Quasar Thakore Padamsee

One of the end-of-year theatre traditions is an SMS from Akarsh Khurana requesting the top 5 plays people have seen for the year for his article in e-zine The Script (www.qtpthescript.blogspot.com). Everyone springs alive online, offline, or over chai, trying to recall what plays we have enjoyed over the last year. Invariably our “first draft” lists are dominated by what we have seen recently.

Satyadev Dubey (1936-2011)
Pandit Satyadev Dubey passed away quietly on Saturday morning in a hospital room — an unusual exit for a fire cracker of a man.

While I write this I’m sitting at the cultural nerve centre of Mumbai — the Prithvi Theatre Café. It is an unremarkable place. Being open air, it is hot and humid. The seats are functional, not comfortable. The food is neither special nor cheap.

I woke up Wednesday morning to the news that Partap Sharma was no more. Although he had been ill for a number of years, it was still quite a shock.

A few hours after you read this, I will be opening Mind Walking in Bombay.

There is something to be said for the organisation and systems in place within the British arts circuit. Recently I have been witness to it first hand on a play called Mind Walking.

I write this from cold and breezy Brighton; my base for a few weeks while working Mind Walking which will tour Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai in November.

Have you seen our ‘digs’ yet? Am sure you’ll like them” asked Peter D’Souza, part of the Mind Walking cast that I had just met after getting off a plane from Gatwick Airport.

The other night I managed to get a seat for the housefull performance of Quaff Theatre’s The Real Inspector Hound.

Three lovely young ladies turned up at my door step the other day to talk about the “sub culture of theatre” for a college project. The term caught me quite unaware. Yes what we do is “cultural”, but thinking of oneself as part of a culture required quite a mind shift.