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METROSCAPE
Colour Your Kitchen
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| THE COOK'S SETTEE: Udge with his works (above);
art appreciation at Indigo |
Visual stunts always stir a response ... and
more so in a culturally impoverished season. In the middle of a dive-for-cover
monsoon, Elle Décor, the home décor magazine tied up with
the Mumbai's Indigo Restaurant for a exhibition on kitchen art with the
plea "that the kitchen can no longer be the most neglected part of
the house". The 150-objects, the result of an arranged marriage of
appliances and artfulness, comprised spice jars, kettles, wicker baskets,
wooden cupboards and plates and bowls painted by 21 artists, including
kitsch-specialist Meera Devidayal and Pune youngsters Prashant Hirlekar,
Amrit Kobal and Nitin Udge. Many of the artifacts, like old refrigerators,
painted chopping boards and antique stoves and sewing machines, had purely
an ornamental value, and, as curator Meher Bijlani pointed out, had been
gleaned from junk.
That seemed to improve their appeal. Almost 50
per cent of the articles scattered around the Italian restaurant were
sold during the preview itself to wowing customers like socialites Queenie
Singh and Gauri Puhoomal. At least something is moving in the Mumbai monsoon.
-Himanshi
Dhawan
Tabla Tale
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| PERCUSSION PEOPLE: Ghosh and his Raag Rhythm Band |
This is a story about a spirited, young girl
who suddenly discovers she has cancer. She undergoes treatment and one
day finds herself completely cured. A simple tale? Not quite if you try
to tell it with drums, as tabla maestro Shankar Ghosh did in Kolkata last
week. His new outfit, the Raag Rhythm Band, picked a fusion of ragas and
percussions-an assortment of drums, including the Cuban thumba and the
Egyptian Pandeiro and of course, the tabla-to give shape to Wellwisher.
On debut night, the band played only two 20-minute pieces. But Ghosh,
66, is thinking ahead: he wants to popularise classical music through
rhythm. "People will take to ragas more willingly if it's mixed with
percussion," he says.
The ensemble concept isn't new to Ghosh. In
the 1960s, he founded an all-skins outfit called the Calcutta Drum Orchestra,
an idea he got from Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hurt. The idea of putting
the ragas came later. Now Ghosh is planning to coopt a lead guitarist
and a saxophonist who will "both play ragas, but keeping the formation
of the raga intact". Something like Imon on a 12-string. Might just
work.
-Labonita
Ghosh
Playing All Roles
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| THEATRICS OF MEDIATION: Sinha with Amar Babaria
and Gayatri Rawal in Pati Patni Aur Mein |
A play rehearsal was an unlikely fallout of the
Tehelka scam. Just when coordinating Shatrughan Sinha's busy schedule
for Pati, Patni Aur Mein was proving impossible, the Parliament session
was called off for a month giving the actor enough time to practise his
cues and make his theatre debut.
The two-act Hindi comedy directed by Ramesh
Talwar, opened at the Nehru Centre in Mumbai and is about day-to-day marital
quarrels, with Sinha (or Main) donning the role of a domestic mediator.
But it's only the contemporary references, like "the Monkey Man"
or "You can't make demands like Jayalalitha's with a face like Mamata's",
that add some edginess to Manohar Katdhare's otherwise stultified script.
Sinha, who began the play with a 40-minute monologue, however, seemed
pleased with the result and plans to take the play to Indore, Pune and
finally the mother of all destinations, the UK.
-Himanshi
Dhawa
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