Anjor-Kaaya, the musical

Liberation. Something that we all dream about. Something which is close to 'nirvana'. Liberation is closely tied with arts somehow; as is captured in this photograph that Vinokur took during his hippie days. The setting is Manhattan - at the Guggenheim museum. Apparently Vinokur was standing across the street from the Guggenheim and this bus with 'Liberty' printed on it happened to pass by. The folk-lore goes on to mention that he was good enough 'capture the moment' as is demonstrated vide infra.


Here's what Vinokur would caption the picture 'As a bus named Liberty passed in front of a revered expression of freedom in the arts (Wright's masterpiece, the Guggenheim Museum), the camera's shutter opened and closed.' It's a shame that he is so lazy that he wouldn't care enough to showcase his repertoire to the world, don't you think?

Life doesn't always allow everyone his/her share of equality, or better 'liberty' in this case. I allege the medical training as the reason for me to be suffering from the injustice of being left out from arts, literature, history and all the other 'essential' traits of a gay man. I shamefully accept that I can't blame anyone but myself for not indulging in all of this - I wasn't a rich heir living the land of dreams who could do anything with their life without worrying about the mundane necessities of a third world life after all! I do this rather passively - excepting of course delving in performing music.

Some other third-world-ers took it a couple of steps ahead. I was a witness to that the other night and it was enchanting. I might be a very 'soft' critic but I am not lying. I was invited to 'Anjor-Kaaya', an experimental musical written and performed by 'professionals' from various other 'professions' - I use inverted commas to be cynical about the media and the society which felicitate these to some higher level as compared to others - like doctors, lawyers, engineers etc. One of my friends, a microbiologist, the co-writer and performer in the play, had invited me for it.

I was late. I was late by about half an hour. Ashamed, I walked in and found a couple of 'phallow gay frens' sitting right at the back. One of them was about to leave attributing his desire to attend a rock-concert somewhere else. The other one, the more-established connoisseur of art, whose cynical tendencies were rather unpublicized, was to give me company. It took a while for me to get 'into' the play. It was a fantastical story based on a wishing-fountain. Many different stories of unfortunate people from the cross section of society - an estranged teenage girl who sells umbrellas in the streets, a painter whose art goes unrecognized, a dancer who becomes quadriplegic, a mother whose son runs away from home - all were unfolded in front of the fountain which is titled 'Anjor-Kaaya'.

The script was written in old-school hindi, something which I was used to thanks to 'Doordarshan' and 'Vividbharti' from my childhood, and it elicited the reaction of the romantic poet inside me. The stories themselves were painful enough to let the language unfurl it's adjectives and allegories poignantly. The combination of the two sounded like music to my mind and I was fascinated. My friend on the other hand was ruminating about what was wrong and what could be done to undo it. I wished I could agree with him. It was extremely hard and I found respite in one aspect - the background score. I thought it could have been written better and produced way, way better. It's ironic how I suddenly jumped into being a harsher critic in a topic that was familiar to me.

Anjor and Kaaya, by the way, were evergreen, immortal lovers who would try to make the wishes of the people come true by following instructions given in little parchments. There were a lot of interesting aspects in their own characterization with issues like jealousy being dealt with in shades of poetry. The fact that they chose colours and their combinations to find solutions to the problems that the people came to them was suggestive about the diversity in which the society is immersed in and how harmony can be achieved by the appropriate combination of the different elements. A very strong message about and to society, I felt.

More importantly, the actual issues in the present day society were highlighted and presented in a very attractive, romantic method. I don't see that often these days - the stuff that we get to see these days is harsher and cynical about everything relevant. The fact that the entire crew behind this effort were people from different walks of society not trained in drama was probably something which is given far too much attention. My friend, for example, chose to highlight that fact as their only redemption. I disagree. I agree with him about only one point - things could be improved in so many ways - to make it classier, to appeal to the 'art-lovers' who are engrossed with pre-defined notions. Ah, what they miss out on, the message, the sheer elegance of the content.

I applaud my friend and the entire team of Anjor-Kaaya for making me feel closer to being liberated. Thank you!

A tryst with art in Mumbai - Part 2

(Continuation of part 1 - read Part 1 here)

A few weeks before, I finally managed to catch a play at the prestigious Y. B. Chavan centre at Colaba. It was three short experimental plays back to back which were entangled to each other by a story from Indian mythology. The reason why I got to know about the play was that Mr. Bach's nephew, an astonishingly handsome young man, was the manager for the event. During the days that I spent with Mr. Bach, I got to hang out with him and during our conversations, I stumbled on to the fact that he was into theatre.

I have a friend amongst the gay-bois, someone that I rather respect (as compared to the vast majority of other who, I think, are really flaky, childish and boring when it comes to enjoying, discussing and reviewing art) who accompanied me to the play. For me, the naive, novice art-lover who devours art in every which form that is presented to him without paying heed to the quality , the play was an enchanting experience. My friend liked it too, but not as much as me. I came to know from Mr. Bach's nephew (through Mr. Bach) that the play was supposedly full off forgotten lines and bloopers and that my observations were foolish and invited ridicule.

Within a couple of days, I found myself watching another play with this same friend. This time it was another fantasy-fairy tale, another experimental play written and performed by people from various walks of life (young professionals who had a penchant for theatre). It was a hindi play with very poetic, romantic lines which were marked with words which were rather dormant in the streets. The acting was average and I thought the set was rather unprofessional too. Again, the romantic, fanatic, fantasy-st in me took over and enjoyed the play despite it's extreme length. This time though, my friend was very critical about the play and commented that I was so 'uneducated' about art that I would love anything that I was presented to.

One of the days when Mr. Bach was around, I had to spend an afternoon all by myself as he was busy running some last-minute errands before his trip. That afternoon, I walked over to the JJ school of Arts and met T., E-boi's girlfriend. It was a great experience because of the sheer surprise element for both of us. She took me for a tour in the campus and showed me the sculpting studio. It was so beautiful despite them being done by amateurs (students) but I could feel myself getting attracted to art more and more.

Apart from these, two of my 'dates' in the last few months have been painters and sculptors. One, a good friend of mine, has invited me to his studio and shown me his wonderful series of paintings which he's working on. Each of them has a silhouette of a person or object in black ink in a background (in a single color). He explained to me his ideas and they seemed to profound to me and I'm sure the alcohol or the prospect of sex did not tamper my judgment in any way. Another one, with whom I have just spent a few hours together talking is a painter and is a retired dean of a prestigious art school. He tried to open my eyes and mind up to the world of art by telling me about how to appreciate art - by having a clean slate or an open mind.

I feel proud to have so many friends, each acquired through life's weird interconnections, who have helped me come closer to the various versions of art in the last few months. I'm thankful to all of them for making it such a pleasure for me and I hope that this journey gets more enchanting in the years to come.

A tryst with art in Mumbai - Part 1

I have been here in Mumbai for over three and a half years. That's how long it took for me do anything related to conventional art and culture. The first whiff of this wonderful world came to me during the first few months of my relationship with Vinokur when he used to tell me how wonderful it was to go to museums and art galleries in the Big Apple. We had our wonderful plan about injecting the brown Indian boy with a dose of art, at Mumbai to start with, when we would start living together for the first time. That didn't exactly workout that way as most real-life stories don't. But the desire kept nagging me on. I had decided during the months that I studied for the exams that I would start diving into the wonderful pool of art and culture that Mumbai had to offer.

The first instance came three weeks back when I attended the screening of a documentary film about Narendra Modi and his evil masterplan to remain in power. This movie, which was banned for public screening, is about how the BhaJPa had cooked up mock assassination attempts at Modi and arrested and killed innocent people in Gujrat, their only fault that they were Muslim. I could distinctly feel the amount of culture and intelligence disseminated in the audience which was evident in the little Q&A section after the screening. I'd be lying if I didn't confess that apart from all the culture, there were really attractive older men aplenty there. People with beards, aquiline noses dressed in graceful kurthas and talking about art - the Indian version of a talking Vinokur-blow-up doll!

The first time that I met Mr. Bach was at the Jehangir art gallery. He is the epitome of the filthy-rich south-mumbaiite who hate the suburbs and love their art. He took me in for a demo tour and ended up buying a sculpture of the bust of a handsome man with a long face and a long, but shapely, nose. He still denies any hints of narcissism in this purchase and such claims have been rendered baseless by the sculptor himself (at the gallery) and a couple of his friends and cousins who seemed to have the intelligence to grasp. We had carried on to another huge private gallery where he had purchased three pieces of a piece of modern art on the mythology of the Eklavya's thumb story - one for his own house here and two for his wealthy friends living in the Snakes.

Experiencing the various pieces of art hung up on walls of his fantastic house(s) in town was a de ja vu experience - two of the three men that I had dated prior to Mr. Bach had their share of art on display. One had Picasso replicas and others at his home and the other is a painter and sculptor who showed me his original work over whisky and soda on a wonderful evening that we spent together. It is quit evident that my sensibilities seem to home in on men with something or the other to do with arts, thanks to my mentor, my best friend and my ex-lover - the one and only Vinokur.