English theatre: new directions
Atanu Saha
Gone are the days an English play in a city like Mumbai or Delhi meant a Shakespearean costume drama or an Alyque Padamsee musical. There also used to be Bharat Dhabolkar’s non-ending farce, an occasional Naseeruddin Shah classic, or a Rahul da Cunha comedy — all adaptations from Broadway hits.

Music has become commercial commodity: Manna Dey
Neena Bhandari
Music has become a commercial commodity, where a singer’s popularity is judged by how many CDs he sells and not by the quality of his singing, says veteran Indian singer Manna Dey.

SIGHT & SOUND

AUDIOSCAN

English theatre: new directions
Atanu Saha

Gone are the days an English play in a city like Mumbai or Delhi meant a Shakespearean costume drama or an Alyque Padamsee musical. There also used to be Bharat Dhabolkar’s non-ending farce, an occasional Naseeruddin Shah classic, or a Rahul da Cunha comedy — all adaptations from Broadway hits.

Today, English theatre is throwing up newer names — Anahita Uberoi, Vikram Kapadia, Sunny Singh, Roysten Abel, Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal. They are increasingly getting of the "borrowed scripts syndrome" and looking for inspiration and play ideas from within.

Observes playwright Mahesh Dattani, who ushered in this trend with "Bravely Fought the Queen:" "For a class-conscious lot, English used to be spoken as the white man does. There was a complicity between them and their limited elitist audience because performing and watching such theatre enhanced feeling of being a class apart."

So in their effort to find an Indian idiom, playwrights like Dattani are using to common Hindi (often filmi) expressions, including swear words in the English text. Jack becomes Jagdish and Jill is Jayshree while Manhattan and Soho become Chowpatty and Connaught Place.

In "Going solo 2," directors Uberoi, Kapadia and da Cunha recently presented a set of plays in which the Zafars and Darshans of the country delivered lengthy monologues on road age, rape, marital discord and such issues occupying the Indian urban mind.

The plays, which have been staged in Mumbai, Pune and Delhi, proved to be an eye-opener for both the organisers and audiences. For one, everybody was convinced that there is still scope for adaptations from Western plays and for another, Indianisms do work in English plays, without ‘vulgarising’ the language.

"It’s more fun this way," a theatre critic pointed out in her review. "So we have a small but significant crop of directors which is no longer confining itself to classics or contemporary hits. These people are opting for drastic adaptations, or searching for original Indian-English scripts."

Adds Bangalore-based theatre activist Prakash Belawadi: "It is demeaning to carry on this pretence that we are working on universal plays. They are all specific to a cultural and geographical context. So apart from a contemporary play with a relevance to India, I wouldn’t touch a Western play any more."

Thus, what began as a trickle with occasional scripts by Gurcharan Das and Dina Mehta has swelled into a deluge with Dattani and Manjula Padmanabhan being recognised as the leading lights of a new generation of English playwrights.

Children’s writer Poile Sengupta has taken to full-length adult plays and with seven already behind her, she is now writing one on literacy and another called "Thus Spake Surpanakha, So Said Shakuni". Da Cunha and Kapadia are also working on full-length plays. Likewise, Sunny Singh is writing her second play, "Missing," which is about an Indian soldier 30 years after he disappeared in the Bangladesh war.

This is a reflection of a multi-cultural society we live in," reasons Roysten Abel, best known for the award-winning English-Assamese bilingual, "Othello", "A Play in Black and White" in which he turned Shakespeare on the head.

His "Othello" is about the politics in a theatre group when a dark-skinned Assamese entrant is cast in the title role which is coveted by a fair-skinned senior member of the troupe. Abel followed that with the English-Hindi "Goodbye Desdemonia," about two actors doing their version of Romeo and Juliet — with two men in the lead!

"The language works when the milieu is right," explains the playwright-director. "So to make an Indian maid servant speak Queen’s English on stage, will just not work with our audience. We’ve had many such ridiculous examples in the past..., but that time is over."

What does not work either is an outlandish subject, as Sunny Singh realised with "Birthing Athena." A highly moving theme of an artist mother wanting "perfect creation" of her child was found far too westernised for comfort and beyond anything Indian audiences could relate to.

Likewise, adaptations do not always work, unless their themes are universal. Little wonder, plays like "Roshemon", "A Streetcar Names Desire", "Death of a Salesman", "All the Best" and "They Call Me Baji Rao" will continue to be staged in Indian auditoriums and draw packed houses. MF

Music has become commercial commodity: 
Manna Dey
Neena Bhandari

Music has become a commercial commodity, where a singer’s popularity is judged by how many CDs he sells and not by the quality of his singing, says veteran Indian singer Manna Dey.

Speaking to newspersons here today, Dey who is here to promote Indian culture, says "Today’s singers have cut-throat competition. Music has become a commercial commodity and the choice of words, thoughts and lyrics no longer matters".

Pop songs have come to the fore even with their pedestrian tunes, unqualified singing prowess and meaningless words because they sell, he says adding "today promotion is the key".

Commending young singers, he says "I was pleasantly surprised to see young talent in ‘Tvs Sa Re Ga Ma’. It means, there is no dearth of talent".

To become a good singer, Dey says, one has to have a good voice, a guru for guidance and dedication. "My uncle K.C. Dey initiated me into music. I religiously performed riyaz for a couple of hours daily. I have been a very strict singer, never lackadaisical about rendition of the songs".

Music lovers in Sydney will have a rare opportunity to attend a workshop on classical and non-classical music to be conducted by the versatile single next week.

Even at 81, Dey, who mesmerised audience at the Bengali songs concert here, says "I enjoy singing for the Bangladeshis because they know each and every song of mine by heart. They have kept Bengali music alive, while in West Bengal there has been an influence of Bollywood".

An eight-minute video presentation "An introduction to Manna Dey" by Sydney-based filmmaker Anita Brar was to introduce the singing legend to the expatriate Indian community at a Hindi concert.

Having sung in almost every Indian language and English, the octogenarian singer says, "I wanted to sing on an all-India basis. I have translated Tagore’s songs in Hindi".

In a singing career spanning 50 years, Manna Dey has seen the growth of music in the country. "We are at a stage where we say no more".

He says "In the film industry one has to be on the guard and not make sweeping statements".

"I have rubbed shoulders with great singers like Rafi, Talat, Lata, Hemant and Kishore, who deserve every accolade. Their singing by any yardstick you measure is great."

While drawing comparisons is healthy, to ask someone of Naushad’s calibre "Why did you ask Rafi to sing and not Manna Dey" is ridiculous. Again, Lata Mangeshkar is an institution, there should be no comparison between her and any other singer, he adds. PTI

SIGHT & SOUND
The other Kashmiris
Amita Malik

They are the forgotten ones; a gentle, civilised people who have made an immense contribution to India’s political, social and cultural life. They have been uprooted from their beautiful homeland and are now eking it out in single rooms which hold large families on a monthly allowance of Rs 2500 from the government. They state case with dignity and restraint and because they have not made as loud noises as the other Kashmiris, their case has gone by default. And the media, which cries itself hoarse over the dramatics of the militants and the suffering people and the armed forces in Kashmir, they tend to neglect the Kashmiri Pandits even when they voice their passionate protests.

However, they were remembered in the nick of time and at last in Barkha Dutt’s new Saturday programme, Reality Bytes. And although they are a quiet people, what the Kashmiri Pandits had to say in the programme left one shattered. The programme ought to be shown to President Pervez Musharraf, whose heart bleeds for the Kahsmiris, just as a reminder that there are other Kashmiris than the ones who claim to speak solely for Kashmir. And who at least are still in Kashmir, where they were born and brought up. The Pandits had to leave overnight, and why they did so is still a very controversial subject. They not only left their hearths and homes but also their professions, built up over generations and long before some of the present shouting brigades were on the scene. And how.

Dr Bhan, now a gynaecologist at Apollo Hospital, was cornered in her home where she had a flourishing practice and asked to act as a shield by some demonstrators so that if the police fired, she would get killed first. Luckily, an armoured car came by at that moment, the demonstrators thought it had come to protect her, and fled. She escaped by the back door, never to return. Most vocal of all was a senior member of the community, Mr H N Jattu, who gave a graphic picture of living with a large family in a small room with young married children, the humiliation of lack if privacy, the unemployed youth, the sick and the children with nowhere to play. Then there was film maker Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who returned to Kashmir to shoot Mission Kashmir and took along his mother. She entered her old house to find everything changed except the puja ghar, which had been left intact Muslim. His brother, a Ph.D, knelt and kissed the Kashmiri soil on landing. And an old-lady, who now lives in a Hindu area hugged Chopra’s mother and said: "I don’t know who is a Hindu and who a Muslim", reviving memories of what was Kashmiri culture before the militants took over.

This is in effect the first serious documented account that I have seen on TV of the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits and I hope Barkha Dutt will make a longer and more documented film on these abandoned people for screening to the United Nations, to human rights organisations and organisations such as Amnesty International which are all too ready to shed tears for those who have killed innocent people of all faiths in Kashmir for their selfish political jehads but either look the other way or do not look at all when it comes to the other Kashmiris, notably the minorities such as the Pandits, the Sikhs and others who also call Kashmir their homeland and have either been forced to leave or are under constant persecution and attack.

And I also suggest a programme on these under attack in the North-East, particularly innocent villagers and urban people, some of whom have spoken most powerfully and passionately about the politicians and the so-called militants who have ruined their lives and brought violence and cruelty to a once peaceful and happy land. Only one angry young man, a young self-taught film-maker, Shankar Barua, with equipment and encouragement given by Anand Patwardhan, and funds from the producer of Bhopal Express, has managed to convey similar anguish on the part of the Assamese people. The screening at India International Centre was an eye-opener and it has been shown even in the villages of Assam but not on Indian TV, because no one seemed to care. I suggest that Barkha Dutt’s documentary on the Kashmiri Pandits, and it is no less, is similarly screened at IIC and similar venues all over India so that fellow Indians realise the full dimensions of the agony of the forcibly evicted Kashmiri Pandits.

AUDIOSCAN
Sajid, Wajid impress
ASC

SHARARAT (Tips): This album by new music directors Sajid Wajid should hold some kind of a record for mentioning the names of as many as, hold your breath, 10 artistes as singers in a single song. The song is Mastana albela... and it has been rendered by — start counting — Hariharan, Arvinder Singh, Saud Khan, Mahotish, Upendra Sharma, Sarfaraz Khan, Sanjeevni Bhelende, Shraddha Pandit, Sneha Pant and Wajid Khan. Phew!

But the name directory apart, it is a fine album embellished with several mood songs. The spotlight is on Sonu Nigam who features in almost all of them. His Dil kehta hai... Kuchh tum kaho... belong to the excellent category while Ek ladki mujhe... (with Alka Yagnik), Ye main kahan aa ke phas gaya... (with Hariharan and Anupama Deshpande) and Mehki hawaon mein.... (with KK) figure only a notch lower.

But the piece de resistance is Aziz’s rendition of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s immortal Na kisi ki aankh ka noor hoon.... This is after a long long time that it has been set to a radically different tune.

Lyrics are by Sameer.

KALI (Ninad Music): This album of the World Music Series brings Padmabhushan Pt Hariprasad with musicians from different parts of the world: Bali, Africa, Spain, Finland and, of course, India. Together they experiment with unusual sound textures and creative patterns that are a treat for the ears.

Led by Vidal Paz, the musicians play rare instruments like the gonga, kentele, harp from Finland, Sudanese drums, karinding, the tabla, dervuca, djembe, Spanish guitar, chestnuts and the tanpura. The acoustic instruments come together in heady interaction. The overall effect is magical indeed.

As the name reveals, the album is devoted to Kali the goddess. It is a musical interpretation of the feminine power. One of the pieces comprises "thought-provoking conversation" with Her.

DIL AISA KISI NE MERA TODA (Venus): Hariharan has made quite a name for himself as a ghazal singer. Jaspinder Narula is better known as a folk and pop singer. Here they come together to sing ghazals. Don’t go on the rather pedestrian title. The album includes some worthwhile creations.

Actually, Jaspinder figures in only two of the ghazals: Kho gayee hai ... and Raat failegi to.... Her high-pitched voice is well modulated under Triveni-Bhawani’s baton.

The other six ghazals are all by Hariharan. As usual he maintains the purity of the genre, without taking recourse to any gimmick.