Celebrity Spotting

As is always the case at Prithvi, there was much celebrity spotting, though a piece of Prithvi furniture called Makarand Deshpandey was missing. Shashi Kapoor was there, looking far more handsome and elegant than he did in his younger days - white hair, white kurta pajama. Its only natural that he be there to watch a play, still it was kind of nice to see him, he looked a little unwell though. There were a lot more, including the newly famous Jago re guy from the Tata Tea commercial - who hung around before the play long enough to be spotted and left soon after some people obliged.

I don't think I have told you this, according to S, I am a magnet for sidey celebrities or may be I am the only one in this world who recognizes them! I think I remember Parul mentioning in one of her posts that she saw and recognized Ritu Shivpuri ... now that's the kind of thing I am talking about! In every flight, every mall visit, visit to our club, every time we are eating out - I almost always end up spotting them, its like they know I am around and come crawling out of the woodwork. The ones from TV soaps, I don't know too many but I'm so good at the game that I look at body language and know that they think they are celebrities!

The dictionary of course doesn't have the word 'sidey' so it technically doesn't exist but I love it, it so fittingly describes a certain kind of people.

Anyway, don't trust S's claim about the sidey bit, he includes Vir Sanghvi, all politicians and even Shubha Khote and her daughter Bhavna in sideys. Imagine! That woman Bhavna starred in Dekhi Bhai Dekh, that should mean something! Not one to give up easily, I am out to prove him wrong. To make it harder he has refused to admit evidence from incidents more than two years old, which ruled out my Quali days when I could recite the breakfast menu for most airlines , traveled with flight full of TV cast and crews for popular (unheard of) soaps which made all aunties run amok and moved around with the likes of Imran Hashmi, Mahesh Bhatt and the idiotic curly-haired guy from that man's bleach cream ad. Er, I think I lost the point a bit.

He also passed the ruling that the people I 'go' to see in plays, premiers, concerts, FW etc. do not qualify as a 'spotting'! How unfair is that! I should take out a morcha against such heartless rulings!My protest is even more centered around the premier(s), though there's only one I have ever been to, its the quality that matters after all and it was to the premier for Rang De Basanti I went and how not to term spotting the cast as spotting?!Is there no justice?! I only hope those not part of the play/concert/premier/FW and present as audience are admissible or I will have to call the human rights people.

All this talk reminds me of two landmark celebrity events in my life - my meeting with the very good looking Rajiv Gandhi when I put tilak on his forehead and he pinched my cheeks in return (I was all of 8) , a mousy looking Soniya Ji was also there. The second event happened many many years later when I walked into the elevator at Holiday Inn, Pune with my dad to see Dharam ji there, noticing my wide-eyed excited look he leaned and said to me in his Dharam voice 'Hulloo Laidyee'. It was totally cool, my dad only asked me later who the gentleman saying hello to me was and S hullo-laidyees me every so often to bug me.This was also my very first celeb spotting. In later years with freshers parties and college fests being infested with known names it no longer remained a novelty. Anyhow, I am mighty proud of the ignorant or disdainful look I manage for the wannabe celebs. Its another matter when I spot some real celebs (by my standards) and sports people or its someone I know my mom would be majorly excited to know about and so I frantically SMS her ... she's the only one who truly shares my enthusiasm. Or J. Or may be Abhinav.

Still in recent times I have proven S wrong with more thumping evidence, what with PC, Bebo and Saif (flapping his arms, imitating an aeroplane at security check) hovering to be spotted. S only sighs about me and the family being filmi :)

Jis Lahore Nahi Dekhya

My foot is a bit better but hasn't healed as it was supposed to, so I'm still not allowed to move around much. Given this, quest for entertainment available at ground floor level took us to one of my favorite places - Prithvi, I have written about my love for the place earlier as well. This was followed by a long, relaxed din at Mahesh Lunch home. Abhinav was also with us and its a weekend tradition all three of us have come to enjoy and look forward to.

The play we watched was 'Jis Lahore Nahi Dekhya', its a much acclaimed one which S has been wanting to catch for some time, we did manage to for their 139th show. The script was very tight with sharply drawn characters and many acts which were short and crisp, they made the story progress very well. The actors were all really good and though it would be a treat to watch Surkeha Sikri play the key role of Ratan's mother (as was the case in its initial days) overall the performances were really good. The story though set in post-partition Lahore is very relevant today, may be far too much for comfort.

Theatrical Bliss!

Hello hello! I'm feeling much better and far less depressed now, we live in troubled times (yaa, I know, I'm reading LOTR once again and tend to talk like that) BUT even with all this morose-ness I have had a very nice past week filled with lots of going out, meeting people, hanging out, movies AND the icing on the cake ... lots of plays!!!

The Motley festival is on at the Prithvi Theatre. For the ignorant, Motley is a theater group started by Naseer-ud-din Shah and they have some wonderful plays that they have staged over the years. I have been lucky enough to watch some of their plays in the past few years. However, this time when the festival started I had something I never had before - Time! So I decided to watch as many of the plays as possible. Only I decided that a little late and most of the shows were already sold out. I did manage to get tickets for two very nice ones - Katha Collage 2 and Antigone; I watched Katha Collage 1 and loved it and Antigone is much applauded ... will write more about these once I watch them in the coming week. Right now will just tell you what happened yesterday :)

I went to Prithvi with more than one purpose - to buy tickets for whichever plays I could get, while time away at their adorable cafe and try my luck for yesterday's play - Dear Liar. I managed all three successfully! After I bought the tickets for the two plays I mentioned before and was about to head for the cafe I thought it was worth a shot and made cute, puppy-like, sorry faces at the people on the ticketing counter and finally one of them said that I should try just 15-20 mins. before the show starts and if there are any cancellations they may be able to give me a ticket. So I hung around. For three hours.

I sat at the Prithvi cafe with its lazy afternoon feel, people sitting and chilling as if there wasn't a mad, rushing world outside the walls. A group of three asked me if they could share my table (though there were at least 8 tables vacant) and they did. It turned out that it was a storywriter meeting with a director's assistant and a screenplay-writer to narrate his latest story. So as I read my book and munched on my samosa, I also heard snippets of the story and as it went along I also smiled and nodded to myself when their discussion got to something interesting (Rajasthani culture for one or the fabulousness of the Motley plays). After some time and many glasses of tea (by them); a raspberry drink, a lemonade and a mint tea down (by me) I became a quasi-teammate of sorts and was looked at for approval or a comment from time to time. It was all much fun. On one table I could see some students having a quick bite and running off. On another a mom treating a brother-sister duo after their summer workshop , there was much giggling and laughter. On yet another, one oldie and a young guy sitting while the oldie reminisced about working with Guru Dutt as a technician and knowing his driver personally(?). Some famous and some not so famous celebrities mingled over bhurji pav. Everyone seemed to be in a comfortable place, I definitely was. The three hours passed away pretty quickly and I managed to get a ticket and got to watch Dear Liar.

I managed to get a VERY good place to sit ... just a row from the stage. So close that I felt that Naseer and Ratna Pathak were talking to me (considering it was them on stage, I'm sure that may be true for most people) and not upfront so that I wasn't looking up at them. I have seen Naseer on stage earlier but I think you can never have enough of that, it was a treat.

The play was a comedy, based on the correspondence of over 40 years between Mrs. Patrick Campbell and George Bernard Shaw. The letters were found by her maid in a old battered hat box in the days of the second world war and now in the form of this play trace the relationship the two shared (Shaw and Stella, not the maid) over about half a century. Hilarious, funny, subtly emotional in places; but most of the time it had the audience rolling with laughter. It was an awesome experience and at the end of the play the two got a standing ovation. I have also watched the plays Love Letters, Tumhari Amrita and Aapki Soniya; which had a slightly similar format. Shabana's Tumhari Amrita is the only one which manages to touch this one's brilliance.


I was left with the sense that I had seen and been a part of something grand. What a day! I stepped out of the theater in a state of bliss. Not excited - just blissful. It was a whole new feeling. I'm now waiting to see what the other two plays will do to me ... :)