Russel Has Physiotherapy and Bombay Jazz at the Prithvi Theater

Saturday, March 16, 2019

Bombay

Russel Has Physiotherapy and Bombay Jazz at the Prithvi Theater

     Namaste from Bombay!

     So, as if all the aspects of my life that I am juggling are not adequate, weight-loss has been added to the list! I am quite arduously avoiding carbs now and not consuming them out of duty—for example, Valerie’s tiffin offerings although delicious and devoid of carbs (as she has been told not to send me rice or chapattis) always includes potatoes! She includes them liberally in her curries and her vegetable dishes! I am now leaving them out when I serve myself even if I have to quell guilt pangs at the wastage.

     What’s also nice is that I am waking up later these days—which means that I am getting more sleep. Today, up at 6.30 am, I finished blogging (it was a short post) and rustled up my breakfast of muesli and coffee. Then, without wasting too much time, I left for Dad’s to be present when Russel had his physiotherapy session with Valerian. He tried hard to get Russel to tackle stairs, but Russel simply refuses. He is now walking with our assistance from one room to the next—sans the walker—but he is a very unhappy camper and does not want to go ahead and do the exercises.  Dad and I have now decided to make a visit once again to the specialist orthopedist who had once ruled out a knee replacement to see if, in light of the developments of the last two years, he would consider doing knee replacement surgery for Russel.  I continue to storm heaven and ask everyone to join me in doing so.

     After the surgery, I sat with Dad and looked at two of his bills that needed paying. I told him I would pay them online to eliminate his having to go personally. I managed to pay the electricity bill quite easily but had real trouble with the telephone one.  It will mean that I have to go personally to Bandra Post Office to do so at the same time that I need to go Bandra Police Station to get a form that will help us register Dad’s new Man Friday. I will probably do this on Tuesday as Dad’s dental surgery is slotted for Monday. 

     It was almost lunch time by the time I finished—so I had lunch: dal, meatball curry and a few vegetables. My weight is still falling on this low carb diet—the only carbs I have are at breakfast (either one broon or muesli which contains oats and dried fruit which are the two sugar elements). In the afternoon, I continued to make calls to try to get interviews going forward (and am not succeeding much at all). Without my laptop, there is only so much I can do on my small Ipad even with its mini keyboard. I managed to draft lesson plans for two Writing courses and then I had a pot of tea with a few nuts. I carried the nuts with me as I got dressed and left for my evening’s appointment.

Seeing Bombay Jazz at the Prithvi Theater:

     My evening’s appointment was set. Actor Denzil Smith had left a ticket for me to see the play    in which he has the lead role. It was set for 6.00pm at the Prithvi and since Shahnaz is too tied up these days with year-end closing of accounts that she is now handling ever since her husband passed away, seven months ago, I went alone. I decided that I would take the bus there and I found that the 56 goes most conveniently from right outside my building on Perry Cross Road to the theater. The bus came in exactly two minutes and inside I hopped for a nice ride that saw me sailing towards Juhu and surveying the passing scene outside my window. 

     It is amazing how much the suburbs have developed since I was a teenager who used to go with her gal pals to the beach to hang out, eat bhel puri and kulfi on the sands, get a camel ride, poke around the shops and get home. Today, the area is amidst the most affluent in the city and designer boutiques line the water front, upscale eateries have sprouted like mushrooms and the rich and famous hang out—they are a bit like London’s Sloan Rangers of the 1960s and 70s? As for the beach, My God! It was simply crawling with people—no one in the water (that is not the Indian way of enjoying a beach) but hordes were on the sands—eating the air, as they say colloquially in Hindi. How fondly I remember the good old days when Dad, Mum and I would take Chriselle to the beach on Saturday mornings and she would frolic on the sand which she would have entirely to her self.  Those were the days!  

     Once I hopped off the bus, I found Janki Kutir very easily—it is the compound in which Prithvi Theater was constructed 40 years ago. It was the brainchild of English actor Jennifer Kendall Kapoor who married the Indian actor Shashi Kapoor. Both of them being from illustrious thespian families, it was not surprising that they decided to build a theater on family-owned property and name it for Prithvi Raj Kapoor, Shashi’s father.  Today, the third generation, Jennifer and Shashi’s children, Kunal and Sanjana, run the show. 

     I have been going to the Prithvi ever since it opened, 40 years ago—so my own education in theatrical arts is closely tied up with this venue. It was the hippest suburban place to be seen at, 40 years ago, when its cafe made history as the first place in Bombay to serve real Irish coffee—with real Irish whisky nestling at the bottom and a thick crown of frothy cream at the top. I find that the scene has not changed much. Suburban hipsters still hang out at the cafe even if they are not headed inside the theater—which is tiny and built in amphitheatrical style.

    I met Blossom Coutinho outside (her husband Etienne directed the play) and Merlin De Souza too (she is the Music Director). Some stalwarts of the Bombay Jazz world happened to be present such as Louis Banks who pioneered Jazz beats in Bombay through his genius on the keyboards. I picked up my ticket from the Box office, then took my place in a queue that had formed outside as there is free seating.

Bombay Jazz:

     The Play was inspired by a book called Taj Mahal Fox Trot written by Naresh Fernandes whom I interviewed last week. It was written by Ramu Ramanathan, directed by Etienne Coutinho and stars just two actors: Denzil Smith who played an aged jazz artist looking back on his life while on his death bed and Rhys Sebastian D’Souza, Merlin’s son, a saxophonist, who comes to meet the legend as a fledgling musician seeking a mentor. The play was a lovely combination of audio-visual techniques—there were a number of characters that appeared on a black and white screen that projected their reminiscences of the artist (who remained unnamed) as Rhys blossoms from a new artist to an accomplished one under the guidance of this man who recalls his faded glory. It was minimalist in every sense—just two actors, just a barely discernible set that involved a single easy chair and just one prop—Rhys’ saxophone. The music in the background and played by Rhys on stage was splendid. I particularly loved the old Bollywood classic tunes of the 1950s—Oh Gori, Gori, Bambai Meri Jaan and others which I know so well from my Bombay childhood. What I am finding fascinating and ironic, given my Bombay Catholic childhood and the fact that I know Bombay Catholic culture, is that those very same Bombay Catholics who, through the decades, turned their noses up at Bollywood filmi music and gaanaas and only patronized Western music, did not know (and neither did I) that the people producing that music were Bombay Catholics—Goans and Anglo-Indians who knew staff notation and were the only ones who could score the compositions of the jazz greats of this city and read them! For these Catholic jazz greats were the ones composing these glorious Bollywood classic songs of the past—not music directors such as Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Shankar-Jaikishen or the Burmas (R.D and S.D.) or Manna Dey who got all the credit! I also loved the jazz classics such as Dave Brubeck’s Take Five that Rhys played on stage. I thought the script was good (could have been better), but the condensation of Naresh’s research into this format could not have been more creatively done. 

     Etienne was sitting right behind me, Louis Banks was sitting right beside me! It was a very special seat indeed and I felt deeply honored to be in the presence of such genius. I did not have the chance to go backstage to congratulate Denzil (and now I wish I had done), but I will call him tomorrow to tell him how good he was. 

     I was so glad I went to the play and got a chance to see what contemporary writers and actors are doing in Bombay inasmuch as I am talking to the old timers and to the folks who knew those who have passed away already. I am really looking forward now to chatting with people like Sanjana and Kunal Kapoor who run Prithvi, to Shahnaz Patel, Rahul Da Cunha and Rajit Kanpur who comprise Rage and to Naseeruddin and Ratna Shah who founded Motley. This will bring my research up to the current times and with these interviews and my background reading, I feel as if I am in a good position to tackle the writing of a monograph on Western Performing Arts in Bombay.

     I hailed a passing rickshaw and was home for exactly Rs. 100! Dinner was a chicken sandwich and the last of my dal. I watched a movie Isn’t It Romantic? On Netflix which was absolute drivel—please do not waste your time. I read a little bit of my novel by Helen Simonson before I felt sleepy and went to bed.

     Until tomorrow...