Every Picture Tells a Story

In Every Picture Tells a Story, song after song, Rod Stewart and band stretch for and find surprising depths of emotion. The wearing of hearts on sleeves for sustained lengths isn't common in rock ‘n roll, especially ‘70s rock. Even its rival for the other great English rock album of the ‘70s – Mott the Hoople’s Mott – relies on ironic posturing to get its horrors across. This album also seems to starts out that way, with the “Ballad of John and Yoko”-like title track and its cheerful numbering of legal scrapes and sexual conquests. But “Seems Like a Long Time” is poetry without the punchline. Soon, it becomes clear that this is an album about memory, and the consequences of holding onto it too tight.

There’s the brief distraction of “That’s All Right Mama”, a lot bluesier that Elvis’ version, followed by a slide guitar-led “Amazing Grace” and “Tomorrow is a Long Time”, a Dylan outtake that never made it onto the Freewheeling album. There’s a stately flashback, the medieval-sounding mandolin piece, “Henry’s Time”. “Maggie May” follows; this was Stewart’s big hit off this album. This story of a boy in love with a more experienced woman is wry and emotional and funny and sad, and even more interesting if you consider that there was also a popular Liverpudlian ditty about a prostitute called “Maggie May”.

The band consists of Mick Waller on drums, Pete Sears on piano, Ian McLagen on organ, Dick Powell on violin, Martell Brandy and Martin Quittenton on acoustic guitars, and Andy Pyle and Danny Thompson on bass. The only really famous musician here is Faces (and pre Rolling Stones) guitarist Ron Wood. Yet this bunch (with an uncredited Lindsay Jackson on mandolin) contribute some of the most heart-rending ensemble playing I’ve heard outside of The Chieftains or some of Van Morrison’s backing bands. It comes to a head in “Mandolin Wind”: Stewart’s voice sounds like it’s lit by a fire of regret, and the band plays around it like winter. On to the last two. Stewart's rowdy version of the Motown hit “(I Know) I’m Losing You” sounds like it’s off another album. Fortunately, the closing track, a Tim Hardin-penned number called "Reason to Believe", is the kind of finish this album deserves. “Someone like you makes it hard to live without somebody else”, sings Stewart, sounding like he’s lived that line. The violin sympathises, as does the mandolin. The band musters up one last sigh, the singer, one last breath. They know they’ll never make music like this again.

The state of the stage

Longer-than-usual piece for Time Out Delhi's recent theatre issue.

A fortnight ago, we found ourselves sitting in the aisles of the packed Alliance Française auditorium – even though we’d bought tickets beforehand. The show was The Weekend Cocktail, by Dramatech, one of Delhi’s busiest theatre groups. It wasn’t exactly untested material – the sources included Roald Dahl, W Somerset Maugham and Sholem Aleichem – but the troupe wasn’t taking any chances, splicing in five musical numbers. Though an unmistakably Indian twang often broke out from under their posh British accents, there was a real sense of giving the audience their 300 rupees worth.

A few days later, we were in a crowded basement in Panchsheel Park, where The Tadpole Repertory and a couple of their friends were putting on a show. The dramatic evening featured everything from skits to poetry readings, bossa nova songs and the inimitable Andrew Hoffland imitating accents of the world. Like the frequent performances Tadpole does in this basement lent to them by a friend, this was an informal gathering – a dog sat at our feet and watched proceedings, and there was hot punch to be had later.

This fortnight, we’ll be at the Bharat Rang Mahotsav. Since its inception in 1999, BRM has become India’s largest, and arguably most prestigious, theatre festival. Organised by the National School of Drama, with all the intellectual heft and grand ambition you’d expect from that cultural behemoth, it has seen growth both exponential – from 58 productions in its first edition to over 100 this time around – and all-encompassing. The current edition has a primary focus on Tagore, a secondary one on Poland, includes productions from England, South Africa, Japan and France, and will bring Indian dialects like Santali and Tullu to Delhi’s stages for the first time. This is the red letter fortnight in the city’s theatre calendar.

Somewhere within the boundaries of these three productions lies Delhi theatre. There’s the old guard at Mandi House, surfacing every once in a while to remind people why they are special. There’s the sharp commercial focus of groups like Dramatech and Pierrot’s Troupe. And there are a handful of independent voices, trying to emerge from the basement. Delhi theatre is in a curious state of flux. Even as the quantum of public performances increases, the amount of new writing seems to be shrinking. Selling out a show often means selling out literally – making concessions, using hackneyed material, repeating old tricks.

It’s easy to forget while the Bharat Rang Mahotsav is on, but one gargantuan festival does not a theatre scene make. Put that festival aside, and Delhi’s theatre calendar starts to look rather bare. The only other time audiences get to see a bunch of plays from other cities is during the META festival, hosted by Habitat World. There are, of course, exceptions. Mumbai’s Akarsh Khurana brought the popular Classic Milds and The Interview to town this year. Lillete Dubey premiered the Broadway smash August: Osage County in the city where she received her first theatre training as a student in Lady Sri Ram College. Even this apparent victory was a compromise: the play was supposed to open in Mumbai, but the organisers couldn’t get bookings on the dates they wanted.

“With Prithvi in Bombay or Ranga Shankara in Bangalore, groups are assured of a theatre audience,” said writer-director Neel Chaudhuri, of the Tadpole Repertory. “With the exception of the NSD, which doesn’t lend its halls out, there is no space like that in Delhi.” That might be why Quaff Theatre omitted Delhi from its travel plans for The Real Inspector Hound. And while last year’s META brought a bouquet of great productions to town, it was unfortunate that only two plays found their way to Delhi before the festival. Chaudhuri categorised Delhi audiences as “hungry for culture, as opposed to Bangalore, Bombay and Chennai, who have actual theatre audiences.” Khurana, one of the rare frequent fliers to Delhi, was more guarded, saying he’d had satisfactory responses to his plays here. He did, however, mention a resistance to adult humour: “I remember someone at the Habitat mentioned to the management that our play [A Guy Thing] was a little vulgar. Since then, I’ve been a little cautious of doing stuff of that nature, or jokes that are a little political, over here.”

Even if we assume there are local playwrights too wary of audiences to actually publish, there’s no denying the paucity of original scripts currently emanating from Delhi. In the three editions of Writer’s Bloc in Mumbai, an annual forum for emerging playwrights to interact and come up with new work, Chaudhuri remains the sole Delhi writer to have been invited. It’s also telling that in each of the last two editions of META, only one Delhi play has made it to the final list of nominees (Tripurari Sharma’s Roop Aroop in 2010; Arvind Gaur’s Ambedkar Aur Gandhi, written by Rajesh Kumar, in 2011). Syed Alam, founder of Pierrot’s Troupe, recalled how different the scene was in his native Aligarh. “There, every play had to be original, contemporary, topical, otherwise it was not liked by the students,” he said. “Delhi theatre is suffering from intellectual bankruptcy. Everyone just does adaptations.”

While Pierrot’s Troupe is guilty of a couple of adaptations itself (Big B, Tale of the Taj), it does balance this out by presenting original dramatic work like the Tom Alter-starrer Ghalib and the impressive solo piece 1947. It’s also one of the few local groups that can afford to pay its members a salary. They’re a successful group by Delhi standards, alternating historical dramas and broad comedies; and unlike Arvind Gaur’s comparably industrious Asmita, they come with little socio-political baggage. “People here need to stop giving these social messages,” Alam said. “As long as you’re not doing burlesques, if you’re staging something and charging people for it, there’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Both Alam and Chaudhuri stressed the importance of entering theatre with the awareness that it isn’t really a paying proposition. “I don’t see how people can realistically be expecting to earn a living from theatre,” Chaudhuri said. “I think it’s something you can foresee and work towards, but for that, you have to have something special and you have to toil, and I don’t think people are willing to do that.”

Set against this gathering gloom is NSD Director Anuradha Kapur’s assertion that the theatre scene in Delhi is amongst the most forward-looking in the country. “There are a lot of young people here who are trying to find alternate spaces, alternate ways of expressions,” she said, mentioning Aditee Biswas, Zuleikha Chaudhari and The Tadpole Repertory as examples of Delhi artists doing interesting work. She did admit that Delhi’s output of fresh plays had fallen, and that Bangalore had raced ahead in that respect. “Abhishek [Majumdar], Ram Ganesh [Kamatham], they have the pulse of the language,” she said. Kapur also voiced a concern about Delhi theatre suffering from a lack of internal communication. That’s probably an understatement; at present, there’s hardly any collaboration between playwrights and directors from Delhi’s different theatre circles, and no common platform (such as a Delhi festival) that might bring them together.

Still, Delhi theatre has made some important strides in recent years. For one, it’s started the difficult but necessary journey out of Mandi House. It’s begun to push an audience used to getting culture for free to part with the kind of money they’d pay for a movie ticket. There’s exciting work in new media, dance theatre and puppetry (Anurupa Roy in particular has gained a name across India for her puppet shows). And now, in addition to Bharat Rang Mahotsav and META, there are the idiosyncratic Ibsen and Short+Sweet festivals to look forward to – the former organised by Nissar and Amal Allana, the latter an offshoot of an international festival that began in Australia a decade ago and made its India debut here in 2010.

Perhaps what’s needed now is a dedicated venue like Bangalore’s Ranga Shankara, though it might be worth asking whether we have the material to currently sustain a place like that. Alam pointed to the ever-increasing number of public shows in Delhi as a positive. “We’re doing good, bad and average plays,” he said, “and to survive, you need to do good, bad and average plays. You also have to do many plays.” Forty-eight years ago, Ebrahim Alkazi directed a now-legendary production of Andha Yug against the backdrop of Feroz Shah Kotla. Bhanu Bharti’s recent staging of the play in October this year at the same site was, in a way, Delhi theatre’s salute to itself. With some luck, it might also prove to be a bookend for one Delhi theatre era, and the beginning of another, even more fascinating one.

2011: A Review of Sorts

The year in review: 2011

After the significant gains of 2010 (Udaan, Karthik Calling Karthik, Peepli Live), Hindi cinema in 2011 was a bit of a letdown. Vishal Bharadwaj finally delivered a clunker, 7 Khoon Maaf. The story - about a woman who keeps killing her abusive husbands - needed something like the Wilder touch. Bharadwaj instead ended up directing like the David Fincher of Se7en and Fight Club: the film was cynical, oppressive and unremittingly dark. It did, however, have “Darling”, which would have been the song of the year if it’d been original (it was an acknowledged cover of the Russian song "Kalinka").

Aamir Khan continued his golden run as producer. Kiran Rao's Dhobi Ghat was a muted tribute to Mumbai, and far too gentle to remember for long. Yet, there was a lot that was just right about it: the performances by Prateik and Kriti Malhotra (who has the most relatable voice), the score by Gustavo Santaollala and a unwillingness to concede to popular appeal (down to Aamir Khan’s irritating mind games about how this wasn’t a movie for the masses). Delhi Belly was its polar opposite: loud, trash-talking, fast-paced. It had whipcrack editing, the funniest script in recent memory, three leads who cussed like they didn’t care, and crazy, cross-eyed Poorna Jaganathan stealing scenes from everyone's noses. Also, I hate you like I love you love you love you…

Shor in the City may not have been as slick as 99, but it did manage to take the manic comedy of that 2009 film and turn it into something darker and more substantial. Directors Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D also got Tusshar Kapoor to act, an aberration that was quickly forgotten after his turn in The Dirty Picture (which, despite a joyously smutty performance by Vidya Balan, was very average).

The close but no cigar film of the year: Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster, which had an impressive Randeep Hooda, a surprisingly effective Jimmy Shergill and an awful Mahie Gill.

Ra.One might just be the worst film ever made in this country's history. If you’ve already seen it, I don’t need to tell you why. If you haven’t, read this Vigil Idiot strip.

Level any charge you’d like against The Tree of Life, but I could not get those images, or the haunting “Les barricades misteriuses”, out of my head for a long time. The most ambitious and flawed film of the year.

Drive unfolded like a cool dream interrupted by hideous violence. Gosling was a real human being, and a real hero (how old-fashioned). Carrey Mulligan will have to stop with that sad smile, or every film she does is going to end up this way.

Yet to see Shame, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Artist, War Horse, any of which might be the year's best.

Finally, some miscellaneous categories with no significance whatsoever:

Best concert I attended this year: Vieux Farka Toure Toumani Diabate and the Manganiyar troupe at Siri Fort

The concert I attended that I wouldn’t trade for the best concert I attended this year: Bob Dylan, live in Singapore

Best concert I didn’t attend this year: Metallica, Gurgaon

Best concert I’ll never attend: R.E.M, who broke up this year

Album of the year: The Beach Boys’ Smile, pieced together and released after four decades in the vault

Oh, and I bought my first original Criterions this year: Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter. And we won the World Cup.

But only worth living/ Manhattan

Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh... Like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh... um... and Wilie Mays... and um... the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... um... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's face...

Dinner and a movie

A piece I did for Time Out about PVR's Director's Cut

“Nowadays, people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing,” says Paul Kemp in The Rum Diary, quoting Oscar Wilde. The line wafts over to me as I lie back in my recliner, sip an ice tea and idly wonder whether I should tear my eyes from the screen long enough to glance through the iPad menu by the armrest. This is Director’s Cut, the new ultra-luxurious offering from PVR. It opened last month in Vasant Kunj’s Ambience Mall, and houses four movie theatres – the largest of which has a capacity of 108 – a multi-cuisine restaurant, a café and a bookstore.

Director’s Cut appears targeted at people who believe that things of value should come at a price. But just how valuable is this experience? The recliners are admittedly comfortable. It’s great to have a decent (if not very adventurous) in-theatre menu – though be warned, a pizza here can set you back Rs.500. The main benefit, though, is being able to watch a movie in a hall and in peace, in the company of other “connoisseurs” (as the press release would have it). Who could put a price on that? PVR can; tickets are Rs 750 on weekdays, Rs 850 on weekends. My bill, lunch included, came to Rs 1,778, a decidedly expensive outing for anyone who doesn’t shop regularly at Emporio Mall.

PVR entered the luxury movie-viewing market a couple of years ago with their “Gold Class” halls in the NCR and Bangalore. The plush surroundings in these theatres are roughly the same as what Director’s Cut is now offering. PVR’s Joint Managing Director Sanjeev Bijli acknowledged that Director’s Cut was an extension of the Gold Class concept, albeit with more food and beverage options. “It’s very annoying sometimes to be thrown into the exit corridors after the movie finishes,” he said over the phone. “A lot of people want to sit back, have a glass of wine and discuss the film. That’s why we decided on a restaurant.”

PVR also has plans to reel in the discerning (as opposed to simply wealthy) viewer with screenings of “vintage and classic cinema” in one of the four halls, under the Director’s Rare label. Try medium rare. This week, they screened the Javier Bardem-starrer Buitiful, which released in regular PVR theatres earlier this year (as did Drive, shown the week before). They also screened The Shawshank Redemption, a film whose rarity is compromised by the fact that it’s on TV every other fortnight. Cinephiles are more likely to find something of value in the bookstore, which has an impressive collection of literature on cinema, reasonably priced movie posters and Bollywood-inspired memorabilia.

Director’s Cut wants to be seen as the place for sophisticated cinema lovers. “The interiors…are soaked in classic and contem­porary film-based art, so as to underline the classic quality of the experience,” rhapsodises the press release. This “art”, mainly signed photographs of directors like Jean-Luc Godard and Akira Kurosawa on the walls, is a smokescreen, an illusion to make the patrons of Director’s Cut feel like they’re discerning viewers. The truth is that Director’s Cut is a luxurious viewing experience, not necessarily a quality cinematic one. What would make this offering more interesting is if PVR could start screening genuinely rare movies, something that cultural centres here do for free. That would certainly add some value to the price.

In which we walked around Def Col Market looking at films on walls

After years of treating it as a pathway to the other side, it was a bit of shock to realise that Defence Colony Market has a nice park down its middle. It was clean, and the shrubbery actually looked like it’d been tended to. It was on this lawn that a projector was set up, pointing at the wall above Soi, Thai & Burmese restaurant. A string of lights, left over from Diwali, hung down, obscuring the “&” as well as the pale green logo of A Wall is a Screen.

A Wall is a Screen originated in Hamburg in 2003, when three filmmakers decided to project short films onto the walls of the City Centre there. Since then, the same has been done in a few dozen countries around the world, and on just about every surface imaginable. When the Delhi venue was announced as Def Col Market, I wondered what they’d be able to do with that crowded, rather indistinct crush of bars and restaurants.

6.55pm. Some 20 odd people have gathered in the park. Most of them sound German (Max Mueller Bhavan is co-organising), though there are a few locals as well. The first screening begins, a pounding animation inspired by Blake’s “Tyger Tyger”. It’s over in five minutes – most of the films were about that length – and a couple of crisp, friendly announcements are made, first in English, then in Hindi. The organisers are clearly keen to draw in casual onlookers; there’s no sign of the cliqueshness that sometimes happens with foreign cultural centre events.

Two short screenings on the adjoining wall, and we make our first location shift. By now, the crowd’s gained some 15 members; it’s diversified to include a baby in a pram, a couple of interested-looking grandmothers, and smatterings of German, French, English and Hindi. We stop in the lane opposite Barista, and watch a rather disappointing Irish Bollywood spoof (a drunker heckler saying something about knowing Lata Mangeshkar was more entertaining). The next projection was on a private wall. The film, the announcer explained, was on German houses, so they felt it was fitting to layer it on an Indian house. One of the owners came out mid-film to scattered applause. By now, the crowd was closing in on 50.

The organisers continued to match wall and film; an animation on waste disposal was screened near a garbage dump, while Motodrom, with its gritty black-and-white images, was perfect for the crumbling, whitewashed-a-decade-ago facade beside the Orient Bank ATM. People sat on parked scooters and bikes and tried to make sense of the flickering images. Rickshaws passed on the road behind us, their passengers craning their necks. A couple of policemen looked on from a distance. An auto-driver was moved by the mention of Yamuna to emerge from his vehicle and tell whoever would listen exactly why the river was so dirty. And a young MBA graduate came up to me – incorrectly assuming that I’d been dragged here against my will – and asked if I went to these kinds of things often.

The last surface, in a break with tradition, wasn’t wall as screen, but just a screen. This was placed in the park at the head of the market. We sat in its mini-amphitheatre (which I didn’t know existed – I’d never even noticed this park before), and watched an entirely charming short about mobile cinema in Calcutta. As I stared up at the white canvas, I suddenly understood why A Wall is a Screen was such a success wherever it went. It reminds us of how we used to watch movies as children, heads raised, looking up in wonder.

Wisden on India: Review

Just this month, Wisden announced that it would be launching an India edition in early 2012. It’s a measure of the times we live in that this announcement went out, to quote Douglas Adams, in a blaze of no publicity at all. Two decades ago, the news would have had Indian cricket fans out in the streets, waving their floppy-brimmed hats. But today, there’s Cricinfo and relentless TV programming and mobile applications to fill in the gaps – and that’s assuming fans here are still reading anything longer than Yuvraj Singh tweets. And what’s an almanack anyway?

The Wisden Cricket Almanack is the game’s one holy book. It was first published in 1864, and has come out every year since, making it the longest-running sports periodical in history. Since the game’s beginnings on the village greens of England, Wisden has been its most faithful scribe, and generation after generation have set its pronouncements in stone. Despite this God-like reputation, it would be unwise to view Wisden on India as a definitive history of cricket in this country. This is, at best, a selective history of Indian cricket, seen largely through British eyes. Compiled by writer Jonathan Rice, it brings together all the major reporting on Indian cricket that’s appeared in Wisden over the years, starting with the Parsee tour of 1886 and ending in 2009, with Virender Sehwag as Leading Cricketer in the World.

In Beyond a Boundary, arguably the greatest cricket book ever, CLR James wrote about how, at one point in his life, he was so much “on the alert for discrimination” that he would underline anything said against the West Indian team in his copies of The Cricketer. Reading Wisden on India might stir similar feelings in history-conscious Indian fans. There are some major omissions – Palwankar Baloo and his 118 wickets at 18.11 apiece on the 1911 tour of England are barely mentioned. The tone, especially in the early years, is often patronising (for instance, the vague mention of a “want of harmony” in the touring team of 1936, followed by the sage advice: “If a team of India cricketers is to be successful, differences of creed will have to be forgotten”). There’s also a tendency, noted by Rice, to detail the exploits of blue bloods who merely dabbled in cricket in India.

But for every real or imagined slight, there are substantial rewards for the patient reader. Some are in plain sight, like the two guest articles by Vijay Merchant, the first great Bombay batsman. One is an overview of the first two decades of Indian cricket, the second an exhortation to the 1959 touring side titled “India, Be Bold!” (They weren’t, and lost the series 5-0). Others are buried treasure: the last line in the obituary of the Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi predicts a bright cricketing future for his then 11-year-old son. Mansoor Ali Khan “Tiger” Pataudi, who passed away this month, led India to its first series win in 1962.

Wisden on India is not for the casual fan. There’s a lot of statistical information, and little by way of anecdote. The Almanack’s writing, until recently, has never been of the flashy sort, and several pages go by without any verbal flourish. Serious readers may be disappointed by the lack of literary heavyweights in this collection. Neville Cardus and John Arlott wrote for Wisden, and about Indian cricketers, but never, it seems, at the same time. RC Robertson-Glasgow, Matthew Engel and John Woodcock only make cameos. There are, however, some memorable pieces by famous Indian cricket writers. Ramchandra Guha (whose A Corner of a Foreign Field Rice calls “by far the best national cricket history yet published”) hypothesises hilariously about Mahatma Gandhi’s cricketing career, while Mihir Bose does a spot-on bit of crystal ball-gazing, predicting, back in 1997, the impact Indian money would have on the game.

Wisden is obviously committed to striving to keep up with changing trends. In recent years, its pages have featured articles dedicated to the intricacies of powerplays, as well as a loosening of style (to the extent of including an explicit tweet by English pacer Tim Bresnan in the 2010 edition). If this book and their Wisden India plans show that they’re not above tapping a lucrative market, it also indicates their desire to not just survive the brave new world of modern cricket, but also remain the authority on it.

This review appeared in Time Out Delhi.