Another Busy Working Day and Seeing 'Andhadhun' with Shahnaz

Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Bombay

Another Busy Working Day and Seeing Andhadhun with Shahnaz

     Namaste from Bombay!
     I am on a roll. Suddenly, I seem to be getting so much work done! Which is as it should be--its what they call a 'good' busy!
     So I was up at 5.00 am and blogging. But I made things swift this morning as I needed to get to the city in time to do a scheduled interview at 11.00 am at the NCPA. Accordingly, I washed, dressed for the gym, gulped down a cup of coffee and left to workout for an hour. A quick shower later, I dressed again to go to the city, had my breakfast of muesli and then made myself a quick sandwich--cheddar cheese with Pesto cream cheese and mayo--sounds weird but it was great!
     I hopped on a bus, then took a train and then found the special bus that goes from Churchgate in a shuttle service directly to the NCPA--it drops me right outside the premises! The end result was that my entire journey--door to door--took only an hour and 5 minutes! Yes!
     I carried out the interview with Dr. Cavas Bilimoria right away at the NCPA--he is not only the in-house medical doctor but he is a violinist who used to play with the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. I had a lovely long interview with him during which he introduced me to a Kazakstani woman named Aida, a pianist, who is the piano teacher at the 'conservatoire' that has been set up at the NCPA to train budding musicians. Naturally, I made an appointment with her and will be interviewing her on Friday.
      That done, I went straight to the Box office and picked up tickets for the HDLive screenings from the National Theater (London) of two plays: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale to which my friends Shahnaz and Nafisa will be accompanying me. In fact, Nafisa will be bringing her friend, a person who teaches Shakespeare, who also wanted to come. It seems that I have created a small group of people with similar likes to do the cultural rounds of Bombay!
   Next I adjourned to the Library where I spent the next four hours. I am researching Theater Group of Bombay at the moment and will have to set up my interviews soon with its stalwart members. It is nice to walk down Memory Lane to the years that I remember best when their activity was strong and I was so deeply involved as a theater critic for one or two Bombay periodicals. That was how Chriselle got her initiation into show biz--accompanying me on the various theater shows I covered as a very young reporter.
     I stopped for my sandwich lunch at 1.30 pm and then continued working steadily till 4.00 pm. I am marching ahead--getting a lot of reading done and taking notes on my iPad--the best thing I ever bought as I also have a tiny light keyboard that attaches to it and allows me to type really fast on my iPad. I also stopped to fix up appointments with other active personnel at the NCPA for Friday and shall, most likely, be setting up more interviews for next week as well.  Thursday is a bank holiday in India and most places will be closed. It will give me a chance to catch up with my own work and then give Dad a hand with his paper work.
     By the time I took public transport and came home it was 5.30pm and I was ready for a cup of tea and some chocolate walnut biscuits and then I left immediately for Dad's. After a quick visit with Russel, Dad and I went to church for the Novena and for Mass.
    Right after Mass, I climbed up Pali Hill to meet Shahnaz's rick as she headed to Le Reve cinema to see Andhadhun--she told me it was a murder mystery with a comic edge and she wondered if I would join her.  I was game.  I was seeing a Hindi movie after ages. It turned out to be a good example of 'dark humor'--Theatre of the Absurd, if you like. About 3/4 of it was very absorbing--you just didn't know what turns the plot would take. Sadly, the last 1/4 descended to pure farce. It became too much like a masala Hindi movie. The theater was absolutely packed! I was starving during the film--so I picked up a Tandoori Chicken Sandwich during the intermission--and if there was any chicken in the sandwich, it was doing a very good job at keeping itself invisible!
     Back in a rickshaw, Shahnaz dropped me off at my place before heading home. I was simply too tired to do anything either than get into bed and pass out.
     Until tomorrow...