Shakespeareans Meet Pragya

Pragya Thakur, of Shakespeare and Company network on Ryze.com, came to Bombay to meet us Shakespeareans. So I organized a meeting of Shakespeare and Company members in Bombay. In attendance were Archana Kombrambail, Jane Bhandari (who runs a poetry group called Loqations), Shilpa (a television script writer), Anil Siqueira (my former boss), Prabhakar, Ravishankar C, Maya Sriram (who is working on a novel), Pallavi Bhattacharya (a freelance journalist), Pushpa Moorjani (a writer and teacher), Raamesh Gowri Raghavan (a research scientist and writer), besides my own inflated self and Pragya's husband Anil and her pretty daughter Anoushka. (Sorry, if I missed anyone). Well, the whole thing was worth agonizing over.

Was a bit nervous how the event would go, as the venue we had decided upon, the hotel where Pragya was to stay, was shedding chunks plaster from the ceiling. So Ravishankar, in charge of Pragya's hotel bookings (to save Pragya from falling plaster), had her booking shifted to another hotel, and since that wasn't convenient for all, I had to shift the meeting to our favorite haunt, the cosy and cool Tea Center at Churchgate where we usually meet. It went well, reinforcing the belief that these things take an energy of it's own, if one is set on doing it. Hardly four people confirmed their attendance and the rest had to be cajoled and persuaded to join.

After the meeting we made it to the nearby Sundance Cafe (no coincidence that our guests were American, it just happens to be nearby Tea Center), just across Oval grounds, for "One for the Road" or "Nightcap," or whatever. Conversations flowed, and so did the drinks, and I had to hurry to Victoria Terminus to catch the last train home. A great time, as the cliche goes, was had by all.