Thursday, September 30, 2010

Women, ah!

Last weekend I went and watched The Vagina Monologues and I must say it felt weird. I will also say at some point in this post that it was brave and new age (it has been around since the past eight years too) but the first thing that struck me about it was that it felt - weird.

Note that I do not say it was weird, but that it felt weird. Hearing the word being said out loud, so many times, like it was a perfectly legitimate word, insinuating that the utterer of such a word was neither deranged nor an incorrigible pervert. What a notion!

On a serious note, it was a series of monologues, dialogues - all stories depicting a certain theme. An exasperated housewife, an elderly lady, a young girl, a sex-worker, a victim of rape. And needless to say all these themes had something to do with sex and the V-word.

The acting was immense. It was unconscious and funny, the imitations were awesome - the dialects, tones, accents - Parsi, Marathi, Punjabi, Brooklyn - all perfect.

I do recommend it to you ladies and yes, to you too, boys.

On a different note, Marilyn Monroe once famously said - I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it. 

As a working woman, I find myself trying to be a man sometimes. Not a lot, but it's there - the consciousness of the corporate world being a man's playground and of me - being a spade among clubs. Some people would put a different spin on it - in this age of everybody wanting to play the diversity card, a woman has a better and brighter chance of climbing the ladder etc. I am thinking it all boils down to celebrating the differences - I may not be able to joke with my boys, my team, with the same rambunctiousness and raunchiness as the average guy, but there are ways in which my unique womanly touch does manifest itself. I guess it is about recognizing that and being comfortable with it.

Some good news though. The CEO of a consulting company just recently commented on a study that his firm has done on the strength of the female economy and its influencing power on major purchasing decisions, saying that companies that are ignoring the woman consumer are digging their own graves.

That's right, Mister. You don't put an online payment option for the electricity bill, being Neanderthal enough to think that women nowadays have the time to ferret out post boxes and drop boxes and such like to deposit payments, then I will not purchase electricity from you ever.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

A new beginning

She ran into the building, only just managing to register how impossibly tall it was. Last she had been in this part of the world, structures that stretched a 1000 feet into the stratosphere, were a rarity.

She came abreast a bank of ten tall high-powered elevators - opening-shutting-beeping, making the world aware of their super-tech presence.

Immediately stepping into the one that opened up, she looked around for the floor buttons and could not find any. And then out of nowhere, a flap clicked open in the wall to her left and a head sprang out. Yes, a head. After her heart had crawled all the way back from the back of her throat to the chest area, she noticed that it was not a human head.

"I am the lift genie. Which floor please". Trilled the head in what can only be described as a robot's version of a sing and a song.

Shaily was stunned. Admittedly, she had spent the last five years in Motihari, trying to teach advanced and efficient techniques of breeding cows to farmers, but she had no idea that the world had transformed so much. And this was Bombay, Mumbai. The city she had mostly grown up in. The city which she claimed to know like the back of her hand. The city which she had thought would never be 'India's Shanghai' in her lifetime at least. And here it seemed to be making Shanghai's high-rises look like caves..

"Don't worry, I am here to help. Which floor please".

At this statement, Shaily looked around trying to locate a camera perhaps, through which some person someplace might be monitoring her reactions and accordingly feeding in speech to the robot. Anyway, she was getting late, so she looked at the head and said - thirty-five.

"Thank-you. We will have you there in no time at all".

The lift gave a lurch and started ascending speedily and suddenly like somebody had set its rear-end on fire. She looked at the mirror and saw a weather-beaten, but still attractive thirty-five year old face. Maybe slightly disoriented at the moment. But the determination shone through nevertheless, to clinch this one.

A talk

It's a tough time my love
I fear I will melt away
Under the strong gaze of the sun
During these round the clock days


The mind is fiddling
With doubts anew
Peace is a bird
That long since flew


I need some fearlessness
Or at least some devil-may-care
To get back to strength
And go where eagles dare

Monday, September 13, 2010

Play - One on One

Today I went to watch a play called - One on One at the Tata Experimental Theater, Nariman Point.

This experimental theater is a smallish one with maximum seating of around a hundred people. Which is probably enough. The ticket prices are reasonable, the crowd is well-behaved and the plays vary from being serious bringers-on of Why-did-I-subject-myself-to-this to This-is-exquisite-and-I-want-to-marry-it.

The play today was one of the later variety. The concept itself was delicious - a collage of ten minute acts written by Mumbai's best playwrights on topics which intrigue/annoy/delight them about the India we live in today. To top that, the acting and no doubt - direction was superb, in some cases rising above the material.

Some of the notable performances were by Anand Tiwari, who is the guy from the Tata Tea Jaago Re commercial and some motley roles in various movies, Rajit Kapur aka Byomkesh Bakshi, who has come a long way since his cycle-riding-dhoti-wearing days and Amit Mistry, who plays a timorous terrorist-batchmate of Kasab's going through a crisis of identity.

The transitions between the pieces were made swiftly and silently and the actors seemed to know the audience well, successfully manipulating it into laughing and clapping at all the right places.

I highly recommend it, not only for its obvious artistic brilliance but also the high entertainment value. Who says artsy stuff, that too the very niche experimental kind, cannot be paisa-vasool? Who, really, needs a Dabangg?