Poetry

i live
coz father is dead
dead or meat
balls is stinking sacriledge
pudding is numb

who goes catastrophe
we we you? he
rhapsody of clouds
bursting water
grave my womb
forced death

people say that
there is a man stuck in my throat



"i would like to thank Jimmy for inspiring me"

-- Shooooooooooooshaaaaaaaaaaa

silent SCREAM

i lie asleep curled up in my bed
comfortably numb

no worries
no problems
no apprehensions
the embodiment of life
a symbol of love

i eat
i breathe
i dream
lost in a reverie

SUDDENLY
something jabs at my side
i scream in pain
SILENTLY
a rude awakening
needles poking at me
a knife cuts through my soul
BLEEDING ME
i send up a sigh to the skies

people say that an unborn child goes straight to heaven

---Jimmy

Shadow puppetry and vegetarianism

So its around four in the evening, and I am waiting on the outside steps / seats of the amphitheatre / badminton court in alliance francais (god help me with the spellings, I have not even learnt the correct pronunciation yet). There is this workshop I am to attend at six, but since I am exceptionally anal retentive about being early more than being on time (which I can afford to do on account of being completely jobless in life) I have reached there at four (plus the coffee machine broke down at anokhi, again). Hmmm I just realized I seem to have more afterthoughts than thoughts. That being yet another example of being distracted at all times. I know it’s a surprise I ever passed school.

Now this is a technique I hope will help me get back into focus and address the topic at hand. This is quite simple really and is something you all can try at home. Change para’s. see simple aint it. Hopefully by incorporating this technique you will be able to eliminate the distracting thought and get back to the issue at hand.

I just realized that I have once again drifted off into yet another topic, i.e. explaining tricks of the trade rather than getting back. Hmmmmmmmmm Did it again didn’t I.

Why don’t I just leave space for a couple of para’s to make my mind believe that I can always come back to it later and move on with the story.










So its around four in the evening, and I am waiting on the outside steps/seats the amphitheatre/badminton court in alliance francais (for apologies and other such references please refer to the top). There is this workshop I am to attend at six, but since I am early I am just sitting around, going through old messages on my mobile, afraid of messaging anyone because then ill have to do that mobile chit chat which I was in no mood of ( no coffee that day you see). Anyway there is this group that’s setting up this massive cuboidal room thingy. It’s basically made up of metal frames that form a cuboid, a room for simplicity, covered on all sides by black cloth and a strip of white cloth running across its length facing the audience.

Now this structure is smack center of this stage area, but surprisingly facing its back to the concrete steps or seats. They had chairs laid out in front, what a waste of space I thought and then realized that if they set it in way such as to play to the audience seated on these steps, what they do inside this makeshift room can be seen by the number of people using the main building.

In any case, curious about everything as I am, (plus I was running low on phone battery so couldn’t continue checking old messages) I decided to go behind this structure and meet these seven men who were obviously way too busy.

*hang on be right back, tummy growling, must go
investigate fridge, cant type, need sustenance*

yay yay back now, bless the person who invented dosai maav, the many uses of which I shall go into some other time with before and after photos too, muahahahahahah curious?????? Well then you will just have to come back to read up on the many scintillating uses of dosai maav.

Where was I, oh yeah, structure set, battery low, yada yada yada, busy men, heheh busy men, too many weird thoughts. Come to think of it, there really is nothing funny that. Ewwwww. Just had an unwanted image form in my head. Quick, must change para

So there are these busy men……………………….. still not
happening…….

This is probably where another technique helps, word replacement, when a word or a phrase brings too many unwanted thoughts, then we must change it to something that means the same thing but doesn’t necessarily have the same effect on the warped brain in question.

So there are these seven performing folk artists, and I haven’t mis-spelt folk, and no its not someone saying the all familiar suggestion with an accent either.

Lord help me.

Maybe I should just try and finish the story some other time as everything seems to find its way to one topic.

I am so so so sorry for all those of you who were expecting an interesting and informative write up on shadow puppetry and vegetarianism that you could read and discuss over coffee, but I shall not leave you all high and dry either. www.google.com
Go pig out and get all the info ya need.

Cheers


Shall leave you with something a wise man once said. Mary had a little lamb, and some mint sauce. Bon appetit. That’s French, as in alliance francais where I was just a few days ago. So it’s around four in the evening………………………….

-- EEEEEEEswar

Ultrasonic Thoughts

I am a new entrant to Blogosphere and I have been studying and attempting "to fit in" over the last couple of months. And I must say that initiative has caused the formation of this blog site of evam. Happened on a saturday i think. KK reacted enthusiastically "what the hell are you talking about?!".... and with that blessing, i have seen this site grow. Grow? Well..kinda. There aint nothing here but photos and press write-ups. Yes...i know...that’s boring and so "not-blog". So i send a stern SMS to KK, on a saturday i think, about how he is not blogging and to start writing and make it more active etc etc. He retorted, “if you are so smart, loser, why don’t you write us something??!"...actually he didn’t say it. He delegated "the process" to one of his 7 dwarfs.

Hitler Karuna called on my mobile and delivered a telegram -
"Article wanted from you. For evam, blog. For Friday launch. Submission on Saturday evening. Any rubbish will be discarded and writer shot".
Later another evam team mate, Vijay called and congratulated me on winning a free Webcam that was all mine for Rs.645/-.

So i have a goal now. To write a blog. What do i write about, i wondered. In fact i complained. I could write about past evam plays but our very own Saaransh has it on his blog called "left-right-centre-down under-up over" or something like that. Maybe i could write on events and all but Kiruba already has them on his blog. Movie reviews? Lazy Geek rules at it. Then i thought i could write about my performance on stage with evam. Like me as the scintillating "Spiro" in DEATH, or the extremely well-played comic "Vinnie" in THE ODD COUPLE or the double action in Python Hysssteria or the stylized entry in BAREFOOT IN THE PARK. But humility is of utmost importance in blogging. SO I can’t talk about myself here. Besides it aint in my character. Since i couldn’t find any relevant topic to write on, i decided that I would write about dolphins.

Dolphins are a great species. Contrary to popular belief that its a mixture of "a Smiley + plastic + mini airplane", it is in fact a mammal. And that means, it has sex and lays offspring. Baby dolphins are called DOLLS and are a great delicacy in Japan. Dolphins are known to hunt in groups. A technique used by wolves and alligators. They spot a school of fish. Then they drive them to a particular spot, they go round and round creating a cylinder of fish, then using their powerful ultrasonic sound waves or something, they stun their prey. Dolphins are known to have huge ego problems especially when it comes to SPEED. They are known to overtake speeding boats and ships to prove a point. Dolphins might be able to predict illness in humans, act as spies for the government and might actually have their own religion.

----
This article was contributed by Manoj Kumar. Legend has it that he runs **strawberries**.com
(Ed: - all offensive words have been changed to **strawberries**) :P

The new face (...well almost)

At evam, the cornerstone of our work has been to provide an avenue for entertainment that provides both long-lasting and instant gratification to our audience. Some may ask as to how is it possible to attain these two conflicting goals. To answer that question, let us consider the example of evam Indrajit. As a play, evam Indrajit has a number of instances that provides the instant gratification that was spoken about earlier. For example, the scene where Aunty tells the writer that all his questions about his existence would be solved if he got married. As a part of the audience one is bound to laugh or at least titter because it is a statement we can relate to-the same scene having been staged at some stage of our lives.

Diametrically opposite are the feelings that the writer invokes in us when he says that Indrajit is someone who sees life realistically and yet dreams about it romantically. It’s a statement that lingers in our senses long after the lights go out. We lie back and think of lost ideals tempered by the vagaries of living in today's age.

It is going to be our effort to use this space to discuss the various issues that life throws at us. Yet why use this space for such a purpose when we can use this to just keep our audience informed about the happenings at evam. It is our belief that theatre in a larger sense is an alter ego of life itself and to perform theatre it becomes a pre-requisite to study life. The issues could be as random as Ivan's submissive nature, Mark's problem of letting go, Felix's indulgence in self-pity, Paul's stuffed-shirtedness to Auntie’s constant ramblings about food and to find the pattern in this madness of the four letter word: Life.

---Saraaaaaaaansh Mehta