WHEN SHAKESPEARE MARRIES HITCHCOCK.

Punchdrunk's larger-than-life theatrical, SLEEP NO MORE, takes being a fly on the wall to another level. 

Last night, a friend (an appreciator of the arts and an artist in her own right) and I escaped from the drudgery of suburbia and "checked" into the McKittrick Hotel in NYC. Or rather, we quietly, a bit nervously, lined up behind other "hotel guests" on the sidewalk of 27th street, waiting to be let in at our purchased check-in time. We were ID'd and stamped in approval and exactly at 7:30 a pair of industrial sized, ancient-looking doors opened and we were ushered into the dark. Literally into the dark. Dark as in, I could not see my own hand as I scratched my nose. I had to coat-check my tiny sling - we had been informed (before) that only what can be held in pockets will be allowed inside the "hotel" but smart-aleck that I am, I thought a tiny cross-body sling shouldn't be a problem. Well, it was. So I checked it in, stuffed the essentials in my pockets and proceeded to the "lobby" where our "hotel reservation" was validated and we were given "cards" (think keys) and guided one floor up into a lounge/bar/waiting area (think speakeasies or Greta Garbo.) 

Once there, my friend and I were confused. Um. What should we do now, was what we and the 100 or so other "guests" were all thinking. Do we just disperse and explore the hotel? Where are the actors? When's the drama beginning? Is there a program? Is there a freaking map? Patience is a virtue was proved. A shared shot of absinthe, ginger and something else helped our anxiety. We took a table, were greeted by this glittering, film noir kind of woman holding a champagne glass who told us...okay, I'm not sure what she told us but I figured we were exactly where we were supposed to be. 

With me still? LOL. It's an experience, this performance (for want of a better word) of SLEEP NO MORE. 3D movies have nothing on this total immersion type of theatre where we are not just watching a play from our seats but are ghosts walking through the sets of the play, seeing the actors act from all directions, touching what they touch, sitting where they sit. I drew the line at submerging myself in the bloody bathwater where Lady Macbeth washes the blood off Macbeth's hands. But, the water was warm, I can vouch for that. But I'm getting ahead in the sequence of events.

So, the film noir woman eases our apprehensions and floats off to do the same to the other "guests." Then a tuxedoed man comes up on stage and announces (thank God!) that we're about to begin. He asks all the guests who held Aces (the cards we were given at check-in finally make sense) to please gather on one side. We do. We're led into a tiny room where Ms. Film Noire explains whats about to unfold a bit more and makes us put on masks. Yes! The whole audience is masked like the phantoms of an opera. The Ace card holders are then stuffed (okay not stuffed but ushered again) into an elevator and small batches of us are let out on different floors. My friend was let out on the 5th and when I tried to follow her out, I was barred by the elevator man. He said the whole thing was an individual experience and that friends might meet or not  during our "experience" depending on the paths we take. Obviously, we'd meet at the end when they threw us out.

So, the 4th floor it was for me (I just knew it would happen to me) as I followed the few others who'd been let out with me, we walked into a freaking graveyard - piles of earth beneath my feet, headstones brushing my thighs, eerie grave-digging music filling my ears, dry-ice in my nostrils and a mask on my face. Full sensory experience? Sure, and then some.

I'm not going to give anymore details and spoil it for the people who'll have the good fortune to experience this...this...I won't call it simply a play. It's so much more than that. It's an engagement of yourself with the arts. Where you are the artist, the playwright, the director, the curtain boy, the candy thief and the Peeping Tom. You direct your experience. You discover the plot. You become the play. You are the player.

I loved it. The running up and down 5 flights of stairs, following various actors embarking on murder and mayhem for 3 whole hours was a blast. And did I mention, there is no dialogue at all.

MUSIC IN MAY

My Playlist this month. Will add and reshuffle songs as the "write" mood strikes. Sometimes the music inspires the scene, other times the character demands the song...

Just Give Me a Reason-Pink
Daylight-Maroon 5
Don't You Worry Child-Swedish House Mafia
Unfaithful-Rihanna

Diamonds-Rihanna

Pretty Woman-Roy Orbison

Madness-Muse

It must've been Love-Roxette

What's on your iPod this month?

E-BOOKS VS PRINT BOOKS

And the debate rages on...

Says One: I love holding a book in my hands. The feel of it. The weight of it. The smell of it. The dog ears and the flippable pages. The option that I can tear out the pages I hate and make paper planes with them. The hours I spend wandering around a library, caressing leather bound spines and embossed letters. The sheer majesty of a floor to ceiling book shelf, it's like my personal stairway to heaven.

Says Two: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stop kidding yourself. Holding ancient papyrus scrolls and cuneiform tablets isn't going to get you any closer to Aristotle, or God, for that matter. And think about the waste, man. The trees desecrated, the jungles destroyed, the eco-system damaged...do you even know how ink is manufactured? Print books are bulky, have become more expensive and soon won't be so easily available with all these bookstores (your portals to nirvana) shutting down helter-skelter. I'm not even going to think about your stupid paper plane fetish.

Says Me: It's the content that matters, y'all, not the book's publishing format. Good prose will remain good prose whether its  carved in stone or gigabytes or ink. 

What say you?

THE DEATH OF A CITY.

Bengaluru: No more a city of a thousand lakes.

It seems that half of Bengaluru (Karnataka, India) will have to be evacuated by the year 2023 as the rapidly expanding city is facing a water-shortage crisis. More than half of its bore wells and tap water have been contaminated by E.coli bacteria and no plans are in place to reverse this outrage. How is it contaminated? By letting sewage run into groundwater rendering it un-potable. 

Once, many decades, maybe centuries ago, Bengaluru or Bangalore had been described as a land of a thousand lakes. But today only 200 of those lakes remain and are nothing better than sewage tanks. The rest of the 800 were sucked dry and built over to expand the city's acreage. No one thought to build around these lakes? Can no one enforce sanitation laws? It's not only unbelievable, it's shameful.

Out of the usable water that flows into the city a third is wasted due to leaks in transportation. The numbers are all out there for all to see. Why is no one seeing? How can we let this happen?

Seems a patently fake image.

That's more realistic.

MUMBAI MADNESS IN APRIL.

Meow! I'm Kiara. I'm a cat and that's my jungle, humans. A jungle of buildings and cars and water and humans for miles and miles and more. Observing Mumbai's like my favorite hobby and I do it so brilliantly. Next time, I'll take you on a hands-on city tour so keep watching. Ciao!

MANY MASTERS LOTS OF CONFUSION

April 8th: Truffles Kothari's 4th birthday. Yay! I have to, have to do a post on him. 

Truffles came to us when he was only 10 weeks old. My daughter, husband and I went to get him from Brooklyn (first and only time I've been to Brooklyn, but that's another post altogether.)

We went, we saw a litter of puppies and I wanted the tiniest, prettiest one but my husband said he and my son would not be caught dead walking a pretty and cute dog. He wanted a manly man's dog. Now, a Maltese isn't a manly man's dog but I valiantly did not point it out to my manly man then. So we found a scruffy, unkempt enough, dog to suit him and my son named him Truffles. (after the white chocolate, not the mushroom.) I wanted to name him Henry, the Eighth, but was vetoed unanimously.

4 years later, we do have a manly man's Maltese. Truffles has broken records as being the biggest, sweetest, most lovable and thorough confused Maltese in the world. (They do say a dog reflects his owner. Heehee.)

Watch how we confuse poor Truffles by clicking the sentence below.

Trick or Treat, Truffles?

HAPPY HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY MY PRECIOUS POOCHIE. WE LOVE YOU!

WRITING SKILLS

The Art of Galumphing:

ga·lumph 

intransitive verb \gə-ˈləm(p)f\

: to move with a clumsy heavy tread

To unblock writer's block or to get the creative juices flowing on slow days, I was introduced to the art of galumphing. Which I've found is less of an art form and more of a trick. It is nothing but a lottery you play and hope to get lucky with the chits you pick. 

This is how it works: 

Make several dozen word chits. The words must be a mix of names, places, animals, things and actions. Scramble up the folded chits or close your eyes and pick a minimum of 3. The lesser chits you pick, the easier the trick works, I've found. If you want difficult, by all means pick 10 chits. Open the chits and there, you have your lucky draw. Then use the words you've picked and write a paragraph or two or three with them. 

It's really a neat trick to do. At worst, you'll end up giggling at the words you've chosen. (I once picked: fart, Venice and Internet.) At best, you'll have something worthwhile on your laptop.

Here's one of my galumphs:

Garbage Can, Car Salesman, Sandy Beach.

Mike Cohn, car salesman extraordinaire, was having a great day. He'd sold two cars today, leased another two and had the potential of two more sales going through tomorrow, and by God he would make sure they did. It was a day made for whistling, he thought, glorious, sunny, warm and fresh. All he needed to make this glorious day stupendous was his surfboard, some surf and the beach. 

He parked his midnight blue ’99 GT Convertible in his daily spot, smack dab in the middle of the parking lot that led to the white sandy beach, the pride and joy of his quiet, North California town. He stretched, popping the kinks and tedium of the day away and grabbed his checkered Billabong shorts. He striped of his suit and put on the shorts, keeping an eye out for peeping toms and prudes with screechy voices. He did not want to waste a single minute mollifying anyone or explaining why he was inflagrante delicto in a public place to the cops. 

There! All done. He grabbed his board and the empty coffee cup sitting on the roof and started jogging towards the beach. He detoured in the direction of the garbage can to toss the cup in, and he froze.

Holy shit! What in hell was that peeking out of the garbage can?

It took me about 10 minutes to do that. Not bad, eh? 

So, go on. Do your own Galumph and tell me you rocked.