Before I begin, thanks everyone who turned up. Thank you so much. Muaah.

Alright, here I go. I don’t know about the acting bit, but I loved it when Prachi threw that look of disbelief at me when I told her it actually was me who was answering my own questions while playing Akrur Chowdhary, the ventriloquist who talked to an invisible guy, on stage. I actually pulled of ventriloquism. Heh. Nice. She thought Bala was shouting from Green Room. I can make for a good ventriloquist I guess.

I was kinda nervous yesterday and let few words slip here and there, but more or less I managed to pull off a sufficiently tight performance. The body language could definitely have been used more effectively. With time, I shall improve.

What everyone loved yesterday was the last part of my story where I played the land-lord. The bihari accent and the body language that came out for the land-lord Suresh Mastuddi, struck a wonderful cord with everyone out there (though sadly, the turn-out was unsatisfactory). All in all it was fun playing four characters and creating five different voices in twenty minutes.

Retell Redone was obviously better than Retell and no, not because I was there in one of the shows (LOL, wish I could say that though) but because this time they/we (whatever applies ), had nice music and vocals going on. Ipe on flute, Varun on veena and Jaya on vocals added a lot of class to the entire two hours show. If you missed this stuff, you missed something man, you really did. In the review for Retell, I had written how Bala could have done better. In Retell Redone, you should have seen him; so cute. But Sumukhi, of course was just the best! Bow to her! Her acting simply touched the heart once again, because as always it came out like so much of a real thing. Anaro Bano has to be the cutest Iraninan mother.

Ok. Done. Time to move on. I still feel like narrating the entire script to me every half an hour. The play season is not going to end for me. See me in Pondicherry coming weekend playing the role of Prince Mamalla in Gowri Ramnarayan’s Flame of the Forest.

Sivakami, in kutto ke saamne mat naachna. Mai aa raha hoon Pulikesi, mai aa raha hoon.

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No one is safe today. The incident happened on a busy street right next to Valluvar kottam Police Station, day before yesterday, in broad daylight. I had just come out from a house that I had been to as part of my search for a decent place to live in Chennai. So I was walking on the road and suddenly, a dark ugly crow, came flying down from behind me, descended enough to brush past my left ear and then it rose up again to go sit on one of those electric cables running over the street. It’s claws had scratched the tender skin. The ear started bleeding.

This was shit man, crow-shit. I mean, I had seen my toe bleed, my head bleed, my arm bleed and even my dog’s ass bleed but my ear? WTF! Fuck the flying beast and may it never get to feast on any dead rat or dog, ever in its life. I almost had the temptation to rush to an ammunition shop, buy an air-gun along with a box of million dodges, and in the next one hour kill all the dirty motherfucking crows of Valluvar kottam. What had I done to deserve a bleeding ear?

Shit, wait a second. Was the crow trying to tell me something? In the ear? Shit! Crow-shit!

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The following is what i wrote on this date, last year and every word of it holds true even today.

I wonder what kind of people read posts which carry such titles!

I won’t write anything more about any of these than what is already known. But today, if you ask me, I will tell you that they are like the three legs of a tripod. What is a friendship that lacks love? And what is a life that lacks friendship?

Today is a special day. And I dedicate it to my best friend who knows who he is. I don’t know, nor do I care when the rest of the world celebrates friendship day. For me, it’s today. Happy friendship day to me.

I recently discussed how I have many best friends but no one best friend. But this one friendship referred to in the the lines above will always remain special to me. No, I am not going to talk about the reasons. Sorry.

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…in the last show of Retell Redone at 7 PM this Sunday (29th June 2008) at Alliance France, Nungambakkam Chennai. Tickets come for 100 bucks (50 for students with i-cards) and can be picked up directly at the venue. If you want me to block it for you, let me know and I will gladly do so.

Retell Redone is nothing but Retell being redone. LOL! Okay, alright that was a dumb statement to make but anyway.. so yeah.. I had blogged about Retell earlier. I had also reviewed the play. The play consists of six short stories, one of which I am doing now (for just one show). Ironically, I had rated Bhuto 2/10 the last time I saw the play. LOL, seriously, what can be more ironical than doing some stuff that you yourself didn’t like?

You know what, let me just be frank and do some self-analysis here. Why did I accept this role?

Varun had performed Bhuto in the previous shows and will be doing it for the other three shows of Retell Redone (totally there are two shows on Sat and two shows on Sunday). Now, he has been doing theater for quite some time now (quite some years actually) and he no doubt, is a good actor. So am I trying to prove that I will be able to do better acting than him? LOL! I really don’t think so.

Forget about controlling my body-language (over which most of these theater guys have beautiful command), I am busy most of the times simply trying to speak normally without any vague accent creeping in. I am an actor, I know it, and pretty natural one on that (heh, how much more can one praise oneself? ), but theater needs much more than just acting dude. Like every art, there is a lot to be learnt. So well, yeah, coming back to the original question, why the fuck did I still pick up the role then?

Heh, the answer is simple da. Varun ain’t free on Sunday evening!

When Bala, the director, asked me (I don’t know why he did that indirectly though), if I would be interested in doing that one show, I just said yes. Now, the tricky question is this: is it justified to promote my performance, just because ‘I’ am doing one show, even when I’m performing something that has already been performed by someone who, in my own opinion is obviously a better actor, and especially when I myself did not like Bhuto?

But what to do? Ego re! I can only wish that you guys who come to watch me, don’t get disappointed. Although I so wish so, I actually have no bloody reason in this world to believe why that should happen. All I know is that I am going to have fun doing that on stage. All I hope for is that you guys have fun too.

Hey, wait a second. There is another reason too. Shit, how could I forget Sumukhi! Did you check out the review by any chance? If you did, then you must have read this observation that I had to make for another story performed in Retell, with Sumukhi in the lead:

Pomegranate lady and her sons: The 100 bucks that I paid to watch Retell was worth it all just for this single story.

So, the best thing about turning up for the show would be that, even if Bhuto still sucks, you still get value for your money. Now, tell me my dear phrand, do you have any reason not to show up? Chalo, map shap dekh lo neeche aur aa jaana time pe. And if it makes you happy, rehearsals are going good.

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I don’t know how but I ended up watching loads of time-lapse videos on youtube today. About two years ago, I had shot a time-lapse video of myself making a pencil portrait. Today I felt like shooting once more (bro has finally returned my cheap camera after two years). There is just one difference. Unlike the last time, I did not have the enthusiasm to draw grid-lines. So yeah, I went ahead with total freehand, bindaas, and must say, didn’t do a bad job at all. Enjoy the video though what else it is but chumma shelf-shag.

Update (June 27, 2008): the portrait

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