A decade in Toronto - 28

Celebrating Che's 19th birthday at Montana steakhouse

I’ve been writing these blogs on my decade in Toronto since 2018. When I began, I’d hoped to complete the entire narrative of ten years in 52 weeks. But as that line from Robert Burns’s poem To the Mouse famously predicts, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley,” my resolve crumbled in the face of rapidly changing circumstances sometime in the spring 2018.

And a project that was to be completed last December, continues to drag.

Che: from adolescence to adulthood

Recently, I also complied all the posts into a Word document and realised that I’ve put together over 30,000 words so far (2008 to 2016) and I guess, when this exercise will be completed, it’ll all add up to nearly 40,000 words. In these days of shortening attention spans and the habit of reading falling side, 40,000 words is about the right sort of length for a decade of life.

Upon re-reading some of the posts, two things struck me:

The first was that most of the posts are based on my blog, which is sort of obvious because I’ve been blogging for the last decade, and the blog has become some sort of an unofficial journal, albeit one that mainly focuses on books and authors, poets, and book-related events.

To overcome that anomaly, I’ve taken some inputs from Facebook, to connect the narrative to my life, and to provide some context to the changes in my life in the last decade with what happened in the world.

I’m skeptical whether I’ve succeeded.  

The second was that I realized that this is a sanitized version of my life in Toronto, and I’ve kept out unpleasantness. I’ve commented on this briefly in one of my earlier posts, too. Nobody’s life is without unpleasantness, mine is no exception; if you’re looking for a life without unpleasantness, you’re likely to find it only on Instagram.

We choose not to dwell too much on unpleasantness primarily because those experiences are caused by our own expectations; expectation of what we want others to do for us or not do to us. And these others are not strangers that we exchange glances with and nod ever-so-slightly to on public transit, but people we consider our own – family, friends, co-workers, neighbours.

Before I’m accused of transmogrifying into a fake Baba, a sort of Buddha of Suburbia (and suburbia here being Toronto’s West End), let me quickly return to the narrative, with just a brief digression: I interviewed Hanif Kureshi after his debut novel was launched in India for The Daily at Strand Books. He was mildly annoyed at everyone constantly referring to him as following Rushdie’s footsteps.

I want to focus on the arts (mostly popular) in this post.

Popular Hindi cinema is a passion for both Mahrukh and I. We don’t miss any opportunity to go to a Hindi movie, especially if it has one of the three Khans in it. Lately, of course, two of the three Khans have only given duds, but they remain our perennial favourites.

All the three Khans gave memorable films in 2016. Fan was Shahrukh Khan’s valiant effort to move away from the stereotypical roles and do what he perceived to be different and challenging. It bombed comprehensively. Perhaps not as badly as his 2018 dud Zero. But Aamir Khan’s Dangal and Salman Khan’s Sultan (both based on wrestling theme) were tremendous hits.

I’ve found the moviegoing experience in Toronto so unique that I’m always tempted to write about it every time I go to see a movie. After going to the downmarket Albion cinema to watch Hindi movies for the first couple of years, we changed over to the Cineplex at Yonge and Dundas.

Here’s a brief passage of what I wrote about the cinema venue when we went to see Dangal:

I’d have thought that the first-generation immigrants such as Mahrukh and I would comprise a majority of the audience at the Cineplex in downtown Toronto because that is the kind of audience that comes to see Hindi movie in cinema halls.

However, for Dangal there were a good number of second and third generation Indo-Canadians, and a substantial number of students from India enrolled in Canadian universities.

All making for a rather raucous audience that was totally involved in the film; clapping, cheering, grunting, sighing and exhaling as the story unfolded.

Wisely, Cineplex had permitted audiences to get in half-an-hour before the show time, and the sprawling hall for screen 13 had filled up in no time. Once again, the sight of so many northeastern Indians surprised me.

A lot of nachos were being consumed, and a lot of Coke was being drunk. The smell of food was at once overpowering and nauseating.

In addition, there was almost a muted roar inside the hall; this is because wherever there are Indians, there is immense and unceasing chattering. As the movie began, there were a few whistles and a lot of clapping when Aamir Khan came on the screen.

For a more involved piece, I suggest you read the post on The Sultan Experience in Toronto. Salman Khan is one-of-a-kind, helluva of superstar. The audience participation for any of his film is qualitatively different.

2016 was the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare and it was a great reason to write about Vishal Bhardwaj’s Shakespearean trilogy – Maqbool (2003, based on Macbeth), Omkara (2006, based on Othello) and Haider (2014, based on Hamlet). Street Soldiers, a local, Toronto production, was an exceptional film that handled the drug scene in Toronto with a rare maturity and panache. Some of the actors in the film were theatre veterans (from the SAWITRI Theatre) and their performances were expectedly stellar.

In 2016, I suggested to Tushar Unnadkat, who’d been given charge of the annual community festival organised at Gerrard Street’s Little India. I suggested to him to have a literary component to the festival and he invited me to organise and moderate a panel discussion on South Asian Canadian theatre. He agreed with his usual alacrity. I invited all the South Asian theatre veterans I knew to participate in the panel discussion.

Panelists at the discussion
(l to r: Dalbir, Jasmine, Ravi, Andy and Sally)

The panelists were: Jasmine Sawant, actor, producer, writer, manager, and the Co-Founder and Artistic Co-Director of the award-winning SAWITRI Theatre Group, based in Mississauga; Jawaid Danish, a playwright-poet and translator, and the artistic Director of Rangmanch-Canada, a not for profit Indian Theatrical Group; Ravi Jain is a Toronto-based stage writer, director, performer who works in both small indie productions and large commercial theatre; and Dalbir Singh, a PhD Candidate in Theatre and South Asian studies at the University of Toronto, and recipient of the Heather McCallum award for Emerging Scholars. 

At the panel discussion, we were also joined by Nitin Sawant and Shruti Shah (both of SAWITRI), Andy Hazra of York University, Sally Jones of Rasik Arts, and Tushar Unadkat. I’d also suggested to invite Rahul Verma of Teesri Duniya from Montreal for the discussion, but budgetary constraints prevented his participation.

It was a fruitful and engaging discussion that explored the limitations, challenges and prospects of the topic we decided to discuss. The focal point was what is South Asian and what is Canadian, and does the canon have space for non-English language theatre. I’d urge you to read a report on the discussion here: South Asian Canadian theatre

That year, Ravi Jain’s company also brought Piya Baharupiya (Hindi adaption of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night) to Toronto, and SAWITRI brought Mohan Rakesh’s Aadhe Adhure. Both were exceptionally good.

A decade in Toronto - 23

2015 was a significant improvement on 2014. My new job at Simmons da Silva introduced me to a number of colleagues, many of them became friends; a couple of them still are, although I’ve moved on from that incredibly dynamic firm.

The leadership of the firm is forward looking and progressive, committed to multicultural ethos, despite a majority of its members being white (or as Stephen Harper would refer as “old stock Canadians”). 

Although being a five-decades-old firm, and law being an endemically conservative profession, thanks to its leadership, Simmons da Silva constantly strives for professional excellence.

Howard Simmons

At the firm, I knew Puneet, who'd created the opportunity for me to work there, and Pathik Baxi, a person who owns the term ‘laid back’. After joining, I instantly became friends with Howard Simmons, the founder of the firm. Howard is a rare free-thinking intellectual in a profession that encourages and often ensures regimentation.

Over the next three-and-a-half years, I got to know nearly 40 individuals who worked at the firm. In any work environment, some colleagues become more important than others. And, as I said at the beginning of this blog, a couple of them remain important, even though I’ve not been able to maintain contact with them as regularly as I’d want to.

When my colleagues surprised me by
celebrating my birthday - the first time in more
than two decades that I celebrated my birthday
in such a manner

However, since there are people in our midst who have the tendency to turn everything pure and magical into prurient and ugly, I shall refrain from naming those who are still important to me only because I have no desire to embarrass them, and because what I shared with them was special and will remain so forever.

May 2015 was the last time the Festival of South Asian Festival of Literature and the Arts (renamed as the Toronto Festival of Literature and the Arts in 2015) was organised by the indefatigable team of MG Vassanji and Nurjehan Aziz.

I was involved directly in organizing the East Asian panel with the help of Diana Tso, a playwright and actor. Sang Kim moderated the discussion on ‘Is Asian-Canadian a helpful label in terms of the Canadian canon’ and included the following eminent Asian-Canadian authors as panelists: Denis Chong, C Fong Hsiung, Madeleine Thien, Diana Tso, and Terry Watada.

The festival filled a vacuum in the cultural landscape of Toronto because it gave representation to authors who were invited from across the developing world, and to Canadian voices that seldom found representation in mainstream cultural programming. 

However, it clearly needed a larger professional organisational strength that the group of volunteers was unable to provide. 2015 turned out to be the last of a great series.

If interested in reading more, click here:  FSALA-15

In the summer of 2015, my friend Kumar Ketkar and his wife Sharada Sathe came to Toronto. It gave me an opportunity to invite a few friends over to my place (the party room of Lexington on the Green) to celebrate a warm evening together. 

All those invited were friends who’d helped me in my journey to become a Canadian, and while not everyone invited was able to come, those who did, contributed substantially to making the evening memorable and loads of fun.

Kumar and Sharada with friends

What I remember most about that evening was the selfless and unselfconscious manner in which Jasmine Sawant took the responsibility of doing the dishes after the party.  

Nitin and Jasmine then invited Kumar and Sharada to meet with their Marathi-speaking group for another dinner reception. It turned out to be a grand success. Both Kumar and Sharada are committed liberal progressives who have spent their entire life for the left ideological causes. 

Here’s a post about Kumar’s visit to Toronto when we went to the Toronto Reference Library: Erasmus of Rotterdam

2015 was also important for another reason – Stephen Harper lost the federal elections. He lost because of an exclusionary political agenda that targeted Muslim immigrants during the last years of his tenure. 

In retrospect, I think, Harper’s sharp exclusionary bend was probably a couple of years before its time.

By 2016-17, the tumultuous events across Europe (in the wake of the Syrian crisis and the ceaseless influx of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa) and the unexpected victory of Donald Trump’s extremism in the Presidential elections in the United States the forces that Harper tried to unleash in Canada had gained ascendency in the political narrative across most of North America and Europe.

Despite this obvious shortcoming in his politics, I admire Harper for his visionary leadership in improving Canada’s relations with India. He went to India on two occasions during his tenure and expanded the Canadian trade office network across India. And more pertinently, he understood and encouraged the role that Indo-Canadians have and can play in improving bilateral ties.

Also, he was Canada’s prime minister when I arrived in Canada in 2008 and became a citizen in 2014. These are significant landmarks in my life and Harper was an integral part of it. Thanks to my involvement with the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce, I was able to meet him on a couple of occasions.

With Stephen Harper and the ICCC leadership

I voted for the first time in a Canadian election hopeful that my vote would make a difference in making Canada a more just society, a society that treats all its citizens with respect. As they say, the jury is out on that one.

We lost many stalwarts in 2015, among them were: Charles Correa, the eminent architect from Bombay; novelist Gunter Grass; Narayan Desai, Mahatma Gandhi’s executive assistant and an eminent pacifist; Lee Kwan Yew, the creator of modern Singapore.

Vinod Mehta, one of India’s finest editors; and Praful Bidwai, an activist journalist, also passed away. And we lost RK Laxman, the legendary cartoonist of the Times of India, the creator of the Common Man. Laxman shaped the sensibilities of three generations of Indians by his cartoons. I shared the same workspace with him briefly when I worked for the Times Group. Here's the link to a post that narrates my encounter with him:

Uncommon encounter with the creator of common man

In India, Hindu fundamentalists assassinated Govind Pansare, a Communist, and MM Kalbargi, a Kannada academic. A couple of years ago in 2013, they had assassinated Narendra Dabholkar, and a couple of years later, in 2017, they'd assassinate Gauri Lankesh, a journalist who was vociferous in her opposition to the right-wing Hindutva nationalist politics that has come to control India. 

I remain worried for my more outspoken friends in India, and have often told them that in case they perceive any threat to their lives, they should immediately hop on to a plane and reach Toronto. I'd help them in every way possible to get settled here and continue to wage their ideological battle.

I lost a friend – Najia Alavi, a Pakistani-Canadian, and an active member of Communications, Advertising, Marketing Professionals (CAMP), Canada’s first voluntary organization for the marketing fraternity. She died by drowning while on a family vacation in Dubai.

SAWITRI Theatre Group's 15 years

Recently, SAWITRI Theatre Group celebrated its 15th anniversary at the Art Gallery of Mississauga at a glittering program attended by theatre connoisseurs and friends of SAWITRI’s dynamic founders Jasmine and Nitin Sawant.

The theatre group has been an important part of my personal journey in Canada in the last decade. It reintroduced me to the theatre and gave me an opportunity to enjoy the tremendous joy one experiences when actors perform on stage.

The first time I heard about SAWITRI was when Jawaid Danish invited me to Rang Manch Canada’s Hindustani Drama Festival in 2011 that he held in Mississauga. Jasmine and Nitin Sawant and Shruti Shah were present at the roundtable discussion held prior to the festival Challenges of Staging Indian Drama in Canada and Experiences of Desi Talents in Mainstream Showbiz.

About a year later, SAWITRI performed its play Saree Kahaniyaan (The Saree Stories) written by Jasmine, performed by Shruti and Naimesh, with Jasmine as the sutradhar (narrator). Since then, I’ve tried not miss a Sawitri play. The group has mounted a major play and several smaller staging annually.

SAWITRI has a frequent presence on this blog. If you’re interested, you may read the blogs of the different SAWITRI plays here:

• Gramma
• The Saree Stories
• Street Soldiers
• Case #99
• કાય પણ ઍક ફૂલ નુ નાં બોલો તો
• Lata Pada’s guest post
• Jasmine Sawant’s guest post
• South Asian Theatre panel discussion

Over the years, the group has created an audience for South Asian theatre and shaped the sensibilities of this audience by providing it with a rich variety of theatre experience in all the major contemporary languages of Bombay – Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and English.

Jasmine and Nitin Sawant

Recently, prior to the celebrations of its 15th anniversary, I had the opportunity to sit with Nitin and Jasmine and chat with them at length about their group.

The group's name is an acronym. SAWITRI stands for South Asian Women's Intercultural Research Initiative. It's also derived from the character in Mahabharata. Jasmine is clearly the driving force behind the group, although she readily admits that too many supporters have played a crucial and critical role in making SAWITRI the institution that it has become today.  

Among their steadfast supporters is legion of friends who have become an integral part of the group and includes the legendary Lata Pada, the globally renowned danseuse and the artistic director of Sampradaya Dance Creations. Among the supporters that Jasmine and Nitin acknowledge for having contributed tremendously include Prakash Date, who directs all the Marathi plays that SAWITRI produces. Keyoor Shah is an integral part of the team who takes care of the technical aspects of the production and is also a member of the set-building team. 

Jasmine and Nitin also acknowledge the role of the co-founder Shobha Hatte-Belgaumkar who was a part of SAWITRI for the first 5 years, as was Nain Amyn who took care of wardrobe, make-up, etc. After 5 years, they both wanted a bigger canvas to express themselves. Shobha moved on to pursue her own acting career and Nain moved on to become a part of Mosaic Festival along with Asma Mehmood.

Aniruddh Sawant was one of the founding directors of SAWITRI along with Nitin and Keyoor when SAWITRI was first incorporated. Jasmine recalls, "No matter where he was in the country he always flew back to see a SAWITRI performance and had solid and spot-on constructive criticism's to offer which went a long way in improving the quality of our performances." He was a Drama Major from Cawthra Park High School and a tremendous artist. "I cannot tell you how much we miss his feedback," she says.

Apart from auditioning and acting in SAWITRI productions when he is cast, Siddhant (Sid) Sawant is responsible for the photoshoots for our posters and many a time for providing music for the productions. He too is a Drama Major from Cawthra Park High School.

Both Jasmine and Nitin derive tremendous satisfaction from their success and the journey that they commenced in 2003. Shruti has been an integral part of their journey. The Group was keen to produce socially relevant theatre; in 2006, it produced the powerful women-oriented play From Here to There (Janice Goveas).  

A year later, the group was registered as a not-for-profit, with a board of directors.  Jasmine and Nitin teamed up with Prakash Date to produce तो मी नव्हेच for the Marathi Bhashik Mandal. Subsequently, in 2009 SAWITRI produced Mahasagar, its first Marathi play. It was directed by Prakash Date. 

Without ceasing its shorter productions, the Group was now keen to do major plays. In 2011, during the Festival of South Asian Literature and the Arts (FSALA), the Group met Mahesh Dattani, the renowned Indian playwright who has an awesome global reputation for writing powerful plays on contemporary issues. The first collaboration between SAWITRI and Dattani was Where There’s a Will. Subsequently, it also staged Seven Steps Around Fire and Dance Like a Man.

Both Nitin and Jasmine take pride in discovering and nurturing talent in different spheres of theatre – from direction to production design and from stage lighting to costumes. Gabriel Grey, Christina Collins, Joe Pagnan are some of the professionals who are regularly involved with SAWITRI productions.

A self-funded entity for most of its existence, the group has managed to get some official grants lately but such grants cover generally about 20 percent of the entire production cost. As a not-for-profit, the group distributes all the extra resources generated amongst the professionals who work to put up the performance.

GRAMMA

It’s only in the realm of fiction that the past and the present can be made to coexist. Both on the screen and on the stage, interspersing of the past and the present compels the audience to willingly suspend disbelief and, when the playwright and/or the director gets it right, this commingling of time and space creates incredibly poignancy that is heartwarming.

As GRAMMA, the latest offering by Sawitri Theatre Group reached its climax, I was disappointed that the play would end soon. Yes, the grandmother had passed away, but, I argued with myself, the play could’ve gone on for a bit with by switching over to the story Samantha and Raj. In these two characters, playwright Jasmine Sawant created characters that were endearing in their youthful innocence.

And as far as I could tell, they couldn’t have been part of the original memoir. 

The play is based on Dr. Jane Fraser’s memoir of her grandmother Lillie Carberry (1865-1949), and Jasmine makes it relevant to our times by incorporating characters in the present. Adopting an Indian theatre tradition of having a narrator (sutradhar), Jasmine turns Samantha and Raj into narrators of the story of the eponymous GRAMMA’s life.

Lillie’s story epitomises the lives of Canadian women and families living in Mississauga from mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. But she's not the docile and domesticated archetypal woman of her times. Lillie's an independent woman with a steely determination to do whatever she wants to do. Out of necessity, such strong-willed people (and especially women) lead a life that to others may seem lonely but that's not so. They prefer their solitude without feeling lonely. Lillie’s best pals are trees outside her the many homes that she lives during her lifetime.

The gradually changing dynamics of human relations between all the characters are evocatively portrayed and the witty and perceptive exchanges between Lillie and her daughter and her mother make the characters come alive. Lillie’s relationship with her mother and daughter also reveals her deceptively dominant (and manipulative) nature, all of which is conveyed in a few pithy lines. Her late marriage and relatively early widowhood strengthen her character even more.  The loss of her babies makes her a hard woman, who has learnt that it's only she who can adequately console herself to overcome her immense losses. 

Lillie's an intelligent woman with strong opinions on worldly matters; she doesn’t mince her words expressing unconventional views such as the futility of war. She lives through two World Wars. Jasmine makes that early 20th century period relevant to present times and makes a strong political statement by including in the narrative the contribution of Indian armed forces (then part of the British colonial army) to the war efforts. Although it’s a part of prattle between Samantha and Raj, it underscores the fact that this contribution has never been adequately acknowledged (the latest example is Nolan’s Dunkirk).

The material progress ushered in through technology that the Canadian society experiences in the early 20th century (such as the telephone and the automobile) and the growth of urbanisation in Mississauga (localities such as Derry Road and Meadowvale) in particular and the Peel region in general personalises the play for the local audience, nearly all of whom would’ve been familiar with the geography.  

Both Sawitri Theatre Group and Jasmine need to be acknowledged for producing a play that is as Canadian as it can ever be. It's a welcome departure from what the group's been doing in the past few years. I’m sure this is the first of many such efforts to follow. 

Credits:

GRAMMA's author - Dr. Jane Fraser

Playwright - Jasmine Sawant

Director - Christina Collins

Producer - Nitin Sawant

Production Design - Joseph Pagnan

Sound Design - Christina Collins & Sid Sawant

Costume Design - Shruti Shah

Projection Design - Nitin Sawant

Choreography - Akhila Jog, Shruti Shah & Raina Desai

Cast:

Lillie Carberry / Little Brown - Amy Osborne

Samantha Fraser - Ivana Bittnerova

Raj Nilan - Carlos Felipe Martinez

Isabelle Carberry & Grace Brown / Grace Emerson - Lucy Winkle

Henry Brown & Luther Emerson & Rag and Bones Man & Janitor - Jesse Anderson

Makeup - Akhila Jog

Stage Manager - Jeremy Pearson

Technical Director - Keyoor Shah

Production Assistant, Props & Wardrobe - Raina Desai

Makeup Assistant & Wardrobe - Forrest Jamie

Assistant to Stage Manager - Devansh Shah

Set Build - Keyoor Shah & Nitin Sawant

Marketing & Administration - Jasmine Sawant

Postcard & Cover Design - Arti Bakhle

House Program - Shamy Kaul

Period Costumes / Props - Courtesy Heritage Mississauga

Antique piano and table - Carol Ambrault

Antique chair - David Huband

Piano Tuning - David Patterson

Rocking chair - Emma Ryan

South Asian Canadian theatre

The Toronto Festival of South Asia is fun.

Toronto’s Gerrard Street East which is known as Little India (and should be renamed Little South Asia, because there are a good number of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Afghani establishments on the street) turns into a mela (village fair), with live performances by high-calibre as well as popular artists, and, of course, street food straight from Bombay’s Chowpatty and Delhi’s Chandni Chowk.

This year, the energetic and enthusiastic Tushar Unadkat helmed the festival as its creative lead. And transformed it completely.

Tushar introduced a literary component to the festival. The first was a discussion on the impact of Hindi cinema and South Asian media on the South Asian diaspora (Meena Chopra’s piece posted in this space two weeks ago was part of that discussion). The panel included Tahir Gora, Pushpa Acharya, Harpreet Dhillon, Meena Chopra and Tarek Fatah and Munir Pervaiz moderated the discussion.

Then, the next day, we had an engaging discussion on South Asian Canadian theatre. I moderated the discussion and was delighted that prominent people involved with theatre and who are South Asian agreed to participate in the panel discussion.

The panelists were: Jasmine Sawant, actor, producer, writer, manager, and the Co-Founder and Artistic Co-Director of the award-winning SAWITRI Theatre Group, based in Mississauga; Jawaid Danish, a playwright-poet and translator, and the artistic Director of Rangmanch-Canada, a not for profit Indian Theatrical Group; Ravi Jain is a Toronto-based stage writer, director, performer who works in both small indie productions and large commercial theatre; and Dalbir Singh, a PhD Candidate in Theatre and South Asian studies at the University of Toronto, and recipient of the Heather McCallum award for Emerging Scholars.

In an attempt to define the subject of the discussion, I exchanged emails with all the panelists prior to the discussion, and all of them came up with interesting insights not just about the subject, but also about themselves. For instance, Jasmine said she has trouble with the term South Asian. She said she uses the term not because she feels like a South Asian but because it is readily understood by the mainstream.

Ravi emphasized that all his work is an in-between space because I am in-between. He said, “As an artist, I’ve actually rejected being called a ‘South Asian’ artist, as I found that title limiting, and not reflective of the scope and breadth of my work. I am an artist. I am an avant-garde artist.” Ravi posed an interesting question, “Is Naseeruddin Shah starring in a George Bernard Shaw play South Asian theatre? More than Anita Majumdar starring in Hamlet? Or less than me onstage with my mom?

Jawaid’s contention during the email discussion brought out the crucial question of recognition and patronage. His question, which we should attempt to answer today, is simple: “Why do ethnic language plays don’t get the same recognition and grants?” Dalbir felt that it would serve us better if we also steered the discussion towards cultural diversity in general and how our stories are adequately reflected today and hopes for the future of theatre practice in this country.

At the panel discussion, we were also joined by Nitin Sawant and Shruti Shah of SAWITRI Theatre Group, Andy Hazra of York University, Sally Jones of Rasik Arts, Tushar and many others in the audience.

Jasmine kicked off the discussion by emphasizing that what is material to her creativity as a theatre person is the process of transforming a playwright’s vision from paper to stage. She said content should be equated with creativity not ethnicity; citing the example of Shakespeare, Jasmine said he stays relevant in all translations. Her theatre group involves artists, theatre craftspeople, and technicians of multiple ethnicities. This creates a confluence of many and varied visions that flows into the joint effort that reflects in the final product that is staged.

Jawaid, who has the singular honour of his plays being researched upon in Ranchi and Delhi universities, was unconvinced that honest assessment was being made of the Canadian South Asian theatre scene. He questioned the premise that Canadian South Asian theatre was being given due recognition. Jawaid’s contention was that only plays written in the English language were getting due recognition in terms of official patronage and grants. He said most of his plays had Canadian context and content, but because they were in Urdu, he had never been given any recognition, not just by the establishment, but even by his peers.

Ravi, who has won the 2016 Dora, considered the Canadian theatre Oscar, rejected the categorization of a theatre on the basis of ethnicities. He said he has been associated with the theatre that attempts to portray global experiences. His own play with his mother A Brimful of Asha despite being set in the South Asian milieu proved to be a global success because audiences everywhere could relate to its theme. Ravi also specified that he has tried to bring global theatre into Canada, and has been doing so to create awareness of a universal language of theatre that transcends ethnic, national and cultural boundaries and categorizations.

Dalbir, who has edited several books on Canadian South Asian theatre, also said that his sensibilities are totally Canadian. Although of Indian origin, he was born and raised in Canada and has little to no connection to India. He said South Asian theatre has increasingly been trying to contextualize South Asian diaspora presence in the Canadian society. Sally spoke about the need to have the right connections to be able to stage ethnic content in a multicultural environment.

The discussion veered to Mahesh Dattani, the Indian playwright who has worked in the English language. Andy Hazra drew attention to the absence of recognition (to the extent merited) of Mahesh’s work in India and compared it to the similar lack of attention being given to Canadian South Asian theatre. Nitin Sawant said it is important to understand and properly define Canadian South Asian theatre, and the criterion should be content. If the content and the context is not Canadian, even if the language is English, it cannot be deemed Canadian.

When I discussed the idea with Tushar, I had suggested to him that we also invite Rahul Varma of Teesri Duniya to the panel discussion. However, the festival didn't have that sort of a budget to invite participants from outside of the GTA. However, Rahul offered to send some inputs for the discussion, which I had planned to read as part of my moderator's responsibilities. But, as with all of us, we get busy with a multitude of things, and can't allocate time to all that we want to do. Rahul's note arrived a bit late, and I'm adding it to this blog, not as an afterthought, but as integral to the discussion above.

Rahul's note: "In the early phase of multiculturalism, there was hardly any professional artist of south Asian Diaspora and, producers imported plays from India on an Indian theme. Teesri Duniya Theatre took a different approach – in that it started creating plays from scratch in Canada instead of borrowing from India.  Doing so, Teesri Duniya Theatre undertook a three-pronged approach in its productions:  

(1) culturally diverse plays set in Canada  

(2) locally created plays on local and global themes and

(3) new forms, e.g. dance-theatre that knows no boundaries.

However, global themes mean less to us if Canada is excluded from the plot. Similarly, culturally diverse plays also mean less to us if they are dealing exclusively with material from the playwright’s ancestral country at the expense of intercultural experience occurring in Canada.  Clearly, company’s definition of a culturally diverse play is a play that draws heavily on lives lived in Canada. Such culturally diverse plays maintain a dual vision of the world and transcend differences in culture, color, race, gender, sexuality, and politics."

The panel discussion concluded with everyone agreeing that more discussions needed to be conducted at a regular frequency. 

Case # 99: Another gem from Sawitri

Controlled performance on stage is never easy, and even when an actor achieves it, the audience seldom, if at all, realizes the tremendous effort that goes into underplaying a role. Such expertise and ease comes with age and experience. 

A veteran thespian can be expected to pull it off quite effortlessly, but when callow actors do that, it is surprising, and refreshing. 

Of the many surprises that Case # 99 periodically sprung on the audience the Saturday evening I saw the play at Sampradaya earlier this month, the biggest and the most pleasant was the virtuoso performances by the three young actors who performed the only roles in the play. Their performances were so taut that there wasn’t a step was out of place, or an emotion that was excessive or unnecessary.

Just for the performances of the three young actors, the play was paisa vasool.  Raina Desai (Madhuri), Siddhant Sawant (Satyasheel), and Seth Mohan (Inspector Ramesh Sawant) turn Case #99 to a memorable experience, transform the suspense-filled, nail-biting thriller into one that hovers over the edge, always in the danger of tripping over the precipice but always managing to dearly hold on to the terra firma.

Madhuri watches in horror as
Inspector Sawant holds a gun to Satyasheel

In deliberately distinct ways, the three characters depict greed and avarice, fear and fragility. Ultimately, it is their vulnerability that endears them to the audience. Sawant’s Satyasheel is the epitome of low cunning that crumbles under the analytical unraveling of the mystery by Mohan’s Inspector Sawant; but for all his cockiness, and sure-footedness, the inspector proves to be all-too-human. 

That evening, both the young male actors were a study in contrast, and control. But the evening clearly belonged to Desai’s Madhuri, who is bold, brash at the beginning, but then quickly turns brittle, and ultimately breaking down in the end. 

Satyasheel terrorizes Madhuri

Jasmine Sawant’s adaption into English of the original Marathi play by Yogesh Soman keeps the audience riveted to the end. She retains the authenticity of the original by retaining elements of the original – such as deliberately not translating Indian currency denominations into North American ones. So, lakhs remain lakhs and don’t turn into millions, and crores also remain crores instead of turning into tens of millions.

However, she deftly alters the tone of the content to make it more contemporary, and relevant to a general North American audience. The original Marathi play has had an incredibly popular run, and by staging it in English in Canada, Sawitri Theatre Group has served theatre lovers in Toronto well with something that is not generally associated with the group’s oeuvre.

Sampradaya, the venue, is a cozy place that enabled the three young actors to engage the audience and draw them into their shenanigans. Over these last few years, the Savitri team has coalesced into a finely-tuned operatic orchestra that seemingly surpasses its best with every show.

Images: https://www.facebook.com/SawitriTheatreGroup/ 

કાય પણ ઍક ફૂલ નુ નાં બોલો તો

Salman Rushdie, in his critically undervalued The Ground Beneath her Feet coined acronym HUG-ME for languages that everyone in Bombay was familiar with. 

He says, “Bombayites like me were people who spoke five languages badly and no language well.” The languages were (are?) Hindi Urdu Gujarati Marathi and English. 

A Bombay where we all understood these five languages, could speak four, read at least three, and write in two. 

This was the quintessential Bombay – a Bombay that now probably lives only in the diaspora outside India.

Jasmine and Nitin Sawant of the Sawitri Group are of that lost generation who live a Bombay that exists only in the imagination. 

The Sawitri Group have made a great contribution to the theatre scene in Toronto by staging Mahesh Dattani’s plays. Periodically, they also stage plays that capture the Bombay of the past, Bombay that is lost. 

A while back, the group staged Sai Paranjape’s सख्खे शेजारी, and earlier this week, the group staged Madhu Rye’s popular Gujarati play કાય પણ ઍક ફૂલ નુ નાં બોલો તો.

Rye’s play is a whodunit with an unexpected and unconventional dénouement that nearly five decades after it was first staged, retains its freshness. More than anything else, it’s a play about the Bombay of yore, a Bombay that could hold in its imagination a woman like Kamini Desai, the stage actor who is willing to suffer a lifetime of oblivion behind bars just to revel in a moment of narcissist wish fulfilment.

It’s a play that is in many ways a period piece. For instance, it cannot but raise eyebrows at the various dalliances between its main characters. Yet in many other ways it is timeless. For instance, Deshpande’s blackmailing of Jyotsna’s husband that he would publish a calendar of her (presumably nude) photographs if he didn’t pay him a hefty sum has a resonance even five decades later. Rehtaeh Parson’s suicide is a tragic example from the present times.

The play examines the fluidity as well as the hypocrisy of relationship, and realistically questions the basis of most relationships – husband-wife, brother-sister, writer-producer, writer-actor, between actors, between lovers, between colleagues. 

In a distinctly multilinear manner (cubist in treatment of the plot but without cubism's invasiveness), it examines a murder from the point of view of different characters, and probes the psychology of guilt that surfaces in each of the characters as they question their own motives.

Theatre is an actor’s medium, and Naimesh Nanavaty, a theatre veteran, understands this perfectly. His direction is subdued and non-intrusive, as he allows controlled freedom to all his actors, who without exception give a superlative performance, with Shruti Shah (Kanta Patel, Kamini Desai), and Nanavaty (Keshav Thaker) himself standing out for making it look easy and natural.

Sampradaya’s space enables intimacy between the performers and the audience, breaking down the barrier that a conventional stage otherwise imposes. It enhances the appreciation of the craft that is theatre. 

That intimacy was highlighted by Joseph Pagnan’s lighting design, especially during the interrogation of each character, and attaining heartbreaking poignancy when tears well up the playwright’s (Nanavaty) eyes.

It was an evening well spent.