The current issue of Wordnet (Jan. 19, 2012) carries yet another apologia by Deepak Mehta where he ridicules the folks who criticize his ill advised and often wrong use of English words in his writings published under the pompous heading WorldNet. The term wordnet itself is a copyrighted word and it has nothing to do with the digest or articles that Deepak Mehta publishes in that section.
More over he distracts his readers to an issue that is not even a part of the criticism that is leveled against him for his wrong headed use and insistence on using English words in his columns.
In the issue of Wordnet (Jan. 12, 2012 ) Deepak Mehta reproduces the list of countries that use English language. So far good. But none of his critics have complained about use of English by any one individual or a country. The criticism is against improper and needless use of English words in Gujarati language by the Gujarati media and particularly by Deepak Mehta.
Once again, let me restate that the words Wordnet and Bookmark are copyrighted words and each time Deepak Mehta uses these terms he infringes on some one's intellectual property.
Now some one please tell me what is the meaning of In Memorial where in he writes about the gravesite of Jack London. It seems like he intended In Memoriam.
Let me share a more interesting fact about the death of Jack London. On the night of Nov.22nd he suffered acute pain from the kidney stone. The pain being unbearable, he reached for medicine and before he could take it he died. It is as simple as that... Jack London did write about suicides in some of his novels and if he wanted to quickly end his life he could have used the loaded revolver that he kept near his bed. A shot from it would have ended his pain and relieved him from the misery of kidney stone. He would not have taken morphine death from which is relatively slow when compared to a shot from a revolver.
There is another problem with the story. Jack London was NOT buried under the lava rock as our so called scholar Deepak Math implies (see his use of the word કબર. Jack London was cremated as per his wishes. His second wife too was cremated. The ashes of Jack London were carried in a copper urn that was placed in a cement sarcophagus that was buried there. The place is not too far from his cottage. The lava rock was intended to be used in the building of the cottage but the architect could not use it because of the large size of the rock. The rock had to be dragged by using four horses and placed over the spot where his mortal ashes were buried. And this is not the first time he has erred or provided inaccurate information. So much about truth and accuracy in Deepakbhai's writings.
Here is how writer Dale Walker describes the death and burial of Jack's ashes in his article titled Wolf Dying,
He was cremated, his ashes placed in a copper urn. The funeral was simple, as he wished, with a short oration, the reading of William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis," one of Jack's favorite poems, and a poem written for the occasion by George Sterling containing the lines:
Unhearing heart, whose patience was so long!
Unresting mind, so hungry for the truth!
Now hast thou rest, gentle one and strong,
Dead like a lordly lion in its youth.
On Sunday the 26th Sterling brought the urn back to the ranch where Charmian decorated it with ferns and primroses. The burial place had been selected by Jack years before, a knoll about a half-mile downhill from the cottage he and Charmian shared. There were already graves there, marked by plain wooden crosses, of two pioneer children, David Greenlaw, who died in 1876, the year of Jack's birth, and Lillie Greenlaw, who followed her brother in death a year later. London loved the silent place amidst brush and flowers and shaded by tall oaks and redwoods, and told Charmian, "If I should beat you to it, I wouldn't mind if you laid my ashes on the knoll where the Greenlaw children are buried. And roll over me a red boulder from the ruins of Wolf House."
The burial was unceremonial, attended by Charmin, Eliza and her son, a few of the ranch employees and old friends such as George Sterling. The copper urn was placed in the ground, sealed within a cement sarcophagus, and, as Sterling wrote, "Amid the profound silence of the on-lookers, a huge boulder—a great block of red lava long-pitted by time and enriched by the moss of uncounted years—was urged by roller and crowbar above the sepulcher."
Jack London's second wife Charmian died in 1955. Her cremated remains were also buried under that boulder.
Jack London's “Credo” -
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them, I shall use my time."– Jack London 1876-1916
Deepak Mehta seems to be stubborn like a mule. Perhaps I am insulting mule by comparing it to Deepak Mehta.
How one wishes some one (hint - His Editor at the Mumbai Samachar) yanks out the Wordnet section from under his feet ( Deepak Mehta) or forces Deepak Mehta to check his writing for errors and in accurate information or have some one else check his writing before it goes to the press. Is this too much to expect from the editor of a historic Gujarati newspaper?
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Exit-stance by Atreya Sarma
Courtesy - Muse India: Issue 39, September/October 2011
Book Review
Harish Trivedi
Exit-stance
A Play
The Sharonom Media Group (2011)
895 Kentshire Drive, Dayton, Ohio 45459-2327
Pages 46+ :: Price $15.95
ISBN 978-0-578-07767-3
Drama of an old man refusing to die and hell-bent on living
Here lies OM.
OM.Com!
OM, calm at last and silenced forever!
Life has deserted OM; and Death, as always, has won!
His body was burnt not at the stakes
But at an electric crematorium. And
What remained was a heap of ashes
Salvaged from an ass-hole.
An ash hole for an asshole!
Finally dissolved with the five elements.
The above seriocomic poetic epitaph is scripted by OM – for himself, the only protagonist in the melodramatic one-Act monodrama - Exit-stance – who lives his final days in a nursing home for assisted living; and is torn between life and death, between traces of hedonism and shadowy spiritualism; and who suffers isolation and loneliness. And the character, who has none to turn to, presents us with a lot of gallows humour. In one moment, OM is curious about - and wants to see - his own death. So he says:
“No one has ever said what it’s like to be dead. I want to enjoy my death. I want to be fully aware of my final escape, the ultimate liberty!”
But in another moment, he is dead scared of death; and is insistent on living out. What for? Yes, he wants to enjoy the life the way he wants to. His libido is aroused when the nurses attend on and touch him. “… a mere thought of lust and sex keeps me alive!”
But soon he realises, albeit fleetingly, and despairs: “But what good is lust when youth has fled?” and taunts himself, “What a pathetic and perverse craving for human touch!” But is sexual urge an abomination or an abnormality for a man of his age? OM answers: “Lust and desires are normal feelings. And I think I am too just f…ing normal!” Mind you, this is not the only time OM chooses the four-letter word; he, in fact, suffers from oral diarrhoea of them. The doc tries to dissuade him from the compulsive addiction, but to no avail, for habits die hard, much less the instinctually obscene ones.
We’re treated to bouts of bawdy jokes, every now and then. He even makes fun of his name OM – the sacred Hindu syllable as well as an acronym of how he is called, Old Man. In a disgusting mood, he has this dig at his name: “I am not THAT OM! Instead of ‘OM tat sat’, I am OM tat shit…”
When it comes to the male doctors, he feels “like grabbing the crotch of a student doctor and squeezing his balls” whenever he is “upset and angry.” But the sight of a female nurse turns him on. “If this is a nursing home then why a big bosomed nurse hasn’t nursed me?” he longingly rues.
By now it’s evident that OM is certainly not in the class of a Tennyson’s Ulysses synonymous with a spirit of adventure and the concomitant heroic struggle or of a Hemingway’s Santiago, a symbol of stoic and silent struggle. OM, no doubt, has no nobler goals for the remainder of his life, yet he wages a struggle - a paranoid mental conflict; and also suffers an ethnic conflict and a cross-cultural dilemma, having his roots in India – though untraceable – but living in America. He pooh-poohs the various racial and sub-racial identities, and asks – why can’t all of us be just humans - for he finds himself to be neither an American nor an Indian? Despite his quarantined existence, “deaf and legally blind” status, a life of vacuum, “Isolation, desolation, frustration and anger,” and his body being “nothing but an ill-smelling heap of bones, skin and blood,” - he is hell-bent on surviving and continuing to live … to enjoy the good things of life!
And OM, by that very token of being an ordinary mortal like most of us, is a representative of a massive majority. So everyone can relate to and touch a chord with him. It’s how Harish Trivedi - the playwright – moulds the character of OM, in a postmodernist universal cast influenced as he is by Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett in whose birth centenary homage he wrote this play.
It needs guts and creativity of a high order to write a full length piece on the travails and derisive idiosyncrasies of a typical old man and the dreadful old age. The author has, evidently, succeeded in closely and deeply studying the geriatric psychology from various angles. He extracts the secrets from the darker recesses of the protagonist’s subconscious and makes him boldly and unhesitatingly vent his feelings.
No wonder, Harish Trivedi could bring it off what with his credentials. An Indian American – living in the US from mid 1960s – Harish has a doctorate in Theatre and Communication and is an associate of the Dramatists Guild of America. He is also a prolific journalist-poet-writer-translator – with his works appearing in English, Gujarati and Hindi. He is the founder Trustee & Chairman of the India Foundation in Dayton, Ohio; “his plays have a distinct Indian ethos” appealing to the “sense and sensibilities of viewers and readers… in the US,” says the author’s profile appended in the book.
Not everything OM chants can be dismissed as senile balderdash. Some of his observations stand out as a testimony to his wide reading, poetic taste, wit, experience, and keen observation of life. We also perceive that he is ‘bipolar’ – tossed between American materialism and Indian spiritualism, though he quips he is ‘multi-polar’ to the doctor’s diagnosis that he is bipolar. Tongue in cheek, OM remarks that the staff at the nursing home “changes frequently and fast – even more often than my bed sheets or towels.”
OM draws a nuanced distinction between freedom and liberation, while in an extreme mood of dejection. “I don’t need freedom; it is meaningless! I need liberation, liberation from my self.” All of us know that in our world - a topsy-turvy world full of hypocrisy - appearance need not be reality. See how OM puts it: “People are always pretending. Life itself is pretending – Pretending, masking, and hiding!”
Also notice how effectively OM portrays the monotony of the grind of a life lived cosmetically: “I used to go to a spa every day. Going around the jogging track, walking or running on the treadmill, lifting weights, riding a stationary bicycle… doing all that and still remaining in the same place.”
OM’s mind goes through a chiaroscuro of memories – of movies, music, books of literature, great personalities; as a result we’ve a quotation to suit his every mercurial mood. Being an American Indian, his mind sweeps across the Western world as well as India. Scriptures like the Rig Veda, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, aphoristic literature like Bhartrihari Shataka, movies like Gigi (English) Jagate Raho, and Mera Naam Joker; diverse personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, PB Shelley, Neil Armstrong, Mata Hari, Freud, Descartes, Maurice Chevalier, and Clarence Day are paraded before us.
All this hyperactivity of his mind erases the timelines for him so much so he feels that he exists “in a timeless zone!”
OM’s self-unsettling loneliness causes a mental drift in him. He imagines things; he sees a cat that isn’t there; and even plays with it, only to drive it away. He is ‘the Duke of Darkness’ and “a camera obscura, a dark chamber with a lens that has turned things upside down.” At the same time, his bizarre and disjointed thoughts sometimes glimmer with coherence and agreeable reason.
Mortally afraid of death, for all his iconoclastic philosophy, OM panics and collapses on seeing (in his hallucinations) a duster plane hovering over him. When he comes to, he flies into a flash of eschatological spirituality and reconciliation by invoking the Holy Grail, the Five Elements and the Shanti mantra; but even before the chant is over, he swoops down onto his wonted earthly bohemian reality where he belongs and declares “I do not need to find any holy or unholy grail… for me it is always going to be singing and dancing…,” unmindful of his irreversible physical limitations! So go on and celebrate the bacchanalian revelry!
Thus, “Important is the OM’s universality… He is a kind of everyman ranting about the injustices of life. His ethnic identity fixes the play in reality, but the specific Indian identification of OM transcends mere individual concerns…,” remarks Dr Robert Conrad, Professor Emeritus, Dept of Languages, University of Dayton, Ohio, and he proceeds to teleologize the character’s raison d’être: “OM maintains his dignity with irony and humor as he confronts his end. His disquieted suffering and his methods of coping provide a bitter hope to all who face the last stage of existence.”
The strength of this one-act & one-character play lies, perhaps, more in its performance than in its reading as a closet drama – unless the latter is taken up with necessary breaks, for otherwise the reader could feel some monotony however powerful the monologues are. The writer has incorporated elaborate stage directions; and set the play, aptly, in a late winter night. Following these directions and with assured technical effects, histrionics, and music regularly fading in and fading out - the punch and poignancy, the absurd and the black humour would briskly come into bold relief in performance. And yes, the play has a good track record: having been staged at Clayton and Cincinnati, Ohio; while the author rendered its staged reading at a theatre in Mumbai, sponsored by the government of Maharashtra.
Book Review
Harish Trivedi
Exit-stance
A Play
The Sharonom Media Group (2011)
895 Kentshire Drive, Dayton, Ohio 45459-2327
Pages 46+ :: Price $15.95
ISBN 978-0-578-07767-3
Drama of an old man refusing to die and hell-bent on living
Here lies OM.
OM.Com!
OM, calm at last and silenced forever!
Life has deserted OM; and Death, as always, has won!
His body was burnt not at the stakes
But at an electric crematorium. And
What remained was a heap of ashes
Salvaged from an ass-hole.
An ash hole for an asshole!
Finally dissolved with the five elements.
The above seriocomic poetic epitaph is scripted by OM – for himself, the only protagonist in the melodramatic one-Act monodrama - Exit-stance – who lives his final days in a nursing home for assisted living; and is torn between life and death, between traces of hedonism and shadowy spiritualism; and who suffers isolation and loneliness. And the character, who has none to turn to, presents us with a lot of gallows humour. In one moment, OM is curious about - and wants to see - his own death. So he says:
“No one has ever said what it’s like to be dead. I want to enjoy my death. I want to be fully aware of my final escape, the ultimate liberty!”
But in another moment, he is dead scared of death; and is insistent on living out. What for? Yes, he wants to enjoy the life the way he wants to. His libido is aroused when the nurses attend on and touch him. “… a mere thought of lust and sex keeps me alive!”
But soon he realises, albeit fleetingly, and despairs: “But what good is lust when youth has fled?” and taunts himself, “What a pathetic and perverse craving for human touch!” But is sexual urge an abomination or an abnormality for a man of his age? OM answers: “Lust and desires are normal feelings. And I think I am too just f…ing normal!” Mind you, this is not the only time OM chooses the four-letter word; he, in fact, suffers from oral diarrhoea of them. The doc tries to dissuade him from the compulsive addiction, but to no avail, for habits die hard, much less the instinctually obscene ones.
We’re treated to bouts of bawdy jokes, every now and then. He even makes fun of his name OM – the sacred Hindu syllable as well as an acronym of how he is called, Old Man. In a disgusting mood, he has this dig at his name: “I am not THAT OM! Instead of ‘OM tat sat’, I am OM tat shit…”
When it comes to the male doctors, he feels “like grabbing the crotch of a student doctor and squeezing his balls” whenever he is “upset and angry.” But the sight of a female nurse turns him on. “If this is a nursing home then why a big bosomed nurse hasn’t nursed me?” he longingly rues.
By now it’s evident that OM is certainly not in the class of a Tennyson’s Ulysses synonymous with a spirit of adventure and the concomitant heroic struggle or of a Hemingway’s Santiago, a symbol of stoic and silent struggle. OM, no doubt, has no nobler goals for the remainder of his life, yet he wages a struggle - a paranoid mental conflict; and also suffers an ethnic conflict and a cross-cultural dilemma, having his roots in India – though untraceable – but living in America. He pooh-poohs the various racial and sub-racial identities, and asks – why can’t all of us be just humans - for he finds himself to be neither an American nor an Indian? Despite his quarantined existence, “deaf and legally blind” status, a life of vacuum, “Isolation, desolation, frustration and anger,” and his body being “nothing but an ill-smelling heap of bones, skin and blood,” - he is hell-bent on surviving and continuing to live … to enjoy the good things of life!
And OM, by that very token of being an ordinary mortal like most of us, is a representative of a massive majority. So everyone can relate to and touch a chord with him. It’s how Harish Trivedi - the playwright – moulds the character of OM, in a postmodernist universal cast influenced as he is by Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett in whose birth centenary homage he wrote this play.
It needs guts and creativity of a high order to write a full length piece on the travails and derisive idiosyncrasies of a typical old man and the dreadful old age. The author has, evidently, succeeded in closely and deeply studying the geriatric psychology from various angles. He extracts the secrets from the darker recesses of the protagonist’s subconscious and makes him boldly and unhesitatingly vent his feelings.
No wonder, Harish Trivedi could bring it off what with his credentials. An Indian American – living in the US from mid 1960s – Harish has a doctorate in Theatre and Communication and is an associate of the Dramatists Guild of America. He is also a prolific journalist-poet-writer-translator – with his works appearing in English, Gujarati and Hindi. He is the founder Trustee & Chairman of the India Foundation in Dayton, Ohio; “his plays have a distinct Indian ethos” appealing to the “sense and sensibilities of viewers and readers… in the US,” says the author’s profile appended in the book.
Not everything OM chants can be dismissed as senile balderdash. Some of his observations stand out as a testimony to his wide reading, poetic taste, wit, experience, and keen observation of life. We also perceive that he is ‘bipolar’ – tossed between American materialism and Indian spiritualism, though he quips he is ‘multi-polar’ to the doctor’s diagnosis that he is bipolar. Tongue in cheek, OM remarks that the staff at the nursing home “changes frequently and fast – even more often than my bed sheets or towels.”
OM draws a nuanced distinction between freedom and liberation, while in an extreme mood of dejection. “I don’t need freedom; it is meaningless! I need liberation, liberation from my self.” All of us know that in our world - a topsy-turvy world full of hypocrisy - appearance need not be reality. See how OM puts it: “People are always pretending. Life itself is pretending – Pretending, masking, and hiding!”
Also notice how effectively OM portrays the monotony of the grind of a life lived cosmetically: “I used to go to a spa every day. Going around the jogging track, walking or running on the treadmill, lifting weights, riding a stationary bicycle… doing all that and still remaining in the same place.”
OM’s mind goes through a chiaroscuro of memories – of movies, music, books of literature, great personalities; as a result we’ve a quotation to suit his every mercurial mood. Being an American Indian, his mind sweeps across the Western world as well as India. Scriptures like the Rig Veda, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, aphoristic literature like Bhartrihari Shataka, movies like Gigi (English) Jagate Raho, and Mera Naam Joker; diverse personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, PB Shelley, Neil Armstrong, Mata Hari, Freud, Descartes, Maurice Chevalier, and Clarence Day are paraded before us.
All this hyperactivity of his mind erases the timelines for him so much so he feels that he exists “in a timeless zone!”
OM’s self-unsettling loneliness causes a mental drift in him. He imagines things; he sees a cat that isn’t there; and even plays with it, only to drive it away. He is ‘the Duke of Darkness’ and “a camera obscura, a dark chamber with a lens that has turned things upside down.” At the same time, his bizarre and disjointed thoughts sometimes glimmer with coherence and agreeable reason.
Mortally afraid of death, for all his iconoclastic philosophy, OM panics and collapses on seeing (in his hallucinations) a duster plane hovering over him. When he comes to, he flies into a flash of eschatological spirituality and reconciliation by invoking the Holy Grail, the Five Elements and the Shanti mantra; but even before the chant is over, he swoops down onto his wonted earthly bohemian reality where he belongs and declares “I do not need to find any holy or unholy grail… for me it is always going to be singing and dancing…,” unmindful of his irreversible physical limitations! So go on and celebrate the bacchanalian revelry!
Thus, “Important is the OM’s universality… He is a kind of everyman ranting about the injustices of life. His ethnic identity fixes the play in reality, but the specific Indian identification of OM transcends mere individual concerns…,” remarks Dr Robert Conrad, Professor Emeritus, Dept of Languages, University of Dayton, Ohio, and he proceeds to teleologize the character’s raison d’être: “OM maintains his dignity with irony and humor as he confronts his end. His disquieted suffering and his methods of coping provide a bitter hope to all who face the last stage of existence.”
The strength of this one-act & one-character play lies, perhaps, more in its performance than in its reading as a closet drama – unless the latter is taken up with necessary breaks, for otherwise the reader could feel some monotony however powerful the monologues are. The writer has incorporated elaborate stage directions; and set the play, aptly, in a late winter night. Following these directions and with assured technical effects, histrionics, and music regularly fading in and fading out - the punch and poignancy, the absurd and the black humour would briskly come into bold relief in performance. And yes, the play has a good track record: having been staged at Clayton and Cincinnati, Ohio; while the author rendered its staged reading at a theatre in Mumbai, sponsored by the government of Maharashtra.
Exit-stance - More than a play on words By Tevia Abrams
Harish Trivedi, transplanted from India and residing in Dayton, Ohio, sends an old curmudgeon on a theatrical journey in a nursing home; it is a journey at once harrowing, comedic and totally existential. I refer to the one-character play, ‘Exit-stance’, which Trivedi wrote in 2006 in homage to playwright Samuel Beckett’s birth centenary, and which was premiered in Ohio in 2007, with subsequent production the following year at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival. Curmudgeon of the piece is OM, or Old Man, who serves, among other purposes, as metaphor for the immigrant’s condition within American society.
As I came across a copy of the script only recently, I am unable to report on the original production; however, I was impressed in the reading by Trivedi’s manner of tracing OM’s voyage in monologue form through loneliness, isolation and despair, despite the proffered medical services, facilities and managed care within the confines of his nursing home. To make matters worse for OM, he is hobbled at the very outset of his journey by the fact that he is both deaf and legally blind.
The monologue form is enlivened through the use of audio and visual effects to heighten audience interest. So there are snippets of nostalgic American and Indian songs – some even from old Indian films, as, for example, ‘Zindagi Kwab Hai’ from the film ‘Jagate Raho’:
“Zindagii khvaab hai khvaab men jhuuth kyaa Aur bhalaa sach hai kyaa Sab sach hai Zindag I kvab hai”
In his tirades, interspersed with poetic asides, OM curses his entrapped situation; but in a calmer and more thoughtful moment, he can say, with resignation: “This is a warehouse for old people. No, this is a place for rich homeless people, people whom nobody wants, society’s rejects.”
At this point in the play, we learn that the old man is aware of the broader meaning of his existence: “So OM I am. OM is the first sound, the first Word – ‘Aadee Swara’ in Sanskrit, the first symbol of the entire universe.” But he quickly turns from it: “I am not THAT OM!” This is but one of many moments where we see OM struggling with intense desire to recapture some sense of personal worth and dignity.
Personal memory is important for OM, as he turns at times to comforting passages from the ‘Rig Veda’, where the ‘dawn’ is equated with hope. Given that he is now blind, OM cannot really share that hope.
All this might suggest the work a gloomy piece, but in fact the melancholy is balanced by moments of sardonic humor and by occasional sound bites of recorded poetry by Shelly and Robert Frost on beauty and dying. Other projections of sound, music, and occasional voices of cold institutional medical authorities help to broaden and enrich the landscape and cultural dimensions of the stage. And there is a tender moment with OM’s cat, whose mewing breaks a moment of dramatic silence.
As the play nears its close, OM offers a prayer that would appear to represent an utterance from his soul, his Atman. Is he ready to be reconciled to his fate?
“Remember, O Lord, remember OM; and remember my deeds . . . Peace! OM, shanti, shanti, shanti.”
But, no, the Old Man suddenly recoils from going the way of traditional acceptance of man’s fate. He’d rather take leave of the world in a jaunty manner, “singing and dancing . . . didn’t I say I had no regrets?” At this, the stage directions call for filling the theatre with Frank Sinatra’s bravado come-what-may song, ‘My Way’, which takes the play to its curtain.
I can only imagine how audiences might have responded to Trivedi’s sensitive mix of monologue with the varied Western and Indian audio materials. They must surely have been touched to the core by the OM’s struggles with hopes and fears about life, death, and the meaning of personal and social existence.
# # #
Tevia E. Abrams completed post-graduate studies on traditional Indian theatre with research focused on the Tamasha folk theatre form of Maharashtra, India.
Mr. Abrams, a Canadian, and now permanent US resident, was recruited by the United Nations Population Fund, and served variously at headquarters and in India. He is currently retired but remains committed to his playwriting activities.
As I came across a copy of the script only recently, I am unable to report on the original production; however, I was impressed in the reading by Trivedi’s manner of tracing OM’s voyage in monologue form through loneliness, isolation and despair, despite the proffered medical services, facilities and managed care within the confines of his nursing home. To make matters worse for OM, he is hobbled at the very outset of his journey by the fact that he is both deaf and legally blind.
The monologue form is enlivened through the use of audio and visual effects to heighten audience interest. So there are snippets of nostalgic American and Indian songs – some even from old Indian films, as, for example, ‘Zindagi Kwab Hai’ from the film ‘Jagate Raho’:
“Zindagii khvaab hai khvaab men jhuuth kyaa Aur bhalaa sach hai kyaa Sab sach hai Zindag I kvab hai”
In his tirades, interspersed with poetic asides, OM curses his entrapped situation; but in a calmer and more thoughtful moment, he can say, with resignation: “This is a warehouse for old people. No, this is a place for rich homeless people, people whom nobody wants, society’s rejects.”
At this point in the play, we learn that the old man is aware of the broader meaning of his existence: “So OM I am. OM is the first sound, the first Word – ‘Aadee Swara’ in Sanskrit, the first symbol of the entire universe.” But he quickly turns from it: “I am not THAT OM!” This is but one of many moments where we see OM struggling with intense desire to recapture some sense of personal worth and dignity.
Personal memory is important for OM, as he turns at times to comforting passages from the ‘Rig Veda’, where the ‘dawn’ is equated with hope. Given that he is now blind, OM cannot really share that hope.
All this might suggest the work a gloomy piece, but in fact the melancholy is balanced by moments of sardonic humor and by occasional sound bites of recorded poetry by Shelly and Robert Frost on beauty and dying. Other projections of sound, music, and occasional voices of cold institutional medical authorities help to broaden and enrich the landscape and cultural dimensions of the stage. And there is a tender moment with OM’s cat, whose mewing breaks a moment of dramatic silence.
As the play nears its close, OM offers a prayer that would appear to represent an utterance from his soul, his Atman. Is he ready to be reconciled to his fate?
“Remember, O Lord, remember OM; and remember my deeds . . . Peace! OM, shanti, shanti, shanti.”
But, no, the Old Man suddenly recoils from going the way of traditional acceptance of man’s fate. He’d rather take leave of the world in a jaunty manner, “singing and dancing . . . didn’t I say I had no regrets?” At this, the stage directions call for filling the theatre with Frank Sinatra’s bravado come-what-may song, ‘My Way’, which takes the play to its curtain.
I can only imagine how audiences might have responded to Trivedi’s sensitive mix of monologue with the varied Western and Indian audio materials. They must surely have been touched to the core by the OM’s struggles with hopes and fears about life, death, and the meaning of personal and social existence.
# # #
Tevia E. Abrams completed post-graduate studies on traditional Indian theatre with research focused on the Tamasha folk theatre form of Maharashtra, India.
Mr. Abrams, a Canadian, and now permanent US resident, was recruited by the United Nations Population Fund, and served variously at headquarters and in India. He is currently retired but remains committed to his playwriting activities.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Exit-stance - Publisher's Remarks
Publisher’s Remarks at the book launch event for Exit-stance, April 2, 2011 at Ajanta Indian Restaurant, Dayton, Ohio.
Good afternoon everybody and thank you Dr. Percy,
A few months back I decided to start this venture or adventure the Sharonom Media Group. And I am the owner and CEO.
You were probably expecting some big shot publisher from some big city, didn’t you?
But before I go into the details about what our Media Group is all about, I would like to say that Dr. Tom Percy, the long time Trustee and former President of the India Foundation and a very good friend has kindly agreed to formally launch our first publication. I will soon invite him to formally launch our first publication.
Exit-stance is the first publication of the Sharonom Meida Group and right now, while I am talking with you, the folks at the big time local Media Company is shaking in their pants.
According to my partner in this venture, The Sharonom Media Group will be involved in all sorts of media – films, stage shows, Broadway musicals, television, broadcasting, printing and publishing. We are going to have our presence in the cyber world too.
As our first project I signed up a relatively unknown writer from this town. I had to massage his big ego, entice him and kind of seduce him with all sorts of promises … and I am happy to say, it has worked – the publication of Exit-stance – a play written by Harish Trivedi.
For this special occasion, the Sharonom Media Group is offering a special discount. Regular price less the discount makes this book PRICE LESS.
The buyers of this very limited edition book will be provided with a certificate of ownership duly signed by the author himself.
The certificate would make the buyer the legal owner of the book that the buyer can hold and cherish in perpetuity and maybe read it again and again too …
So without much ado and with great pleasure and personal pride I would like to invite Dr. Tom Percy to launch the publication of Exit-stance.
Why I feel secure…
By Harish Trivedi,
© 2011
Your Editor says -
"For the first time, (as they say 'in my life' ) I feel secure like never before...."
* An insurance company is 'by my side',
* Another insurance company keeps telling me, 'State Farm is there...’ My problem is I do not know where 'there' is?
* A local TV channel keeps saying, 'On Your side', sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and instead of the lovely 'weather girl' (do they still use the term 'Weather Girl') I find my cat trying to get on the better part of my comforter,
* Since I wear the medical alert, I know if I
'fall and cannot get up'some one will come and help me get up. This is something I am tempted to try... I am, according to some religious leaders already 'a fallen soul’ I wonder if the ‘bracelet people’ would help me get up...
* I know everything, I happen happen to have the entire 'Idiot's guide to....' books,
* My cereal contains 'daily required amount of fiber' so I don't have to chew on rug to alleviate any fiber deficiency.
* My yogurt contains the antioxidants that are good for me,
* My coffee is 'caffeine free’...
* I get more than required amount of BS from the TV talk shows and the talking heads...
* I have learned to live with socio-psychological issues from Dr. Phil,
* I know whom to call if I ever develop any symptoms of Mesothelioma, (even though the TV commercials do not say if one can developed the symptoms by being exposed to such commercials over a number of years...)
* The Ohio law has made it simple, only two individual needs to sign a statement that says, 'He is dangerous to him and needs to be confined....’ I know the 'missej' and my niece are ready to use that legal provision any time they think I am dangerous to myself - that happens to be all the time...so I am waiting for guys with straight-jacket'....
And finally (that is how such things are written), so And finally -
One more time - 'Again, as they say, having so many friends, who needs enemies?'
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Exit-stance Ownership Certificate
Exit-stanceBook launch
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Ajanta Indian Restaurant
2 pm to 4. 30 pm
Exit-stance
Certificate of Ownership
I, (.....your name), take thee Exit-stance as my lawfully bought book at a discounted price.
I promise to protect, preserve and keep thee for life. I further promise not to loan my copy of Exit-stance to anyone or let anyone borrow thee from me.
Administrator of oath:
You now kiss your Twelve Dollars good bye and kiss your copy of Exit-stance.
I wish you pleasant reading.
Signed this day, Saturday, April 2, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Ajanta Indian Restaurant
2 pm to 4. 30 pm
Exit-stance
Certificate of Ownership
I, (.....your name), take thee Exit-stance as my lawfully bought book at a discounted price.
I promise to protect, preserve and keep thee for life. I further promise not to loan my copy of Exit-stance to anyone or let anyone borrow thee from me.
Administrator of oath:
You now kiss your Twelve Dollars good bye and kiss your copy of Exit-stance.
I wish you pleasant reading.
Signed this day, Saturday, April 2, 2011
Exit-stance: Book Release Report
This is a very belated and long overdue 'news' report of the lanuching of Exit-stance (my play)
Exit-stance book launch event news report:
Note that no big time geriatric literary figure from Gujarat was asked to do the book launch, no fanfare (well there was some of it because the big time dramatist had paid for it), but definitely no press coverage with big photos and pompous speeches... Prior to the formal launching of the book, Dr. Raghava Gowda read excerpts from Exit-stance and that was followed by Sharonjee reading three scenes from my one-character play An Evening with Mary Carpenter. Both the readings lasted a little over twenty-minutes each with a very enthusiastic and standing ovation. (The standing part was due to lack of seats in the restaurant)
And here's my totally unobjective, dramatic and very self-serving report: (Some people just have no shame or any concept of modesty)
Dr. Tom Percy launched the book by tearing off the fancy gift-wrap in which the book was ensconced with a dramatic flourish - appropriate to the occasion and made equally generous remarks about the writing skills of the dramatist and his writing skills. Dr. Percy thanked the Publisher too for this very first publication under the Sharon Media Group banner.
The Publisher then invited the dramatist for his lofty and profound remarks that included his dramatic reading of the legal ownership certificate that was to be provided to the very enthusiastic or very reluctant (take your pick) guests. Over fifty very enthusiastic or reluctant guests clamored to buy a copy of Exit-stance, get their photos taken with the dramatist and of course the obligatory autograph and signed certificate of ownership from the dramatist was provided to all...(Some of the guests took more than one copy of the signed certificate and additional copies had to be printed)
During the remarks by the dramatist and at his urging (thinking that it was inevitable) many of the guests chose to rush for the dessert or to refill their wine glasses. Incidentally the cake was covered with a photo of the cover-page of the book. The cake was covered with the said photo that was printed on edible paper. Yes, this small city in the mid-west has very good bakeries run by descendants of German, Polish and Hugarian immigrants. One could actually hear their grunts from the back rooms where they bake such goodies. (The dramatist thought that the process of kneading the dough for bread and pastries was very sensuous and at times erotic and totally irrelevant part of this news report).
Later the niece of the dramatist Alpa Mahuvakar and her family hosted that evening a dinner with assistance from the Publisher where some thirty hand picked guests were present. The dinner menu was meticulously selected or prepared by Alpa and the Publisher. Merlot from Woodridge winery from the Sonoma Valley flowed like water and was consumed by few guests but mostly by the dramatist.
Just about the time when the guest were getting ready to stagger out of the restaurant, Alpa and the Publisher surreptitiously sprang open a big box of birthday cake. Even though the dramatist's birthday is usually in January this was a surprise celebration of the historic birthday. A truly big surprise for the dramatist! Every one sang Happy Birthday, some hummed while some faked singing. The dramatist made the thank you cum after dinner speech wherein he said how he and the misses generally request to be seated in the non-birthday section of a restaurant where they do not have to listen to some guest celebrating some relative, spouse or mistress's birthdays...
The dramatist now overwhelmed by some indescribable emotions, very tipsy and suddenly feeling very OLD, thanked the guests and staggered towards the car...
It is assumed that good time was had by all or at least by one person - the dramatist!
Now if you can correctly tell me how many times the words the dramatist has appeared in this report you may qualify for a prize that is not worth a damn! (Of course void where prohibited by law or spouse)
(Excerpted from Ass - ociated Press, very Random house report, Barns and Stables news and other unheard of news and wired services)
Exit-stance book launch event news report:
Note that no big time geriatric literary figure from Gujarat was asked to do the book launch, no fanfare (well there was some of it because the big time dramatist had paid for it), but definitely no press coverage with big photos and pompous speeches... Prior to the formal launching of the book, Dr. Raghava Gowda read excerpts from Exit-stance and that was followed by Sharonjee reading three scenes from my one-character play An Evening with Mary Carpenter. Both the readings lasted a little over twenty-minutes each with a very enthusiastic and standing ovation. (The standing part was due to lack of seats in the restaurant)
And here's my totally unobjective, dramatic and very self-serving report: (Some people just have no shame or any concept of modesty)
Dr. Tom Percy launched the book by tearing off the fancy gift-wrap in which the book was ensconced with a dramatic flourish - appropriate to the occasion and made equally generous remarks about the writing skills of the dramatist and his writing skills. Dr. Percy thanked the Publisher too for this very first publication under the Sharon Media Group banner.
The Publisher then invited the dramatist for his lofty and profound remarks that included his dramatic reading of the legal ownership certificate that was to be provided to the very enthusiastic or very reluctant (take your pick) guests. Over fifty very enthusiastic or reluctant guests clamored to buy a copy of Exit-stance, get their photos taken with the dramatist and of course the obligatory autograph and signed certificate of ownership from the dramatist was provided to all...(Some of the guests took more than one copy of the signed certificate and additional copies had to be printed)
During the remarks by the dramatist and at his urging (thinking that it was inevitable) many of the guests chose to rush for the dessert or to refill their wine glasses. Incidentally the cake was covered with a photo of the cover-page of the book. The cake was covered with the said photo that was printed on edible paper. Yes, this small city in the mid-west has very good bakeries run by descendants of German, Polish and Hugarian immigrants. One could actually hear their grunts from the back rooms where they bake such goodies. (The dramatist thought that the process of kneading the dough for bread and pastries was very sensuous and at times erotic and totally irrelevant part of this news report).
Later the niece of the dramatist Alpa Mahuvakar and her family hosted that evening a dinner with assistance from the Publisher where some thirty hand picked guests were present. The dinner menu was meticulously selected or prepared by Alpa and the Publisher. Merlot from Woodridge winery from the Sonoma Valley flowed like water and was consumed by few guests but mostly by the dramatist.
Just about the time when the guest were getting ready to stagger out of the restaurant, Alpa and the Publisher surreptitiously sprang open a big box of birthday cake. Even though the dramatist's birthday is usually in January this was a surprise celebration of the historic birthday. A truly big surprise for the dramatist! Every one sang Happy Birthday, some hummed while some faked singing. The dramatist made the thank you cum after dinner speech wherein he said how he and the misses generally request to be seated in the non-birthday section of a restaurant where they do not have to listen to some guest celebrating some relative, spouse or mistress's birthdays...
The dramatist now overwhelmed by some indescribable emotions, very tipsy and suddenly feeling very OLD, thanked the guests and staggered towards the car...
It is assumed that good time was had by all or at least by one person - the dramatist!
Now if you can correctly tell me how many times the words the dramatist has appeared in this report you may qualify for a prize that is not worth a damn! (Of course void where prohibited by law or spouse)
(Excerpted from Ass - ociated Press, very Random house report, Barns and Stables news and other unheard of news and wired services)
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