Rehearsals!!! Minstrels and Maaaagic!

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Minstrels and Magic

The Alliance Francaise of Madras presents,


Minstrels and Magic, evening of Indian folklore. Songs from the Bhakthi movement set to music and performed by Vedanth Bharadwaj. The concert also features leading musicians in Chennai like Anil Srinivasan, Andrea Jeremiah and Neil Mukherjee.

Venue: Auditorium, Alliance Francaise
Date: 21 July. Time: 6:30 Admission: Free

These songs are by poets like Mirabai, Kabir, Gurunanak amongst others dating from the 13th to 17th century of the Bhakthi movement. The music with a base of hindustani classical music is overlayed with contemporary elements like, African rythms and country style guitaring.

Hey all!

So I'm back in Chennai and am fully in action with my latest pet project. A music concert! Yes!!! To those of you who are well acquainted with me, you know its normal that I break into a song and dance around every now and then. But you also know that when I "sing" its more like recitation. So I'm sure you've had your doubts, well, its true! I am musically challenged.

Its not uncommon for me to get complexed and blocked while discussing music. Its rather hard for me to admit it but yes, I am ashamed to be this way. Therefore after my initial efforts at remedying my handicap I've made progress ( how ever insufficient ).

Although it's a friend's concert, I didn't know him as a musician first so it still surprises me that its him the musician. Hence I'm not all that biased.

I'm really proud to organize this music concert. THIS music touched even someone as indifferent as me. I can't make in depth analysis or intelligent comments. I can't even sing a single refrain from my favourite song of the Album. But I know I've loved this music, that its made me feel better, that its extraordinary although I can't articulate how.... It made some gloomy times in Romorantin (the village I was exiled to) a lot more tolerable!!!!

So I'm really happy sharing this music with everyone! ( "yaam petra inbam peruga ivvayagam" )

Mourning

I miss my father. I wish he were alive. There! I've finally said it and am not ashamed at all. Each one of us deals with loss and separation in our own way. I didn't wear black or white and sit in a corner and cry for a week or a month. I went and acted, did 2 days - 4 shows of my play " Crave", then I went to college. I went to French class, I worked on a French theatre workshop, completed my photography assignment and then did the exam.....

Its been two years but it does not mean that the loss is reconciled with. Sometimes it feels like it is just beginning , that I am just realizing what has happened. There is no period for mourning. How can you restrict something like this to a time frame?

And mourning is also complicated! When I first landed in France, I found myself thinking that I will maybe find my father here! As if he had simply moved from one continent to another! It must have been the complete change of landscape, jet lad, and just change.... And once I wondered if I will find him on the internet!!!! Maybe death has fared better at teaching him about the internet than I had???? Well no, but google did find me a letter he had written to a newspaper....

I've said it before and I will say it again. No one and nothing is that central to your existence, nothing will take your breath of life away. You will live through everything, of course.... but this does not stop you from yearning, wishing, craving for someone's love, affection and just mere presence.

Yes its complex! I don't just miss his love and affection.... I miss fighting with him! I missed him at my graduation... I wish he could argue with me now about the congress rule, about how late I come home.... I wish we he could be there to disapprove of the boy I go out with!!! I wish he could tell me to be careful in France knowing very well that I know how to manage... I wish he could give me lame advice even though he knows I know exactly what to do...

Nothing is central but you only ever get one father...........

Shruti's questionnaire!!!! yay!!!

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it.

I have a tiny oval shaped below the eyebrow next to my right eye. I slipped and fell in the bathroom the first time I tried to bathe by myself when I was about 4 or 5... And I am pretty sure I was dancing to " Theeradha vilayattu pillai" or some such thing during my first attempt to bathe alone... Obviously I needed my nanny and I don't mind having one now either... Doing laundry SUCKS!
2. What is on the walls in your room?

A bedsheet is pinned across one of the walls so that the room doesn't look completely like a mental asylum cell... A dancing ganesh sticker gifted by Rémy (I myself didn't bring any remembrance of even a single God from our Pantheon) Photos from back home and a bunch of super photos shot with a brilliant slr, full aperture, featuring ME ( feeds my narcissism ) A calendar to score out the days as I wait to get out of this village, A metro map of Paris framed against an orange pillow cover!!! Drawings my school children made for me... A metro ticket from my first day in Paris...

3. What does your phone look like?

Errr its a sony ericson walkman phone...

4. What music do you listen to?
Can't go naming genres... musically challenged... Jaques Brell and his witty snazy songs I dig!

5. What is your current desktop picture?

A scene from one of my plays "The curse of Urvashi" I am princess Uthara and am confronting/accusing Arjuna who is walking away from our "relationship"

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
To get out of Romorantin, live in Paris before I come back home... I really really really REALLY want this...

7. Do you believe in gay marriage?
Hey yes!!!! Its just love, man!

8. What time were you born?
A little past 7 in the morning :D

9. Are your parents still together?

My dad is dead so....

10. What are you listening to?
An empty silent corridor.... Otherwise I was listening to Jaques Brell, Elvis Presely, Budha Bar and Maati kahé!!! haha!!!

11. Do you get scared of the dark?
Not really maybe I am concerned about tripping over something and breaking my face but thats all...

12. The last person to make you cry?

Hmmm Me I guess... did badly in an exam but was glad to cry after some bloody 4 months!! yay!!!

13. What is your favourite perfume/cologne?

Aiyo I like bath and body works chick peas scented body spray!!!! hahha

14. What kind of hair/eye colour do you like on the opposite sex?

Any!

15. Do you like pain-killers?

No!!! But chocolate yessssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!! :D Kinder bueno!!!!!

16. Are you too shy to ask someone out?

hmmm Not shy per say but the one time I asked someone out it was not really fun so maybe now yes....

17. Fave pizza topping?
Mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes!!!!

18. If you could eat anything right now, what would it

Sambhar sadam and maanga thokku

19. Who was the last person you made mad?

My friend Niranjani.... I sent her too many of my bollywood numbers in TEXT medium ...scraps on Orkut actually

20. Is anyone in love with you?

Can I be shy now????? :D

Refining the art of doing nothing!!!

Do you work long hours? Do you have so much to do that you never find the time to do it all? Are you convinced you are doing too many things at the same time? If you are telling yourself you need a break and you wish that you could just do nothing, well, be CAREFUL what you wish for because it might just come true.
Contrary to popular opinion, doing nothing, is NOT an easy job. It takes a lot of effort and time and risks being painstaking. Its an art. All you are allowed to do is nothing. Even the occasional activities to get away from nothingness become less alluring. Its a state of existence that leaves you alone with yourself, your thoughts and your deepest darkest desires. So it is full of surprises too ( provided you are slightly more interesting than the average television show). It is the perfect platform to start with obsessive compulsive disorders, impulsive tendencies and really bad eating habits. Coupled with sleeping too much or too little, you are all set for becoming the curiously wise character on the sit com of your choice. Try spending a Sunday without ever stepping out of the house or talking to anyone with not more than 2 sentences, no texting or telephoning either and to still be humane, you of course have internet and can rejoice in reading random blogs!!!
Its bizarre how even your favorite author cannot make you read, how easy it is to think that staring at the ceiling, stretched out on your back can some how kill time faster!!!
To resist this dark side teeming with regression something that an easily amused friend of mine said....look at the sun, the moon and the stars and tell yourselves that your friends are looking at the same thing....
Statutory warning: Doing nothing can be extremely dangerous to physical and mental health, to be consumed in moderation.

Divine providence? Pah!

Is there anyone at all that is indispensable? Irreplaceable? What? Will you just drop down and die, or will the world stop turning, will you not see the purpose in life anymore, if you lose a certain person?

The blunt but brilliant truth is that no one and nothing is that central to your existence. You will survive any kind of loss, material or otherwise. We end up getting used to almost anything! Look at our PTD ( public transport dpt ) So we really do make peace with whatever the Gods put in our way. It all comes down to the singular question of time and with good old time we accept and assimilate whatever loss or grievance and survive sufferance.

So do the ambitious fair better at all of this than the "ordinary man"? Do the great characters of history from Budha to The big B constitute exceptions to this theory? Think about it! The world would not have ended without them. Other people would have probably raised to the occasion to do the necessary! And I mean all this in the most grateful way.....

You lose parents, lovers, siblings, children they certainly are irreplaceable in their unique way but they do not take your breath of life ... THAT is one of the billion grains of truth that I think forms the Indian philosophy/spirituality/religion.....


If you were looking for something coherent, this was not really for you.

What will happen this May??

In love with a memory

Some three seasons have rolled by,

Almost back to that fateful summer,

Just one harsh winter to go....

Even now my memory is changed,

it is not the same idea it was last may.

Then when this may will come knocking

the earth would have gone around the sun a full round,

But I would probably stay still on the same but foreign ground.

Steady even though the ground feels like it would give away,

The memory is but a shadow, a long gone reflection,

Gone with the light leqving a ray inert.....

Cannot follow they ray cannot escape the memory...