Flame of the Forest

I just reached back home after watching the play "Flame of the Forest". I have been wanting to watch a play in a theater for a long long time now. I have always thought that real performance comes out in theaters than in the Silver screen. I have been checking the Rangashankara website for quite sometime now, and came across this play a few days back. The note that the story is based on Kalki's "Sivagamiyin Sabadham" interested me, and just to be sure that I am not disappointed facing another house full, I made the booking for the Sunday afternoon show well in advance. Even though I have heard a lot about "Sivagamiyin Sabadham", I have never put any efforts to read it or know about it. All I knew till I went to the play was what I heard from my mother, that Kalki Krishnamoorthy wrote it years back, and was a big hit as a "thodar kadhai" (serial story) in the Thamizh magazine Kalki, one of the favourite passtimes for my mother during her spinster life. A little googling also revealed that the story was about the King Mahendra Pallava who ruled the temple city of Kanchipuram in Thamizhnadu. But I went with a plain mind to watch the play. I found it very interesting in many ways, that how much semblance does a 65 year old story has with the todays world. The performances were just excellent, particularly the one by Balakrishnan V, as Paranjothi, Pulikesan and Chinnappan, was really good, while the actor who enacted the role of Mahendra Pallava, was truly amazing. I very much liked the dialogue delivery of both. Having said that, I will not do justice if I fail to mention the dance performers, the one dance sequence by Mythili Prakash (I believe) which comes in the middle of the play, "Sivagami" dancing in front of Pulikesi and Mahendra Pallava, was the best. The play had a mix of all, depth in the story, few subtle comedies, strikingly good performances. I liked the direction of using short dance sequences to elucidate the passage of time which is so important in a story which spans across 25 years. The director, Gowri Ramnarayan, who herself appeared as the elderly Sivagami in the later stages of the play, did really well. I liked the way the director presented the scenes in which the elderly Sivagami remembers her past sitting in the Kanchi temple as the devadasi, where the younger version of herself is shown in parallel as suffering in the City of Vathapi in the prison. I also liked the songs that came along the play sung by the actors and was really impressed by their singing capabilities.

One thing I felt was that with little knowledge of the original story, it was a little tough to get a grip of the entire set of incidents unfolding on stage. But with a little effort I could understand the missing links. Particularly, the play (or it was me) failed to capture the fact that Pulikesi actually couldnt break through to Kanchi, and hence entered Kanchi as a friend of King Mahendra Pallava much to his surprise, only to later betray him and destroy the artistic beauty of Kanchi. But the play really did capture the love, war, anger, agony and emotions through which each of the character goes through and how much change each of them encounter as they pass through various stages of life.

While the director opted out of using any huge setups/ stage works, still the play didn't fail to appeal to the audience. I felt, probably this is not such a story which demanded use of a stage spectacle, but at the same time adding a stage splendor would have made it a real grand treat to watch.

This experience has definitely kindled my interest and dream towards acting, but I really dont know how far or long this is going to last. Overall, I thought, I really enjoyed the play, and thought I should more often attend plays. While I was very sad that there is no other English play in September, I will be keeping an eye on the October calendar for sure. Its worth your money to see some good live performances rather than wasting so much money paying the multiplexes to watch movies.

And the biggest surprise to me was the announcement that came at the end that today is Kalki Krishnamoorthy's 108th birth anniversary. So it was kind of a tribute to the great man who was not only a writer/ journalist but also was a freedom fighter in his times.

The Nexgen Kids and the need of the hour...

"Give a brand new mobile to an eight year old and you'll get to learn a few new things that you could do with your mobile from them. "
"You sit thinking what was that model of the car that just passed by, and before your brain can even start querying your database theres a reply from the young one there explaining the model,, the engine power and its other variant models."

Yeah, I am talking about the next generation kids...Oops my cousins daughter Raksha (Age 3) would be angry if she heard me calling her a kid. She calls herself a big girl. She was here a few hours ago and as soon as she entered out house demanded me to give her a paper and some color pencils. With no small ones at home, I couldn't locate any color pencils and could only manage a few normal ones. She asked me what I would prefer for a drawing and I said, anything she wishes. She said she will tell me a story about a man called "do job" and along with the story she drew a nice cute little face built around the words "do job", the d and b as the ears, j as the nose etc. Then she came to my room and saw the white board I have installed. She dragged me around all the way from the kitchen to my room, demanded the markers, and asked me to move my cot near to the board so that she could climb on it to write it on it. Her mother came along and asked her if she would like to write the English alphabets on the board. She immediately obliged and started from A, B, C, D...and completed with X, Y, Z in a neatly managed two lines. My parents were amazed so much reminded me that even after reaching Class 1, I never used complete all the 26 properly and made me feel ridiculous.

I saw the video recorded on a personal camcorder on Raksha' s third happy birthday (as she calls it) a few days back, and noticed that its not only Raksha who is smart and intelligent; almost all of this generation kids are. She wanted to host a cute little party with cake cutting and stuff at home for her birthday and herself invited all her cutee little friends. I saw in the video the fun, and games all the little ones (yeah almost 12 of them) had during the course of the party and realized that with a great depth of exposure to city life, technology and what not, kids these days have become really much much smarter than we were during our days.

While its a very good sign for the future of our own society and country, theres also another side to the story with so many poor kids who don't get a chance to get, leave alone the exposure, even the basic education. Who is to be blamed? One side India is consistently clocking an economic growth of over a nine percentage, but still theres no respite for the poor. The economic divide in the society is, I believe, slowly increasing and is not going to do any good in the long run. What I mean by economic divide is the gap between the rich and the poor. While the government and corporates are taking some steps in defeating this disturbing growth, responsibility lies in each and every one of us, who enjoy the sweets of the so called Incredible India, to share and help our lesser privileged countrymen. As its said little droplets make a large ocean, one should not worry about how small is the contribution and continue with whatever one could manage. I think this is the need of the hour and hopefully the youngest country in the world rises to this challenge. I would make sure that I give my share towards this cause for sure...Will you? Think about it.

Some personal ramblings...

Today I watched the movie, "A Beautiful Mind". I felt like, Wow..!! Everyone knows the story almost but the way it has been shown was brilliant I thought. And acting, Russel Crowe was just amazing.

I thought I am always impressed by such movies, or books that I read or people I see and remain obsessed/ thinking about it/them for a long time until it slowly it dies down and I forget them. For eg. I logged into the blogspot and started writing a blog on the movie, characters, etc., so that I satisfy myself by sharing it to the outside world. But then slowly I got deviated from the topic as I started typing, and then..changed the post title to something I thought would be apt to what I am doing right now....probably I have got a little bit of Nash's mind for now...so let me take a break and then I'll catch up with the blog. :-p