Sunday, June 3. 2007

I woke up with a fearful cold. I had a sore throat and a runny nose. My ears were blocked and my head felt heavy. I suspected it was the shuttling between the extreme outdoor heat and the intensely cool air conditioned interiors that had led to this. I went online as usual but F. and I had an appalling connection to deal with. I later counted sixteen interruptions during our conversation. Fortunately the rest of the day was not as frustrating. We enjoyed an excellent breakfast of Dosas (a South Indian dish, rice bread stuffed with potatoes and eaten with a coconut based sauce) and at around half past eleven one of my closest friends Devatanu arrived. I had known Deva from our days at the Arya Vidya Mandir School (the name translates into a very dramatic Aryan Temple of Knowledge). Deva nowadays works as a team leader for a software development firm based in Bombay. He recently married his girlfriend Seema, she works at the HDFC back. It was very nice seeing Deva and Seema again. Deva is quite generously built and loves his food but we all really enjoyed the lunch Mum had made. She made a Parsee meal of rice, masala bread, vegetables and dhansak (a combination of lamb and vegetables). After Deva and Seema left I was able to take a quick power nap before getting ready for the evening. Pishomoshai had gotten tickets for us for a play performed by Rajit Kapur, quite a well known actor, and written by Girish Karnad, a well known playwrite. It was in English, called Flowers. I personally knew the lighting designer, Arghya Lahiri, he was my senior in school and in college. The play was being performed at the National Center for the Performing Arts complex, in the Tata Experimental Theatre Hall, in the city. It was a cool hour and a half drive away. Fortunately the roads weren’t too crowded and we didn’t have too much of a problem getting there. While entering I actually bumped into Arghya, it was nice talking to him again, I hadn’t seen him in years. The Experimental is a tiny theatre hall, designed to engage the audience with the play itself. Unfortunately, barring Arghya’s lighting there wasn’t too much to be impressed by when it came to performance itself. I felt Rajit Kapur was a little too subdued in his performance, and the play dragged in parts. It was a monologue about a priest who fell in love with a courtesan. Ironically the most dramatic moment of the evening however occurred after the performance. During the show a cellular phone had gone off and at the end of the play after receiving a substantial applause Rajit Kapur went on a terrific rant about cell phones and how disrespectful they were. Personally I thought Kapur was a bit obnoxious. I got annoyed by the phone too but I don’t think anyone in the audience had paid two hundred rupees to be lectured by Kapur in a holier than thou tone. We had an uneventful drive back and enjoyed an excellent dinner. Mum whipped up some Phane Bhat (over boiled rice with lentils, boiled egg, and rarefied butter). I fell asleep dog tired.