Seems to be the sea­son of plays! After Tumhari Amrita and Zen Katha, watched another one called Class of 84 last Fri­day. Directed by Rahul da Cunha, the play deals with a set of 7 friends reunit­ing after many years when one of their group dies. They real­ize that though they thought they were thick pals, they might not have known him (Jojo) so well after all. Espe­cially enjoyed the per­for­mances of Sohrab Ardeshir, Rajit Kapur and Rad­hika da Cunha.

It reminded me of my school pals… There were 5 of us, thick bud­dies. Out of the gang, I only keep in touch with one of them and she’s in dis­tant New York. One is mar­ried with 3 kids (I think, but it could be 2!) and lives in Cal­cutta. One eloped while in school and we never heard from her again! One is in Bangladesh, the last I heard. Though highly unlikely, it makes me won­der how it would be if we all reunited now.

Sun­day, attended a Tamil wed­ding and had great fun sam­pling the food. Realised, I haven’t attended a South Indian wed­ding recently (or at all, prob­a­bly)! They first give you really teeny weeny serv­ings of every­thing — I guess it’s to sam­ple the food – after which I guess you can ask for more.

Unlike tra­di­tional South Indian wed­dings, for our affairs back home, non-vegetarian food is a must. If you don’t serve gen­er­ous doses of fish (at least 3–4 preparations!)/chicken/mutton you might be ostra­cized by the com­mu­nity and faux pas will be recorded for pos­ter­ity. In fact, peo­ple will talk about it for days after. Like “You know, at so-and-so’s wed­ding, they didn’t have fish. I knew I should’ve eaten din­ner and then gone!” And no, I’m not even exaggerating.

Any­way, I had fun sam­pling all the stuff. Inter­est­ingly, in between all the tra­di­tional fare, was this serv­ing of gobi manchurian! The Chi­nese – I think they’ll take over the world one day :)

11th and 12th night, parked myself at the Palace Grounds for the final Habba events, which turned out to be good fun. We had seats right at the back, about a mile away from the stage (or so it seemed).

But by the time the night drew on, we man­aged to get in front, up close and next to the stage as peo­ple started leav­ing. Hav­ing a Pak­istani group per­form at the Habba was a nice touch. Strings per­formed some of the pop­u­lar num­bers from their album, Dhaani, includ­ing the one that put them recently in the spot­light, Najane Kyon (OST Spi­der­man 2).

Pur­su­ing music as a career is a tough enough deci­sion, and must be dou­bly so in Pak­istan. Says Faisal: “I met Bilal and Strings was formed… I gave up every­thing for my music…thank god I made the right deci­sion. Today with every song we make — I get one step closer to mak­ing my dream a real­ity. It’s so impor­tant to know what you want from life.”

Check out the web­site of the tal­ented duo.

On Sat­ur­day, there was also Pan­dit Shiv­ku­mar Sharma and his son Rahul, who I had actu­ally inter­viewed way back in 1998 when he was just start­ing to take his father’s legacy seri­ously. I was impressed with the young man at that point of time and it was good to watch him on stage along with his illus­tri­ous father.

Another per­for­mance that had me floored were the amaz­ing vio­lin play­ing broth­ers — Kumaresh and Ganesh. I haven’t heard them before, but after this per­for­mance, I will def­i­nitely keep an ear open for them! Along­with the per­cus­sion­ist, Arun Kumar (and the pakhawaj player, whose name I can’t remem­ber) they were fan­tas­tic. The broth­ers appar­ently took to the stage at the age of 7 and 5! If you get a chance to see them per­form, please don’t miss it!

Once the bril­liant per­cus­sion­ist Siva­mani took to the stage with his fel­low band mem­bers, Louis Banks, Karl Peters and a gen­tle­man on the mri­dan­gam (whose name I can’t remem­ber either), there was no stop­ping him. Lend­ing his amaz­ing vocal chords was Shankar Mahade­van, who whipped up a frenzy in the crowd, once he started with his pop­u­lar num­bers like Breath­less, Pretty Woman and the Koi Kahe Kehta Rahe (Dil Chahta Hai).

To top it all, man­aged to fin­ish 3 paint­ings on Sun­day and felt very thrilled with myself. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so fast and furious!

My Air­tel Net con­nec­tion went down for about 3 days. After fran­tic calls to helpline, finally they called me back on the 4th day. By which time, I log on and find that my con­nec­tion is mirac­u­lously back!! Darn. So helpline guy and me talked about the weather and state of Ban­ga­lore roads instead. No, I’m kid­ding here. He actu­ally gave me loads of advise as to how I should rein­stall my oper­at­ing sys­tem and how to get rid of the 1001 viruses that had entered my machine (he kept repeat­ing that!).

Today, Astad Daboo per­forms with stu­dents from the Clarke School for the Deaf, Chen­nai. Cur­rently, tour­ing India, Astad will show­case this per­for­mance at the cul­tural fes­ti­val of the Deaf Olympics, at Mel­bourne in Jan 2005. And a whole week of plays at Ranga Shankara to top it all!

Def­i­nitely a hec­tic Decem­ber and I’m lov­ing every moment of it :)