Mandira Bedi and Darshan Jariwala

As one grows in life we all understand that all things that come to you in life have conditions attached to it!! Whether you take it or leave it is totally your prerogative. So when our friend came selling tickets for an upcoming play in the city of Kochi (Cochin), I decided to take it, as the play itself was deceptively titled “*conditions apply”!!

Being high on plays after Rajat Kapoor’s – Hamlet – The Clown Prince & Naseerudin Shah’s Antigone , which were brilliantly put together, I had great expectations from “*conditions apply”.

For the record the play “*conditions apply” was brought to the city of Kochi by the Round Table and was staged at the IMA house. The play is written and directed by Vikranth Pawar with Mandira Bedi and Darshan Jariwala as the main protagonists.

When I heard about “* conditions apply”, the first impression I had was that it is going to one of those smart witted stories from the urban lives which most of us would relate to. And how they proved me wrong!!

It came as the most confused script with two individuals caught up in their own lives. The story is around Darshan, introvert, unsure of anything, positive affirmation speaking single male who keeps sprouting personality development jargons and Mandira, loud, again unsure of anything, single female. While Darshan came across as a natural, Mandira (dressed in her funny Mickey Mouse tee) looked like she needed some loosening up. To give Darshan due credit, he was able to make the audience laugh over some humor and I thank him for the mercy.

The play started late..   and the first 10 min was ok. But, as the play progressed the audience sat in anticipation about what is to happen when their (Darshan and Mandira) paths cross, which did, but disappointingly nothing great happened. The story took a turn for the worse.

I can confidently speak for my friends and also yours truly who were silent throughout the play not in awe but waiting for some miracle to happen to make the play worth our Saturday evening. Just like Mandira who wanted to join “I have no f***ing clue” club in the play, the bunch of us sitting in audience wanted to follow her!!

The script of the play was totally contrived and looks like the writer had no clue what so ever in how to grow the characters. The biggest laughs came for some jokes which am sure was culled from old issues of Midday / Mumbai Times!! Their accidental meeting (or was it pre ordained!!) & supposed swapping of mobile phones looked straight from a C grade Bollywood thriller. And to top it all – in the end – they both retained each others mobile!!  At the end of it all a word for you – Mandira Bedi – You have used up your equity in Kochi – for sure…

At the end of the session, all that I had was a stiff back – sitting on those uncomfortable chairs and the feeling of having been taken for a bad ride. Well, am no authority to speak on theatre but speaking for few of us, we would rather spend time over intelligent and good humored plays than something as morose & contrived as “* conditions apply”.  And maybe for the cost of the highly priced tickets – we could have bought a bottle of Scotch plus a Tequila and happily tippled away

Me thinks that this substandard play should instead have been called “Entertainment Guaranteed but with*conditions apply” or may be even better would have been “I have no f***ing clue”??

And a word of advise for future organizers, read that as – social clubs, please bring in shows which you have sat through & enjoyed, instead of banking on supposed celebrity value & thus spare the art lovers from such crass and costs.

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

This blog is dedicated to all the anonymous artists whose work doesn’t ever seek any recognition or reward.

Palaisseau, a suburb around Paris is a nice, neat, quiet and serene place that can be reached in 35-45 minutes by metro. (Apart from the fact that I had friends here and was staying here, there is no place of importance or monuments!!) Once here as is my usual methodology, I set out on foot to explore the area & its surroundings. During one such walk I took a short cut through the slightly overgrown bushes, one can’t call them anything else, and came to an underpass of the main highway. And there to my surprise I saw some very colourful expressions on the walls. This obscure underpass was turned into a street art gallery!! Intrigued I walked on in that direction only to find some more complicated pieces of work by anonymous artists. I asked our friends about these brilliant & detailed pieces and came to know that these are done by boys who are simply spending their time with no monetary motives!!

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

One look at these creations and you know for sure that the artist is talented and has put in sufficient amount of time and effort to put the art piece together. Take a look and do note that all these are done with spray cans & the finishing touches that these guys have given is just superb.

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

Street art is a kind of art that is made in public places, an unsanctioned art form not recognized by the government or any known private body. Street art may include various kinds like graffiti artwork, stencil graffiti, sticker art, poster art, street installations, video projections,…etc.

Street art is a medium through which the artists communicates with the general public their thoughts and feeling about any general everyday issue. It can also be a way to mark your area when it’s the different gangs that are concerned; whether this was the reason behind the art we witnessed, we could not tell. Going by the face I would say, what I saw was an impressive piece of graffiti artwork.

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

Early graffiti can be dated back to 1920s, but the real graffiti movement started in 1960’s through the public activists and gang members. There are around 80 odd street artists who have been listed across various continents. Besides break dancing rapping and DJing, Graffiti art constitutes the fourth element of the hip-hop culture.

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

There was an exhibition held by the Washington Project of the Arts in 1981 dedicated entirely to Street Art. Tate Modern, one of the biggest art gallery in England held an exhibition in 2008 dedicated to Street Art. Many a established artists have their roots in graffiti and this art form has inspired many a graphic designers and digital photographers.

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

Where there is popularity, commercialization will follow. In 2001, IBM is said to have launched an advertising campaign where they spray painted the sidewalks all across Chicago in San Francisco with peace symbol, heart and a Penguin (Linux mascot nicknamed TUX) to represent ‘Peace, Love and Linux’. However the campaign bombed on legal issues. The artists were arrested on charge of vandalism and IBM was asked to cough up a whooping amount of $120,000 as against disciplinary action and also clean up costs! Sony tried a similar campaign in 2005 across 6 cities in the US of A. (Without making the history repeat itself, Sony paid the building owners an amount towards spray painting their walls hence taking care of all legalities!!)

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

In Asia, the graffiti art is still in a nascent stage. However, Graffiti began in China in 1920’s with Mao Zedong practicing this art form to vocalize strong opinion out in the public galvanizing the country’s communist revolution. Mao also holds a record for making the longest piece of graffiti depicting 4000 characters criticizing his teachers and the state of Chinese society!!

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

All said, Graffiti art with its bold letters and loud colors represent attitude that no other art form reflects the way graffiti does. Graffiti is very punk and very yo! Kudos to these unknown artists…..

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

image: Priya Q

I could have stayed for few more days at home in Chennai but I simply had to be back in Kochi, in time for the much acclaimed play by Paresh Rawal called shaadi@barbaadi.com.

What a name! Quite ominous I must say. Does shaadi really have to be barbaadi??…well I will take that topic up in my subsequent blog posts. For now, let me share with you my experience of the show.

What an entertainer! That compliment is not only Paresh Rawal who was the main protagonist of the play but also his team whom we have seen on small screen at some point or the other. They had the entire audience in splits and to be able to hold the audience rolling with laughter for whole 2.5 hours of the show is no mean task.

Written by Umesh Shukla and directed by Paresh Rawal, this play has been presented across the country for 134 times before they came to Kochi. I was hoping to see Paresh Rawal’s wife playing his wife in the play; that’s what I had heard that she would be the leading lady ….but on stage we had another artist doing that role and made a good job of it.

The story revolves around a Gujarati family where there are parents and their only son (Paresh). Seems like the Gujarati moms never let their kids grow up. It was hilarious the way the mother toilet trained their son who still ran on the count of 1, 2 and 3…and to add to the misery she was always after their grown up son to drink milk. LOL. The best part was we had a Gujju friend with us. So everything that happened on the stage was related back to him, which added to the excitement

The story goes like this. Paresh Rawal meets a girl at the bus stop and gets talking. One thing leads to another and they become friends. Paresh secretly falls in love with her and reveals it to his boss, who gives him ideas on how to propose the girl. After a few ups and downs in their life they eventually tie the knot. Things are hunky-dory for sometime before the mother-in-law and the new bride turn against each other on typical house matters. Caught between mother and wife, Paresh Rawal bears the brunt of the family feud till in the end things are salvaged only to repeat the entire cycle once again. Sounds like a typical Bollywood flick but it was purely fun, no melodrama.

Thanks to JTPac, the world-class performing art centre in Kochi that has been organizing various concerts and plays ever since its inception. I have been lucky to attend three out of the four performances so far. All these shows had international diplomats as special invitees. Hopefully we will have exchange of not only information but an exposure to the art and culture from various continents.

Mohanlal and Jose Thomas, whose collective dream and vision brought forth JTPac, were present at the show and felicitated Paresh Rawal and his team at the end of the show by presenting them the Aranmula mirror.

Watch out for the next show at JTPac – Rock concert by the Malayalam Rock Band – AVIAL on 6th June at 7:00 pm. Online bookings can be done at www.jtpac.org.

To read about the past shows at JTPac click here -> Dr. L Subramaniam & Kavitha Krinamurthy / Usha Uthup (didi)

AR Rahman brought Calicut (Kozhikode) dancing on their feet during his first music concert in India after his Oscar win on 3rd May 2009.

Around 40k people shrieked in joy on watching Rahman each time as he walked on the stage. Khwaja mere Khwaja, Hamma-hamma, Vande matram, Urvasi, Mustaffa and but of course the Oscar winner Jai ho were few of the songs sung by AR Rehman and the experience explains why he is, what he is.

I simply loved the showman Hariharan. Well, I have always loved him. The romantic me is crazy about the sweet glint in his voice. My heart went mmmm when he got to singing his numbers from Roja and other Tamil numbers. Other veterans who set the stage on fire were Sadhna Sargam and Chitra.

I am completely bowled over by Suzanne D’Mello also Suzie Q and her western singing style. What a voice! We have heard her singing Dreams on Fire and Latika’s theme song from Slumdog Millionaire…just that I never checked who the singer was and put a face to the voice. I am so glad I watched her perform live.

Rashid Ali, the guitarist, singer and musician swayed the crowd with his original Kabhi Kabhi Aditi number from the super hit movie Jaane tu ya jaane na. The crowd went ecstatic when the dancers threw Frisbees with cute smileys drawn on it into the audience. It’s nice to see how Rehman pick up talent and promotes them; Rashid Ali btw is a lead guitarist with Rahman whom he gave an opportunity to sing in Jaane tu ya Jaane na and the solo duets of Ada.

There were other performances by artists who have already sung couple of songs for Rahman either in Hindi, Tamil or Malayalam or completely new finds who we will see singing for films in the near future.

Q had told me about his friend George Peters (vocalist for 13 AD rock band) but it was such a delight watching him perform on the stage. I am looking forward to hearing more of him in the future. George sang a track from “Yodha” the only Malayalam movie AR Rahman directed music for so far.

Lighting and sound arrangement were perfect and the singing was superb Now that I have praised so much I think it will only be fair to bring out the negatives of the show just in case AR Rahman Googles himself and chances upon this particular blog then he should know what we think.

Show came across a little loose. There were too many gaps between two performances. Considering that singers were getting rotated there was enough and more time to be ready backstage. Hariharan didn’t get his mike for his first performance. It was quite funny to see the mike going back and forth between him and Sadhna Sargam during the performance. Sadhna’s mike got on after probably 2 seconds after she was into singing. Oh yes, we also heard someone getting mad at someone backstage. He definitely didn’t realize that his mike was on! Dancers would have been better (just being polite here). Dancers are expected to be well coordinated and to remember their steps. Will say no more.

May be people didn’t notice but coming from the events background I am more than aware of what goes wrong . Actually, cant blame anyone, somehow Murphy’s law preside over all events. No matter how much you are on top of things, things can still go wrong. Otherwise, for a person like AR Rahman who is called a nit picker or a perfectionist and who did a stage rehearsal whole of the night till 6:30 in the morning of the day of the show, the concert should have been absolutely error free.

But whatever said and done, Rahman ji …you are simply terrific. I love your music and I love your songs.

Usha Uthup or didi (elder sister) as she is fondly referred to, was in Cochin (Kochi) city recently, to enthrall the crowd with her contemporary music concert.

Held at JTPac, the concert was the second performance or initiative by the management after the astounding sBesame mucho,how put up by Dr.L Subramaniam and Kavita Krishnamurthy earlier this month.

What a performance and what a performer! Didi connects with her audience like nobody’s business. Even a bathroom singer feels inspired to sing with her as she encourages all to join her in singing lines from songs like Words, Besame mucho, Kaisi paheli hai ye…etc..,

Didi, who has been singing for several decades now, was caught between western and Bollywood music at sometime. She is the only artist to sing songs originally sung by males; this is when, one female singer refused to sing songs sung by other female singers! Didi is also the only singer to have sung songs in 13 Indian and 8 foreign languages. She in a breeze explains it all to her audience during her performance….music knows no language, caste or gender.

Another renowned musician Mattannur Sankaran Kutti was amongst the audience whom Didi called on the stage for an impromptu fusion session. The song was the famous Spanish song Besame Mucho which mean kiss me lots. It was a sight in itself to watch didi clad in a Sari with bangles, bindi, flowers et all singing a Spanish number accompanied by Mattannur Sankaran Kutti dressed in a simple shirt and dhoti. The duo created what you call a musical magic. Copacabana, I love Paris, Fever, were amongst the other songs didi made the audience sway to.

With her rich baritone and a positive stage presence, didi wins hearts of people in no time. Her aura only seems to be multiplying with her age. Didi you rock!

Click here, to read about the performance by Dr L Subramaniam and Kavitha Krishnamurthy at JTpac, Cochin.

Where to watch Kathakali performance in Kochi?

Kathakali, the classical dance drama is quite popular amongst the tourists and locals in Kochi / Cochin. There are many art centers who organize Kathakali performance on a daily basis. However, it’s important that you go to an established and reputed center. I have a bad experience once. Without taking the name of the center, the dingy auditorium coupled with a Malayalam accented English speaking narrator, I was ready to sleep!
Since, a layman totally depends on the narrator to understand the various gestures and facial expressions of the artist; the role hence played by the storyteller becomes very important. I am giving you here, names of two centers that you can surely go to…

Cochin Cultural Centre: they conduct shows everyday at 6:30 pm. However you can go at 5:30 pm and watch the make-up of the larger than life characters. To say the least it’s a treat for shutterbugs! The eloquent storyteller takes you through the story play of the day before the performance; so it’s easy to connect during the show. For more details log on to www.cochinculturalcentre.com

Greenix art village at Fort Kochi promote Kerala’s varied art forms under one roof. They have performances like Kathakali, Mohiniattam, Kalaripayattu, Theyyam, Koodiyattam, and Ottanthullal besides other dance forms. It is also a destination for those who are interested in studying history as it houses a museum where they conduct audio-visual culture shows everyday. For more details log on to http://www.greenix.in/

JT Performing Arts Centre (JT Pac) brought the most reputed classical musician and singer to perform for their inaugural show here in Kochi. Dr.L Subramaniam accompanied by his wife and famous singer Kavita Krishnamurthy Subramaniam and Louis Bank performed at the audience filled auditorium. JT Pac is the joint dream of that of entrepreneur Jose Thomas and the famous actor, musician Mohanlal.

Kavita Krishnamurthy Subramaniam started with an invocation from one of her Bollywood movies music directed by the legendry Laxmikant Pyarelal duo, who also happened to give Kavitha her first break. With Om Nama Shivaya on her lips, Kavita was her melodious best as always. She also sang the famous Tu hi re song from the movie Bombay along with her son Ambi who went with her on his violin. The crowd was overjoyed to hear her sing a famous Malayalam song. We also had their daughter Bindu perform few English songs on the stage.

I am completely at loss of words to describe Dr.Subramaniam’s performance. Astounding, amazing simply mind blowing! I was almost breathless as Dr. Subramaniam took his music to a crescendo. He was complemented well by his son Ambi Subramaniam and the superb team of percussionists. They performed various pieces of music including – In pursuit, Conversation, Journey, Gypsy Trail etc. I simply loved In pursuit and Conversation.

It was like magic being created by the musical family!

>> JT Pac intends to hold such events twice a month. Click here to get a glimpse into their future shows…

Chill Mr. Srivastava! You stay in Bombay. Ever heard of Dharavi? By playing ostrich you cannot ignore the ground realities. Let’s stop being hypocrites and give the movie its due credit.

And about people regarding us slumdogs… please excuse them..for they aren’t well traveled or well read (I am sure or rather hope the percentage of such people isn’t high). Probably they don’t know that their own comrades find India attractive enough to be here on a vacation, business or even life long stay!

Your anger is genuine to an extent; but your statement that you will never get associated with any project which shows India in poor light…if it at all happens..Bravo! But these things should rather be left to situation, if you were given a chance to be a part of a project which means international fame, would you leave it? Well, you need to think about it.

Anyways, India is the most beautiful country in the world. And there’s no denying that. For people making opinions sitting miles across…God bless…

Jai ho!

Having grown up watching him fleetingly on various shows on the television (I don’t have the patience to watch music concerts on TV, prefer live) and the most famous wah ustad wah advertisement that intercepted the then popular chitrahaar, the weekly much awaited movie or other soaps, it was an enchanting experience to watch him performing live.

The humble maestro was teamed up with Shri Dilshad Khan the young promising Sarangi player. His swift hands moved on the instrument with so much grace, it almost felt the music was getting generated elsewhere! Be it be a steam engine effect or galloping horses, Ustad fingers presented these gentle variations along with his original compositions with unquestionable class.

Ustad Zakir Hussain yet again won a Grammy this year in the Contemporary World Music Album category for his collaborative album Global Drum Project. Born to Ustad Allah Rakha, Ustad Zakir started performing way back when we barely 12. He has various national and international shows and awards to his credit.

After yesterday’s performance, the whole of the audience was left spellbound as the heart craved for more.

Hail you Ustad ji…. Par ye dil ne maanga tha more!