Arzan Khambhatta's microworld

At Arzan Khambhatta's show in the city: Micropolis and Microbilrium

I recall the first scrap sculpture I have seen in my life at Nariman Point. So, yes, I remembered the artist's name very well. So, when Arzan Khambhatta's show was announced, I wanted to wander in there too.. I like to see an artist's work if it throbs for me. Then I try to think of what he may have thought of when he created what he has.  In abstract and modern art work that is quite a puzzle:) But if it clicks for me, and I have a Aha moment, I feel good. I don't know if  my Aha moment coincides with that of the artist's moment of epiphany.  But I like to pause before a work and wonder at the layers beyond the asymmetry, or symmetry within the lack of it.  I like the connection that this gives me with the artist... It sounds too vague to be termed art appreciation... I recall how when the arty reviewers were let loose amongst us feature writers at Sunday Times we used to chuckle into our kerchiefs at how pompous some writers were.. They were only talking to themselves, excluding the rest of us crass humanity. That was something:)  Then these writers were eclipsed when Times decided that art appreciation was not necessary for a money-making paper.. So, now I miss those writers and their use of words like palimpsest, damn!!!

Any case, for me Khambhatta's work was something. His creations scaled down from the monster size they assume, like bejewelled men, shining with chrome, swinging from steel. Microbilirium -- swinging from a finger... flying high, let loose, free. Mmmm, seems like yoga of the mind to me:)
The micropolis had different stories -- sometimes  the man synergizing with the city, sometimes crushed by it, sometimes holding it back, sometimes being burdened by it. The disturbing one of one headless... ruthless control? Heavens, I was trying to guess, but it was great fun, to peek somewhere, into another mind, like unravelling a puzzle.
U can still catch that show at Museum Gallery, at Kala Ghoda, off Jehangir Art Gallery.

On theater, spaces and seating

Free MySpace Animations!

We were at the experimental theater of NCPA to watch Padmashri Leela Samson dance. This is not about the dance, which I would not dare review (One, I  am arts illiterate, plus two, she is the principal of the college where my daughter is learning dance:)..This is a general letting off at how seating is organised in such spaces in Mumbai.
My husband swears he booked the seats after seeing the layout in their website (he booked online).  And chose some good ones, giving front view. Yet, when we entered the auditorium, we were asked to walk up the steps and sit  on the sides... I first thought, wow, I get such a wonderful bird's eye view of the dancer. Alas, and woe betide and the rest of the sad exclamations later, all I can say is that it was very bad place to be sitting. And even if Rs 200 is less than Rs 300 (were all sold out, no doubt to members at a discount), I felt like a pariah who had to twist her frame completely to get a decent view of the profile of the dancer:( It was physically taxing. Thank god I do kickboxing and am used to twisting from the hips and may actually think that sitting awkwardly for more than an hour  is good exercise and will def make my future kicks better:)
 These top side seats run along, and over the auditorium, along its side walls. Some seats, far down and ahead,  must have been even worse... Seeing that the seats to our right were empty, we moved a few seats to better our experience. It still felt the same... :(

I recall once we were at a Shiamak Davar show (the annual thingie where students perform) we were given seats near the speakers(at Shanmukananda Hall, Matunga). I thought my heart would break, since the thud from the speakers  (that too Bollywood remixed for high-energy dances) was something else altogether: hellish and if you know any biology you will that sort of proximity can be extremely dangerous. Can u imagine? Rs 300 for a seat and win a heart attack?!!!

Prithvi theater is getting by with it old fashioned style of having no numbers. This means when there is great play (like Chanakya, Manoj Joshi's, which I thrilled to, despite most of the shudd Hindi going over my head) there is a maha scrunch for space. I have seen stragglers coolly moving the early-comers to squeeze their butts into non-existing seats. Scrunch, scrunch, some hip-twists and everybody in chalta-hai Mumbai is happy. And cash-starved Prithvi Theater is ok with a few extra bucks. Does Sanjana have a ceiling on the number of tickets Prithvi sells? Is this based on any informed study on the size of Indian butts? Maybe some research to also indicate that certain plays attract the starving sorts (smaller butts) and some more popular plays attract the well-fed butts (big butts)? I would dearly like to know. Do journos who write flowery pieces on restaurants in the city ever think of looking at the city from this angle and churning up a story worth reading? Along the way get more flowery quotes from theater lovers. Here would be a sample: " we  love theater and we don't mind the sweaty neighbour. We can even tolerate the deprived Indian male (oh, not many of them come  to watch plays, maybe?) moving his elbow over our love handle and breasts."

And since the seats are not reserved, u don't pee during the interval. Some brazen ones, I have seen, can argue their right to more space or walk over from where they don't want to be sitting, to take over the space of some poor fellow with a weak, incontinent bladder. U can see really brazen behavior and nobody says anything... ushers try gently to tell people from sitting on the wooden steps...
So somehow we manage... in this city where space is such a problem, we are sooo  happy we still have culture, what?

Poha gone wrong: terribly wrong

Ok, this does not qualify as a review. But I bought the ticket and went for the play and sat through it, so I have a right to an opinion, even if it is an unintellectual one.

The whole thing is about Sudama. As a concept my husband and I were excited: it wants to, in the beginning, explore the possibility of whether it would have changed the course of the big battle or of Indian philosophy if instead of Arjuna, it was Sudama who got the Gita's message. But though Sudama is made to sound like a left-out friend who keeps on resenting Arjuna, this idea, as the play unfolds, did not make any sense to me. Meaning, first a man who resents so much cannot understand the Gita. And if, as it is well-accepted that Sudama was intellectually and spiritually fine (he is said to have taught a mantra to Krishna, so you get the point) then he did not need the Gita: it makes more sense to give the message to someone who needs it (like Arjuna) rather than someone who already knows everything about it(like Sudama), so what is the point.

Then this Sudama who apparently is also That Sudama (Krishna's friend) gets rather rude I find. He is constantly calling people moorkh (maybe my spelling is wrong, but it sounds like a rude word) and laughing at people doing B.com (why, they are intellectually and spiritually less?) and in fact, I found that sad sack he kept calling moorkh was a rather chilled out guy who is actually one of the few people who finds some substance in Sudama when the whole world rejects him. So, that sort of loud, lunatic behaviour in the name spiritual advancement I found difficult to swallow. Not on, Makrandji.

The actors were all superb. But the script was lost. Suddenly, the spine of the story crumbles completely, and we find we are asked to believe in people who could be (maybe this Sudama is not, but so many tantric priests and Djinn-driven babas in this country who would love to have their halo certified by such a play) some quacks making  a fast buck. To prop this silly ending, the story crackles with a `believe-it-or-not' superstitious finish (where u can sense the whole cast and Makrand in particular is getting goosebumps because he is so carried away by that idea) that shows the playwright had completely forgotten the original intellectual intention. It is essentially a showcase for Makrand Deshpande and his six-pack. The other actors are all superb. The whole audience stood up to clap, clearly having enjoyed the play. I resisted it. Then since it looks rude, I too stood up. But did not feel like it, really.

Shubha Mudgal and sponsorship and RJ gone berserk

We went to Nehru Center for a powerful performance by Shubha Mudgal. I know I am no music critic, but as a student who struggles with musical notes daily I have some right to talk of enjoying her performance..Rushnai, meaning illumination.. A sufi word?

The RJ Rohini got booed for talking too much, with constant reference to herself and reciting Hindi poems... But RJs who try to become comperes are born with Duck's back I guess (Remember Sajjid Khan who did not like being criticised by Ashutosh for being cheap and demeaning and rationalised even... some people do things for fun, some for a living. ). This Rohini even wound up the show by saying  'I am Rohini' or some such nonsense!! Heavens..

The worst thing I saw was when the sponsors got shawls from the artiste. I have never seen such gross and cheap behavior from any sponsors till now. I wonder which sponsor's bright idea it was. As it is, what with the RJ's motormouth and these sponsors' lackey's wanting to be on the stage with the artiste and talking and strutting before the mike with a shaky, foolish voice (nobody had ANYTHING illumining to say) it was extremely irritating to the audience which got thoroughly restless at such lapse of grace. The sponsors also practically got booed with loud claps. But possibly, they also were born with duck's back (otherwise would they dare to make such social gaffe) and patted themselves on their duck's backs, thinking they were being honored.

Union bank, Reader's Digest were amongst the five sponsors I recall.. Terrible. I can imagine the plight of the artiste reduced to pampering clerical egos (actually these  Johnnies are just signing cheques for their managements. The real aesthete or patron will never do that!!) . Apparently they love music, somebody said. I wonder at that really! If they did, they will never treat an artiste like that...

Watching Malavika Sarukkai, revisiting NCPA

My husband and I were revisiting NCPA's Tata theater after a long, long while. I remember going there for a play with my kid, Othello, a few years back.
It remains unchanged. The chandeliars. The uniformed boys (at the food counters), looking a bit harried at the thought of having to serve  celebs -- possibly because they recognise them.  I love that crowd, having interviewed a few during my journalistic days. It is a closed, tightly guarded celeb I-scratch-your-back-your-scratch-mine sort of set, but I like it because they are so non-pretentious despite that halo they have given each other.... U could dial-a-quote with them and they made my feature-writing that way a cake-walk, though I recall Alyque Padamsee made me wait for an hour for a long column he should have written but only had time to dictate to a rookie and after the garrulous man spoke I had reams (on my recorder) and I had to give it some structure... This was immediately after Sunday Times was launched:)

Any case Dolly Thakore hopped in, while we were nervously waiting at the ticket counter (the laptop from where the tickets were being issued, had first shut down, then was slow and there did not seem to be a system of Q and the fellow was feeling too hassled to remember to be polite:) and told that harried fellow  the seats she wanted for herself.. Sigh.  The 300-rupee seats were all sold out, we managed to get some seats off the aisle in the Rs 200-range, and were thankful that we could see the full beauty of the dancer perfectly from that perch.

The cold coffee is quite a filler. And I munched on a cheese sandwich before the dance drama (Kashi Yatra). What a stupendous performance. The reason I am back to doing these things in the city is because my kid is now training at the classy Kalakshetra and I don't want to be a mom who does not know of Malavika Sarukkai's  style when she discusses it with me. So despite this silly reason for returning to my `culture vulture' days, I was glad I was doing it. The dancer glowed, every movement of her perfect. Her expressions lucid. And for the first time I felt I could follow the story in the dance. Such poesy... One day perhaps my kid too will do that?? And I will be in NCPA, watching her... after a sip of cold coffee to settle my nerves:)

Prithvi Irish coffee, a tradition

I went to Manoj Joshi's superb play Chanakya this Sunday. It was playing in south Mumbai and just when I was bemoaning the fact that things don't seem to move up north, to our forsaken suburbs (though we have recliner seats in cinema near home:)the play was announced in Prithvi. We booked online, such a smooth operation. And after years nearly, we went to Prithvi. Got the tickets also immediately, though I wondered how the delivery will happen. The last time I went, was a few years ago, to attend an experimental play and having foolishly ordered pasta and waiting eternally for it as the Q to enter the theater grew (No seat numbers in Prithvi, so this ancient, out-of-sync with modern times practice).
Any case, we managed to float in eventlessly, and were amused to see funny incidents of Mumbaikarbrazenness -- squeezing one extra person into somebody's lap, trooping in late and squeezing out the rest of early comers; and during loo break try to take over somebody's else seats (if that is possible, since there are no numbers). Sitting on the steps, though the usherers keep pleading to leave it for the actor's passage. And then, of course, the brazenness of letting your mobile ring loudly in this tiny theater, so poor Joshi had to restart the act.  But Mumbaikars are very game and such brazenness  is attempted because they don't mind that squeeze, that elbow, that jostling sense of being in a crowd, even to watch a classy play.

The Cafe: Like I said, the last time, a few years I was there, I had ordered a pasta plate for my ever-hungry, cribbing daughter and was still waiting as the Q grew. So that was an annoying experience.
This time we had a slightly more irritating experience, when the waiter boy (Nandu something, since I was irritated enough to ask his name) took the Rs 500 we gave, took down the order and said he will give change and items to our table... but when another waiter went to enquire, this boy was standing in front the guy at the counter who was saying no such order had been placed and he did not know anything about it (or some such nonsense which happens when we do these silly trusting things that should not be done at such public spots). Any case, my body language was aggressive as I wagged my hand at the boy who I recognised (and my husband, that trusting fellow who never takes receipts and always then sends me out to salvage the situation, did not remember his face)... (If anybody at Prithvi is reading it and wants to contact me, u may email me at sama_yama@yahoo.co.in and next time I come I will point the boy out to you)... Any case, he readily handed over the change, despite having acted as if he knew nothing of the altercation happening.. Irritating...

Any case, the irish coffee at Prithvi is a Mumbai tradition by now! I have always had it.  This time I pigged on a blueberry cheesecake (which just last week I attempted at potpourrie too). The latter is more grainy, and I always vote for that texture. The Prithvi one is smoother.. and quite delicious in its own right. Lovely.

The heavy-duty stuff was not available -- pasta, eggs  and such items because the menu is apparently going through an overhaul. But otherwise, despite the old chairs that have not been changed since I saw them years ago, despite the sense of something patchy and tatty at Prithvi, it still rocks. And is a nice place to hang out with friends, if you get a seat:)

The play was superb. And is running housefull:) Thank god the city has it culture spots still...

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