Slices of my daily life

The last couple of days have been filled with thoughts, writing exercises and improvisations related to my play ‘Sahasrachandradarshan’ that is based in Kokan. Sahasrachandradarshan is a ceremony conducted to honour a person who has turned 80 years old. This is a play about a family from the present-day Kokan who gather together to celebrate the Sahasrachandradarshan of Aaji. In the course of events, some relationships are explored and some revisited and some stretched to their limits. The mind is a funny thing ! In one improvisation of Sahasrachandradarshan, Pratibha and I are sitting outside the ICU where our 80-year old mother has been kept after suffering a stroke. The doctor takes his last round for the day and informs us that the situation is grave and could turn any which way over the course of the night. About two and a half years ago I had once done this improvisation with the girl who played Pratibha for the first couple of shows. During the last week I did it again with the ...

3 years ago the trees transformed my life. It didn’t happen overnight, like a military coup or a revolution. It gradually grew in my heart, in my sub-conscious, and by the time I started realising it, the transformation was well under its way. I consciously allowed it thereafter…pushed it along and am still doing so. It started off as a simple poetry presentation program, one that I was even slightly reluctant to be a part of initially, since till then poetry had never excited me at all…perhaps I hadn’t taken the effort to understand and appreciate it. My dear friend Aa loves poetry. He researched Marathi poems for the last 100 years and selected poems related to trees. Then he went through the arduous task of sorting them and aligning them in a theme. He shortlisted 51 such poems and wove them in a theme. There are no narrations. Each poem is itself also a connector to the next poem. We didn’t want it to be just another poetry recitation program. We wanted it to enter people’s hearts ...

This is a revisited post from 5 years ago. I found this while sorting old documents and while reading I felt very refreshed. Good memories need to be refreshed every now and then. So here is the 'flower'-post revisited: I was speaking to a friend and said, I feel like writing today...suggest a topic...and he said, why don't you write about flowers ? So here goes...I'm writing about flowers. Although I'm reasonably fond of flowers, I don't go into raptures over them. I like flowers...different flowers hold different meanings and memories for me...and that is what I'll share today. I had read somewhere that Carnations are given at death occasions - wakes, on coffins, on graves etc., but they never give me that feeling...I just love Carnations...their cut petals, their shape and different colour combinations. Dahlia brings back memories of the bungalow we stayed in as soon as we shifted to Pune. It had a huge garden...almost four times the size of the house...a...

Change is one of the things that I find extremely daunting. I believe most people do. As is my habit, I imagine some scenarios that I want to or I find likely to happen in the future. As I detail out each scenario in my mind, I come up with all the possible alternative situations and their implications on other factors, the thing that bothers me is the loss that follows change. There are thousands of books written about millions of techniques of ‘managing’ change. I find that they help only in rationalising the loss and acceptance of and adjustment to the ‘new’. At least that is how it works for me. I understand, intellectually, that this is completely in tune with the law of nature. The old has to make way for the new. Still I mourn the loss of the old. My sentimental side wants to hold on to some parts of the old and assimilate them into the new. It is not always possible. That is what I feel upset and helpless about. I was mulling over all this and simultaneously reading through my ...

It does. Really. For months now I have lamented the fact that I have not been on stage and that I have been inactive in theatre for a very long time. Suddenly in the last few days things have begun happening…and how ! Just check out my June calendar… Since yesterday I have begun directing a skit for the final day presentation of the theatre workshop that ends on the 7th. On the 8th I begin directing another small skit for a show of historical plays that will take place on the 14th. In the meantime, from the 9th I will begin rehearsing for a long play in which I will be acting. From the 15th we begin rehearsals of two plays that we are reviving. Simultaneously, I, along with a couple of others, have initiated the process for the revival of our poetry presentation program that we intend to begin performing from July. So there is preparatory work to be done for the same. This morning I got a call from my dear M asking me if I would like to be in the next play that he is directing. Obvious...