Naariyal Paani - An awesome experience!

I had never been to a play till today. (The only one I went to in Chennai, hardly counts!) Rangashankara, quite a popular place in JP Nagar, Bangalore - as a venue and producer for plays - always appealed to me whenever I heard people speaking about it. I don't know why until today, I had not bothered to try the experience of seeing a play there. Thank heavens that I tried!!

This particular play, written and directed by Sandeep Shikhar, is a hard candidate to describe in a few words. With no frills attached and quite straightforward in whatever it wanted to convey, it proved to be the ideal first experience. How happiness washes over us, particularly when we try something, expecting hardly anything concrete to emerge out of it, but it proves to be extraordinarily fruitful and enjoyable! This experience was exactly like that...

Hardly a handful of performers, some very fine scripting and acting along with meaningful and down-to-earth dialogue and lyrics, it really makes for a perfect combination for viewing. Humor is one aspect which is very difficult to pull off successfully while acting. Achieving it in a play is all the more so considering the very nature of the medium. Yet at no point during the hour long play did anybody in the audience feel that the humor on offer was affected or exaggerated.

एक फल की दुकान में वो नारियल पानी पी रही थी.

I don't want to share the entire story of the play. It was very simple as the bookmyshow.com summary - "The play begins with a character madly in love. Every time this character tries to share his story with others, he is stopped. At one point, he makes the decision to clarify his story to the general public by hiring Rangashankara as a platform to tell his story.It is from this point that the play begins. Taking the stage with the main character, played by Vivek Vijayakumaran, are two musicians playing the tabla and guitar. The musicians are actually co-actors in the performance" says.

I was elated when one of the musicians, Anupam readily obliged to the audience request to perform one of the songs again. Any good story will have something concrete to take away and this one had a number of messages conveyed in a delightfully engaging manner. The audience I was part of thoroughly enjoyed every bit and the appreciation was heartfelt. Hats off to the actors and the director for this wonderful piece of theater that has made me yearn for more!

An experience like this sometimes gets me thinking - What am I doing in this world everyday struck in a routine? The wide world out here is for us to explore. By cultivating a wide range of interests, each one of us would be doing ourselves a world of good. Let us all try to appreciate things that we might not be good at, but nevertheless deserve the recognition and respect. It is the first step towards knowledge and a broadening of the horizon!