Idle musings

     My wife went with her friends to watch "Parva" ("Chapter", loosely), a Kannada play directed by Prakash Belawadi based on the book of the same name by the author S. L. Bhyrappa. It is based on the Mahabharata, the Indian epic of a conflict between cousins. The book contains the "Bhagavad Geeta", the "Divine Song" in which the God Shri Krishna educates, admonishes, guides and exhorts his friend and cousin Arjuna to fight in a war, uttering philosophical words that ring true today, just as they did in that time. The Geeta has inspired many people, including Mahatma Gandhi. Even without the Geeta, the Mahabharata is a superb story. The book "Parva" explores characters and relationships and morality itself, stripping the divinity away from the Mahabharata and considering the characters as purely human, with all our jealousies, anger and egos included!     "Parva" the play is based on the book. My wife admired the play and sai...

      On Friday 15-May-2026, the newspaper supplement announced blandly that the famous Kannada actor and singer Dr. B. Jayashree and a group would be performing "Saavirada Sharanavva" on Saturday. Both my wife and I are fans of her musical talent. We also knew of her fame in theatre. It was natural that I booked two tickets - after checking with my wife!     The essence of the show was Dr. Jayashree talking about her life and experience in Kannada theatre interspersed with songs from her plays. For a couple of hours, I was transported to the world of theatre. The show was beautiful. The women singers accompanying Dr. B. Jayashree backed her up admirably, as did the men. The accompanying musicians were also good.     In the rest of this blog post, I will be stating what Dr.Jayashree said, but this is only from my memory. I am sure that the words were different. Also, I am translating what she said in Kannada to English. I did not use my mobile phone at...

On Saturday, 05-Oct-2019, I read a review of a play called "Rage and beyond: Irawati's Gandhari" in the newspaper. In the afternoon, I asked my wife: "The tickets for the play are available online. Shall we go?" Her reply was spontaneous: "It is rare that you say you want to see a movie or drama !. Let us go !" I feel that the word "play" is a misnomer for "Rage and beyond: Irawati's Gandhari". It is injustice to call such a creative performance "only" a play. I prefer to call it a dance enriched drama instead, in this blog post. At around 7:05 p.m., we found ourselves claiming the tickets booked online at Ranga Shankar. Soon, we were allowed upstairs. We sat in the centre, in the left end of the row. There must have been around eighty of us as audience. Directly in front of us on the stage, illuminated by a red stripped hue of spotlight from above was a neatly folded blindfold. Curiously, this was placed outside the ...