Caferati’s First Open House Performance

Caferati’s first Open House at Prithvi Café, Juhu, gave me my first opportunity to perform my poem, “Goodbye Shakti Bhatt.” Obviously, since I have been looking at the prospect of performance versus reading, which, you will agree, is dull and uninspiring.

It wasn’t easy. I practised a lot for a “one minute” appearance and I suddenly knew what pop stars and other performers may be going through before they come on stage and do their bit. Its tough work guys! But I had some training in that I had attended the “Celebrating Shakti Bhatt” workshop (Thank you Tarun Durg, thank you Mukul Chadda), also conducted by Caferati.

The assembly of such talent was a bit awesome, my any reckoning and I was somehow cool because I had rehearsed a lot and therefore knew it wouldn’t be the fiasco it was at Oxford. (That’s another story you will find here!). Writers and poets really performed, one even rolled on the floor to act the police’s “third degree”. It became, sort of, a live testimony to the archaic interrogation methods followed by our law keepers. I have harped here before about the needs of a radical overhaul of the entire policing system. It’s only when we are subjected to the system that we realise how wrong it is and we feel sorry for the ones caught in them.

Laws are for our own good, and the law keepers should ensure that law-abiding citizens shouldn’t be harassed. But how do we define law-abiding? I often wonder if our legislators shouldn’t sit one day and purge all outdated laws, such as some that deal with sexual issues.

Well, that’s beyond the purview of this post, so, sorry, khed hai!

In Passing...

The participants of “MTV Roadies” swear in such colourful language that they must be giving the tape editors a tough time blanking the swear words with “toong, toong.” Sometimes, I guess, they don’t know it when an obscenity has slipped out without their knowing. One vociferous Roadie said “pachade pe...” several times and it wasn’t even blanked out, making me wonder if the editor knew what she meant. Obscene, obscene, utterly obscene, and that too on NATIONAL TELEVISION, watched by millions of very impressionable minds. Talk of corrupting young minds.

What are we coming to, anyway? Shouldn’t there be something like a strong “National Communication Commission (NCC)” to take up such issues like they have in the US?