O(pi)nion Utthappa

Yesterday evening I had another wonderful opportunity to see a play called   'Tierno Bokar'. It was directed by Peter Brook. He was in New York for last month conducting a workshop at the Columbia University. This play was the outcome of that workshop. Tierno Bokar was a Sufi 'sage' from West Africa who lived in the last century. He was a wise man and a voice of tolerance when his country and continent were consumed with religion and politics-based violence. One of his students, Amadou Hamapaté Bâ, who is apparently a great writer and has been a guiding light to UNESCO after Mali’s independence in 1960 (I had not even heard this name until yesterday… but that only shows how ignorant I am) has written a book about his master. The book is titled ‘The Life and Teaching of Tierno Bokar - The Sage of Bandiagara’. The play was based on this book. The performance itself took place in gymnasium of a one of the Columbia University colleges. They had converted it into an ...

Yesterday evening I had one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I saw Amitabh Bachchan ! Real.... exactly as Einstein had said about Gandhi.... 'such a one ever in flesh and blood... ' This was at a retrospective of his films that was organized by the Lincoln Center Film Society. Yesterday's event... 'An Evening with Amitabh Bachchan' was the culmination of that festival. He appeared in person and was interviewed for over two hours. He spoke about many things, his movies, his image as 'angry young man', his favorites stars, politics, his financial troubles, his second innings... The event began with a short documentary on him... it started with the narration by its creator about when he started watching Hindi films and what it means to him... it started with a troop of traditional artists telling a mythological story using an old painting... with a typical Rajasthani folk music as background... It was intermixed with famous writers .... Salman Rashdi...

I heard the Veer Zaara songs yesterday…. The soundtrack of the new Yash Chopra movie… based on the tunes composed by Madan Mohan and sung by Lata and others… You know… Sometimes there comes a moment that reinforces one’s belief… this was one of those moments. I had a conversation with a friend of mine the other day… about a biography of Balgandharva that I was reading at the time. I told him about how, in the twilight days of his career, he still used to perform his pet role of Sindhu in Ram Ganesh Gadakari’s ‘Ekach Pyaala’. He was paralyzed in one side of his body and could not even stand at times… and then he used to perform sitting in a chair!! And the shows were still sold out… (Or ‘house full’ as we call them)!!! No doubt it shows the enormous affection he commanded from a Marathi man and mind….and no doubt what people were there for was his singing and not the ‘play’ per say…but we should also note that even his voice was way past its zenith at that time. This is mid 195...