kind of director who shouts. In fact, she tells us that her work as a director is now over. Whatever else that we have to discover, will have to happen on our own. And that helps a lot.

How was the play conceived?

Apurva: This story by Vyankatesh Madgulkar is something we found in 2013. It's actually pretty different from how the play eventually turned out. But we kept the story aside for then and went ahead with an original play. It was only the year after that when we didn't have a new idea that we came back to Chitthi.

Arpita: Actually even the year after that, we were going to do an original piece. Bhilare had written it; it was a heavy and serious two-actress script. But that didn't work out and it only by method of elimination that we arrived at Chitthi.

Apurva: I remember when the story was mentioned again, Arpita even made a face that said 'are you serious?'. But everybody else seemed convinced with it. We changed a lot though. We added a lot to the tale.

Tell us more about what kind of director Apurva is.

Arpita: She's somebody who's always prepared and has her homework in place. It's one of the main reasons I love working with her. If she knows something is going to be difficult for the actors to perform, she'll come to the rehearsals with exercises and ideas in her kitty. She'll have a scheduled plan. I don't think she's that disciplined in real life.

And what is it like directing Arpita?

Apurva: Oh, it is such a pleasure directing her. She makes it all very easy for me.

Arpita: Obviously ga! (Laughs)

Apurva: No but seriously. She studies well for a character. Chitthi as a play wouldn't happen without her. In fact our first show, which was a success and helped us understand our own play better, raged because of her. Her, Bablu (Dnyanratna, their fellow actor), all of these people. It's the actor's talent, the spontaneity, the discipline. She doesn't need to be told.

Arpita: In general, that's how all is function. We don't go around 'telling' each other much. Two hours before the play, we're all very quite.

The character of an illiterate middle-aged woman in a village can be difficult for a young citybred girl to identify it. How did you go about that?

Apurva: An uneducated woman can't even recognize that the symbol in front of her is a letter at times. Reading comes naturally to us now, how does one understand what that woman feels like? Arpita used to sit with newspapers from the southern states.

Arpita: I would try to figure what feelings those incomprehensible curly alphabets evoked.

What about the dialect?

Apurva: We had a lot of dialects in the team itself.

Arpita: A hundred different dialects! Our ways of speaking chance every few miles in our land. But that one accent is how we would all speak for hour and hours in the rehearsals. Even at home, I started speaking a pitch above normal. Rural people have a certain throw, and only practice can help you with these details.

Apurva: Our entire team would show up in costume, any rural costume they'd find. Our lights guy would parade around as a butcher during practice. Soon the cast and crew had figured out back stories for everyone. And we'd all speak in the rural tone.

Arpita: In the first show, there were so many lines I took differently. And there's no way that could happen naturally if I didn't train myself to think in the same language.

At the Director's Adda at Thespo 18, director Nadir Khan made an observation on how the music in Marathi plays often underline the very emotion that the director wants the audience to experience. Do you think that happens?

Apurva: Very frankly, I don't understand much about music. It's only now that I'm learning music. But when Chitthi was made, I had no clue. But our music director was amazing. We all even sat down and composed a song on our own.

Arpita: If I may, we tried to keep it all realistic. So in a scene if you hear music, we have tried to make sure it has plausible sources, like a radio in the house.

Apurva: We hate the idea of playing a sad track to accompany a melancholic monologue. I trust my actors enough to convey what the character feels.

The play is also visually beautiful. Was there a colour pallette in mind?

Apurva: The idea was to keep it realistic, so most things stayed dulls and sober. If there was any brightness in terms of colour, it was with the 'Madam' who writes the Chitthi and sows the seed of suspicion in the protagonist's mind. So you quickly associate any sort of brightness with Madam.

Arpita: We wondered if it was logical to have the paper the note in written on to be bright in colour. But then we took the risk. So every time we had to buy paper, cut it properly, bind it together into a notepad. And then in every rehearsals, Madam would keep tearing them off.

Apurva: The only time we went off our naturalistic form was one of the monologues where the woman sits by herself on a hill (one of the best scenes in the play and a smashing visual). But we decided to enhance the ambience that way and it worked.

College plays that happen in Pune often engage in making plays set in Rural Maharashtra. A lot of the Indian Law School plays (including Chitthi) are in the same genre. What is it do you think that attracts young theatremakers in Pune to this milieu?

Apurva: For us, a lot of our fellow college mates come from villages. So modern, urban topics don't suit our human resource. Besides, because we all come up with the ideas together, there's a lot of rural stories that pop up. We stuck to realistic theatre in college where the conflict comes from the characters and the simplicity.
On a larger level, this isn't the only trend. A lot of the engineering colleges make very urbane plays. They are also technologically more advanced.

So what's next for Theatre Dilse?
A&A: We've just started to figure out what producing a play takes. There's a lot of young theatre groups here in Pune. We hope to collaborate with them in the future too. Thespo will always be an aim, as long as we're eligible. We want to make enough productions and enough profits to keep creating good work.

For the Feb 08, 2017 shows at Prithvi, buy tickets here. And say Hi. I'll be the guy laughing and cheering the loudest in the auditorium. See you!

500 Theatre Lovers Gathered For a Sleepover in Pune and It Was Awesome.

It's 5am in the morning. 500 people have been sitting in an auditorium for the last 8 hours and have witnessed three mind blowing plays. They refuse to budge. Instead they sit there for 3 more hours to watch another couple of plays, all of them written by under-30 year olds.

The city of Pune witnessed a historic occasion on Jan 25th, 2017. It hosted the very first Natyasattak Rajani, an overnight event of 5 terrific plays showcasing some of it's finest young talents. When the audience walked in at 9 o'clock in the night, there was an unmatchable energetic buzz. When they walked out at around 8 o'clock the next morning, they were overwhelmed, exhausted but exhilarated. It was a magical night and personally, I wouldn't hesitate to call it the best experience I've ever had in the theatre.

Here's a brief about the five plays that were curated:

White Rabbit Red Rabbit
An actor gets the script written by an Iranian playwright (Nassim Soleimanpour) directly on stage. With zero clue about what is in store, he performs the play. A new actor performs every show.

In this show, ace actor Girish Kulkarni stepped onto stage amidst thunderous applause. The applause refused to die out right till the end of the show. In the middle when he paused to ask the audience, "are you with me?", the resounding yes was almost reminiscent of a cheesy Rishi Kapoor song.

Binkamache Sanwad
An abstract and layered play, Binkamache Sanwad is a dark, hilarious and hard-hitting commentary on the social situation in the country. With a very strong ensemble, the play manages to make a powerful impact.

I had seen this play two years ago; it is scary how increasingly relatable it has gotten over time. What is also incredible is how much every line in the play has to offer even in the lightest moments. And the non-Marathi friend I was watching it with, not only understood the whole thing despite the language but was also as affected as I was.

Bhanvar
A night watchman stands guard to a shut factory. It is his last night of duty, or so he believes. It's also the longest night of his life. Thankfully, his adorable antic keep both, himself and the audience entertained.

It won almost every award at Thespo. That's all I'm gonna say.

Anathema
Three roommates encounter an unwarranted guest - is it a ghoul, is it a poltergeist, and does it want them dead?

This was one of the plays I had actually travelled to Pune for, and it was so worth it. The play manages to evoke equal amounts of gasps and giggles from the viewer; if you're not shrieking with joy, you're probably shreiking in terror.

Ullagaddi
A middle-aged Maharashtrian man finds himself stuck on a tree during a storm and with him, a little Kannada girl. A one-act play that took competitions by storm a few years ago, Ullagaddi potrays a poignant tale of love and loss.

I'd been hearing about this play ever since I joined college and was super-amazed to find that it lived up to every compliment it has ever received.

Maharashtrian Theatre is one of the fittest arts that has no intention of dying out. Ranging from the far East end of the state (Nagpur) to Bombay, college theatre continues to make its mark every year. So colleges from Ahmednagar come down to Pune for the Purushottam Karandak and students from small villages in the Konkan belt take home trophies from the Mumbai University Youth Festival.
But Pune is a city that stands tall above all.
As opposed to Bombay (where young theatre is often either abandoned or merely used as a stepping stone considering its proximity to the film industry), Pune really cherishes and nurtures it's talent.

all photos borrowed from Facebook

Natyasattak was one of the best examples of this. And by the end of the opening night (literally), it wasn't just a showcase. The Natyasattak was an expression of the pride the city has for its up-and-coming gems, replete in both the presenters and the audiences.

Organised by Wide Wings Media, the night shone on because of the many gifted participants.
Actress Pournima Manohar opened the night with an inherent sweetness and a warm demeanour that quickly put us, the restless spectators in comfort. Bhairavi Khot of Wide Wings was the resident emcee for the rest of the night and did an excellent job of keeping up the spirits of the auditorium with her zest and energy. Girish Kulkarni made the audience swoon  in the opening act.

all photos borrowed from facebook

My person favorite, Siddhesh Purkar hit a home run twice - first as the translator and presenter of White Rabbit Red Rabbit and then as a part of the able cast of Binkamache Sanwad. Suraj Parasnis, another Natak Company alumni produced Bhanvar and acted, co-directed Anathema as a part of his Theatre On Entertainment.
Jaydeep Vaidya, Devendra Bhome and Ketan Pawar of the band Misree won every heart in the hall with soulful renditions of Hindi classics.
Abhay Mahajan's tired Bhosanka, Omkar Govardhan's infectiously vibrant Aabeka and Laxmi Birajdar's pornstar Loly Loly in Binkamache.. deserve special mention, as does Chaitali Bakshi as the little Kannada girl in Ullagaddi.

But the night ultimately belonged to the golden boys - Shivraj Waichal and Virajas Kulkarni.
Shivraj Waichal single-handedly kept the audience hooked in Bhanvar, which he has co-written and co-directed with Kulkarni. It's not easy to not lose the audience's interest when you are performing a solo play at 2am in the morning. But it was no work at all for the unbelievably accomplished Waichal. And if that wasn't enough, he returned as the writer, director and lead actor of the heart wrenching Ullagaddi. So when he walked on stage drenched at the end of the night, one couldn't help but stand-up in applause.
Virajas Kulkarni who was a surprise package as the many voiceovers in Bhanvar and also walked away with the Thespo for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role for the same (without stepping on stage even once, I must add) is the other star we must look out for. With Bhanvar, he also wrote and co-directed Anathema. The script is witty, interesting and profoundly simple. It's the light moments in the writing that bring out the best in what is generically a horror story. Kulkarni's acting role in the Anathema only adds to his long list of achievements in the night. Not to mention, a lot of swagger (borderline rude at times, but well) as he came in to make announcements before the shows.

Natyasattak intends to host overnight every year on January 25. With the kind of amazing response their first year had, I can only hope that this initiative lasts for decades. Because as long ideas, artists and showgoers exist, we can all be sure that the city will continue to breed superstars and keep building it's cultural legacy onwards and upwards.
Hats off!

(The festival continues till the end of January. Check out their schedule here.)

Story Of Mujer

   I'm not very big on watching stuff at Prithvi House. Prithvi House is a black box theatre opposite the main Prithvi Theatre and is a convertible, almost bare space. There's no proper seating, which is a big turn-off for me because I enjoy sitting comfortably when watching anything. Besides, if I'm not completely glued to the performance, I get very restless which is problem when the audience is cramped and seated on the floor.

So of the 15 or so Fringe Performances that happened in my 3 years at Thespo, I saw none..And then, the ones I saw this year virtually took my breath away. 

    

   The first one was called Chenda. The one-man-show was scheduled on a day that another one-man-show (Bhanwar) would wow the audience off. And there couldn't have been a better precedent than Chenda. It told the story of a drunkard street performer, who believes his cow's soul now resides in his musical instrument. Chenda is an instrument made from the skin of a cow's belly. The following guilt, internal conflict and the hilarious struggle were aptly brought to life by a very able Abhinav Grover, who wrote, directed and performed the piece. 

  The Fringe Performances for the next day went a step further. The description given for Mujer was something like this - Six Actresses and One Stage Manager who know nothing about puppetry come together for a puppetry workshop that culminates in a play.

Interesting.

But what happened once the performance started, no words can do justice to. The play essentially speaks what it means to be a misfit, and a woman, in the society. It combined as many Indian languages as possible and the performers extracted stories from their own lives, making the play even more real. Every girl spoke with an odd sort of honesty, that either made you be her or empathize with her.

Poetic, rhythmic and yeI'm on very big on watching stuff at Prithvi House. Prithvi House is a black box theatre opposite the main Prithvi Theatre and is a convertible, almost bare space. There's no proper seating, which is a big turn-off for me because I enjoy sitting comfortably when watching anything. Besides, if I'm not completely glued to the performance, I get very restless which is problem when the audience is cramped and seated on the floor.

So of the 1t somehow a vers libre, Mujer stayed with me for a long time. But I shall come to that later.

I was very curious about how the play took shape. Unfortunately, I had no information on that. Who I did have access to, was one of the six girls, and Theatre Potato's official illustrator - Mati Rajput. Here's her account of the workshop.:

I sat there numb, contemplating whether or not to smile when I heard a whisper, 

"It's going to be all right."

       All right! That's pretty much what my days felt like with her around - all right . I took extra care to reach on time to meet her. You know what it's like living in Bombay! You just tend to get late. But do you know what it's like to be a woman in Bombay?

It was quite tricky, spending 14 days trying to answer this question - 3 crucial hours for two whole weeks working with a director who had no clue about our life styles. (Facilitator Trina Haldar flew in from the UK) What she had brought along with her was a huge roll of paper, a few sketch pens and a Puppet specially commissioned for us. I, along with five other performers and a stage manager tried to put in our keen minds, ears and souls to everything Trina had in store for us. None of us had worked with a puppet before but we were all fascinated by the way she functions. She's made out of recycled paper and GAF tape. The only description Trina had given the designer was that she should fit into all age groups and should look like feminine. 

     The workshop/ Fringe performance was called 'Mujer'. If you haven't already guessed what it means, it means Women in Spanish and it is pronounced as 'Muher'. So all of us decided to name our puppet friend just that. Mujer would often come to life the minute we started to operate her. Having said that, operating her was not a cakewalk. Our puppeteers - Tanvi Sonigra, Urmila and Tanvi Pandit spent quality time going back to simplest ways of living; focusing more on Mujer and her daily routine, etc. Soon, Mujer had become an inspiration for us. In our eyes she was a super hero, an everyday human being who portrayed the lives of our role models. She would fly, swim, dance, breathe. Name it and she would do it! 

‌      Mujer wasn't the only puppet we worked with while building the piece though. Trina taught us how anything can come to life if you let it. We worked with cushions that later became a major prop in our performance. We had minimum props to work with. 4 wooden boxes, 4 print outs of our favorite book covers and 6 cushions. Also, while devising the performance, we had no script in hand. So we asked each other various questions. The fact that we could say anything through this piece made us more diligent about what did we actually want to put across. Not patronizing, not being sexist or for that matter any other -ist. Our only aim was to narrate a beautiful piece about Women. The piece went from one woman to another and Mujer was the thread between us all. We put together various stories of what it has taken for us to 'exist' in minutest ways possible.  

‌    Mujer has been one of the most memorable and greatest experience of my life. It has also turned me into a creep that eavesdrops on other people's conversations while commuting. All thanks to Trina! She would teach us various exercises, acquaint us with her experiences and would ask us to make crucial decisions. I can proudly say that confused individuals like us are very much capable of at least making decisions today. Good, bad, ugly, doesn't matter. Apart from that, Mujer has helped me discover various things about myself and grow into a much more independent human being. And I'm glad that the brilliant minds I've worked with are progressive and put a genuine effort into putting up a show like Mujer. 

‌      I'm grateful to Thespo and Meghana Telang for giving us the opportunity of this international collaboration. It is a very genuine effort by Thespo to make the youth of our country familiar to theatre around the world and everyone who has been a part of these international collaborations has only been happy and learnt something new and different. 

‌    What we have discovered through Mujer is that We're all works in progress and we're just as strange as you! Now go follow Mashi theatre and check out Trina Haldar's amazing work on social media. 

Over to you Kalpak. 

- Mato 

(Theatre Potato)

 For a good week after Mujer was performed, people were still talking about the piece and particularly the puppet. There's a part in the play when Mujer goes to four of the girl, puts her hand on their heads and gently caresses them. I can only reckon that; that is the most comforting thing in the world. Special shout out to the puppeteers for that one.

And then about 15 days post the festival, we met Thespo loyalist Kashin Shetty at Prithvi. He had just finished performing his own play and was taking in the shower of compliments, but the first thing he did when he saw Mati was congratulate her for Mujer. I suppose that says it all.

As for my love/hate for Prithvi House, maybe I can convince Thespo to put on the Fringe Department next year?

The Invisible Mediator

(Prachi Bhagwat is a History student, currently studying Gender Development in Pune. She's just as big a fan of Natak Company as I am and I sometimes suspect that's the biggest reason she moved to Pune. She was also one of the Festival Directors for Thespo 17 and is a regular at Prithvi. A very aggressive debater, sometimes slightly annoying, she's also a very good friend.)

A new, unusual play by the name of White Rabbit, Red Rabbit has generated interest and curiosity in the widely popular Marathi theatre circuit in Pune. The play happens to be written by Nassim Soleimanpour, a playwright of Iranian origin and its translator is a 22-year-old who could be mistaken for a regular college going boy in the city of Pune. Siddhesh Purkar in a short span of time has made his mark as a promising young playwright with plays like Patient in 2009, Kabadi Uncut in 2013 and his latest offering ‘Item’ among numerous other projects. An offer by QTP- a Mumbai-based theatre production company who are the co-producers of the play in its Pune run along with Natak Company and Aurora Nova, saw him take on the role of a translator. What many might assume to be a daunting task for a 22-year-old, Siddhesh saw the offer as a wonderful opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. For him, translating the play was indeed a great opportunity but not as much as an exciting challenge. Of course, the excitement stemmed from getting a chance to assume a new role but also owing to the unique nature of the play- if you could buttonhole it by calling it that. 

White Rabbit Red Rabbit tells a story about social conditioning and obedience, challenging and breaking norms about what a conventional show in the theatre should be like while commenting on societal norms through the show making for a genius of a juxtaposition. The surprises don’t stop just there. The actor must know nothing about the show, should not have read the script beforehand and must be given the script on stage for the very first time. Apart from a few instructions by the writer, a day prior to the performance, the actor knows close to nothing about what to expect on ‘show day’. This makes it but obvious that the show can  be performed by a particular actor just once.  Moreover, the design of the play  also challenges the audience about what an evening at the theatre should be and feel like. 


When , Kalpak- who runs this blog, asked me to go speak with Siddhesh about what the process of translation had been like, both Kalpak and I exchanged exhaustive Whatsapp voice notes about what the complexities and subjectivities of translating a play could be. We spoke of cultural references, audience-specific concerns and much else that made us feel intelligent and as we would later realise, did little to help. I went armed with my list of seemingly intelligent questions only to realise how simply and joyfully Siddhesh had taken this on. The version that is being performed to nearly packed theatres was ready in the very first draft. A narration to the producers of the show, which read to them like a fourth or fifth draft, was approved and was good to go with a few changes. 

Sai Tamhankar

There did, of course, exist challenges and things to keep in mind while engaging with the text and translating it. The play employs a generous usage of symbolism and it was important to enter the mind of Nassim Soleimanpour, as it were, to be able to begin the process of translating the text. Once Siddhesh was sure he knew what Nassim was talking about, the translation took just about a week to be completed and was duly presented.

 Another concern was that of language. A number of translations are often produced of a single play but the play is most probably remembered in countries that don't speak the language of the playwright by just one version of the many extant translations. The other forgettable versions are often clinically approached, translating word for word without much thought about differences in cultural references and formality or informality of language among other concerns. A corollary to this concern was that of the expectations of Pune’s theatre going audiences and how the radical design of the play could be made palatable for those audiences who were used to what Siddhesh believes is the run-of-the-mill Marathi play. Audiences in most places prefer to recede into the shadows and assume the role of passive spectators to the action on stage. Because this was not to happen in White Rabbit Red Rabbit, the language of the show had to be crafted so as to break the ice in the first few minutes and acclimatise the rather stiff audience members for what was to ensue. The fact that the show was to be performed in classic proscenium styled venues in the city made things tougher.However, that some audiences come out of the theatre confused about what they just experienced is not a cause for worry for Siddhesh. That most of these confused audience members wait back to speak with Siddhesh and ask questions about the play and its message is proof enough that the play has struck a chord with the audiences in the city. That is enough to satisfy the young writer.  

Atul Pethe after WRRR

One would imagine that the translator must undoubtedly have exchanged numerous notes with Nassim, the writer of the play on tackling issues during translation and other concerns that Nassim might have. I, at least, did. Surprisingly there seems to be no significant  record of correspondence between the two. The process of translation comes across as one with no interference allowing him complete freedom to tell the story in Marathi while also enjoying the process. Having completed his work on White Rabbit Red rabbit, his mind, evidently, is on his forthcoming projects of which he talks animatedly. His new play 'Item' is a commentary about women in the show-business and the agency they possess over their bodies and sexuality. That 'White Rabbit Red Rabbit' is described by The Guardian to be a universal hit and the fact that it has been performed by the likes of Wayne Brady, Josh Radnor and acclaimed actors in Marathi theatre and films like Atul Pethe, Mukta Barve and Sai Tamhankar, seems not to be the foremost thought on Siddhesh’s mind. He seems almost unaware of his genius. The playwright Christopher Hampton once said that the best translators remain as invisible as possible. Siddhesh remains comfortably invisible.  





(Book tickets for the next show of Item here: https://ticketees.com/dramas/item/
and for White Rabbit Red Rabbit performed by Jitendra Joshi: https://ticketees.com/dramas/white-rabbit-red-rabbit/)

Inner Sanctums

K-25, Hauz Khas

I sit in front of a modern building,
With modern balconies and modern bricks,
Far removed from the alphasexual hub that Hauz Khas is.
A building with no particular significance,
So much so that as I perch myself on the footpath in front of K-25,
All watchmen from the building there look at me in wonder,
With heavy bouts of judgement.

"They don't know" I say to myself.
I wish I could go ask them if they know,
But instead I set the cancer stick between my fingers on fire,
And resort to the only form of escapism I know - poetry.

"Ek budhiya chaand pe baithi",
Gulzar starts speaking,
And soon enough he's convinced me to dissolve all sounds around me and listen to the rhythm of her charkha.

Now here's the thing about poetry,
It's just a step away from schizophrenia,
For your mind will make you believe in things, that even your mind knows don't really exist.

Now here's the thing about love,
It's just a step away from schizophrenia,
For your mind will make you believe in things, that even your mind knows don't really exist.

But as I sit in front of the modern building,
With modern balconies and modern bricks,
I'd rather embrace the mental disorder that is both love and verse,
For where it stands, once stood
The moon the budhiya sat on.

K-25, Hauz Khas
Is where Amrita Pritam lived.

I see an Imroz stand there,
Present for the demolition of the old house,
And the demolition of a billion mixed feelings, of extreme pain and extreme peace,
Feelings that I project on him, really.

I see an Imroz stand there and try to see what he could have,
An Amrita ascending the modest throne of the backseat of his scooter,
Him almost anticipating the touch of her fingers on her spine, carving out his own 'manchaahi' death;
An Amrita getting in and out of a car for her visits to the doctors,
An Amrita in a window to a house always open to all Punjabi poems,
An Amrita that left the house her last time, to never return
And yet somehow do,
In her logically impossible and yet completely truthful promise
Of 'Main tainu phir milangi'

"Ye kiss sadi ke log hai, shabbo"
I ask the friend who sits next to me,
And we proceed to use her 2G and look at a YouTube video of Rani Mukherjee,
Mouthing her questions about Veer and Zaara,
That very well could be about the spirits in this place.
The spirits that were once flesh and blood,
The embodiment of breaking every belief we have about love,
That relationships need to be named,
That love needs to be reciprocated for fulfilment,
That a man and woman can't have a relationship if it isn't named,
That marriages are the only happy endings,
That Imtiaz Ali potrays 'crazy' more often than 'in love',
That love can only happen once,
That you're a particular age and then you're another age and you can only be of one age once,
That men and women feel differently,
That men and women behave separately,
That men and women love in varied ways.

A phone rings, we have to go.
"You can leave your cigarette halfway", my friend tells me. "It would be the perfect tribute."
The sticks nearing it's end,
But the sacrifice is too easy,
The perfect tribute would be a poem,
But ink no longer falls from a pen the speed of ash from a cigarette,
But I stub it none the less.

We get up, then I sit on my knees,
And touch the ground that has nothing in common with the house that lived here, but still manages to exist in the same spectrum called space,
And promise to better the poet I am, who have nothing in common with the fairy who lived here, but still manages to exist in the same spectrum called words, and on an after thought, a birthdate.

The watchmen continue to look at me like crazy,
But the extremes of warmth and cold I feel, the goosebumps on my upper arm,
And the half-burnt cigarette on the footpath there,
Promise not to judge.

The House in Gali Qasim Jan, Old Delhi
AKA Involuntary

My existence is involuntary,
Much like yours,
O friend, father and spirit.
But while mine amounts to knot,
Your lack of choice,
Ornamented by your merit.

I'm a misfit in your lane,
I carry neither stature, nor culture
In a Galli that boasts of rich Islamic heritage,
My T-shirt and shorts are a clownish couture.

I pass by your house,
So hard to find, so easy to miss,
Almost like Delhi's pollution levels
Have dissolved the soul you breathed out,
As your lips touched the Dementor's kiss.

The house is mildly lit,
My excitement is little and lacks any expectations,
I first tread carelessly into a hallway,
I know you aren't home,
I feel some form of guilt,
As I step into your space,
Without your permission.

I've picked quite some from what you left,
O friend, father and spirit
But as I read your words, now on your walls,
I wonder what I inherit

I'm half bent to read the translation,
And there's a little water on my cheeks
Into the house's vacuum, I start muttering the Urdu under my breath
And try to reverberate what the noiseless ambience does speak.

It's then that my head spins right,
Involuntary but almost by fate,
I see your face, you smile at me,
I need to freeze, I need to run,
But the absence of instinct beats faster than my heart rate.

It's not you, just a statue of sorts
Put behind a wall of glass,
Stiff under a poem,
I forgot you never left, Ghalib
I forgot, you were always home.

The tears keep coming down,
I neither sob nor weep,
The silence like it's meant to be,
The silence your heart synced with here, Ghalib
For now is mine to keep.

Scenes from Om Bhutkar's play start whirring,
Lines from Gulzar's book,
There's so much I knew about you already,
And yet for me to finally see you, Ghalib
A beat was all it took.

I keep whispering your lines,
I know neither I nor the translations do you any justice,
Almost like Delhi's pollution levels
Have dissolved the soul you breathed out, Ghalib
As your lips touched the Dementor's kiss.

I now take off my footwear,
And tread on every inch,
Shaken by the realisation of where I am,
My half grown beard is full of salt water now,
I'm neither thrilled, nor calm.

I see bust of you gifted by Gulzar,
And can't help but notice a striking resemblance,
Between your nose and that of my own fathers,
A nose I've always worried I'll receive in inheritance.

Books you sometimes touched,
Clothes that touched you once,
Walls you rested your head against,
Pillars that attempt to take weight of your chest.

My existence is involuntary,
And so is much of your verse
I never knew you and you never knew me and I never heard you talk,
And maybe if I did, I would be too shy and stupid too, and judge me you would;
Either is a curse.

My existence is entitled, Ghalib
Much like your royal birth,
I neither love or drink as fiercely,
Neither have I lost as much.
Then why, Ghalib does your poetry speak to me so,
When this privileged is my sorrow?
Why does your pain feel mine?
Why do I consume your whine?
Why does the dismay feel so real,
And the lack of comfort, a similar ordeal?
Why does my peace feel manipulated,
By a force that you would know,
Then why, Ghalib does your your poetry speak to me so,
When this privileged is my sorrow?

A group of three enters the room,
The sanctity is gone,
I must now leave,
Be the misfit again,
For while now you and I were one,
And while we'll never know each other,
O friend, father and spirit,
Thank you for letting me exist here,
Thank you for letting in your home.