I was always fascinated by live performances, and Prithvi Theatre was the place where I began watching plays of Amrish Puri, Shabana Azmi, K K Raina, Vijay Kashyap, Sudhir Pandey, Anjan Srivastav and many great actors. And surely in 1985 I got an opportunity to be a part of this fantastic Journey which continues till date. Glorious 30yrs of Theatre & events as a designer  with over 2000 shows, I still feel I am hungry for more. Even today it excites me to see actors perform live on stage. I remember va very interesting incident I was watching A play Royal Hunt of the Sun 2nd time and suddenly I was called outside the auditorium by the Director of the play Firoz Khan and taken up to the Light Room to operate the running show since his light operator left the play in anger due to some rift with the director. I was shocked to take over the show. I told Firoz how can i do, He said i know you are watching the play again and he was sure that I would remember the play (And yes I knew the play, His guess was right) so he said he will keep telling me and I ll operate and luckily the show went very smoothly and nobody in the audience realised that a new light operator had taken over. It was a terrifying yet brilliant experience of my early days as theatre and light designer. Next day Firoz presented a book as a token of appreciation for saving the play.  This live and ticking Journey is Theatre. 

Lets begin the stories...

We as children always wanted to hear stories and as we grew up we wanted to share stories. And these stories have stayed with us some for fun of it and some as inspiration. I remember my father when he would be tired and if we insisted on a story session he would start with a story which has no end and it would not move from its intial opening line, that would frustrate us but then in due course of time we realised that Dad was tired and needs his break. There have been instances when he would quote lines of wisdom which would confuse us than but when we think about them they had great relevance in our yrs to come.
This place is for all such stories and quotes which your parents shared with you. Lets relieve those stories from our younger years and share it to create a blog of "storytellers".

One such story from my past for you.

The little man.

From over the shoulder of the little boy, you see his mother entering the room. In the middle of the living room the nine years old boy in torn and muddy school uniform is looking straight at his father very confidently, while his father is reading the remark card.

The mother sits next to the father and he hands the remark card to her, as he hands it over the red remarks bring a sense of worry and concern on the mothers face.

The mother reads it and looks at the boy, and before she asks anything, the boy gestures with his hand conveying, ‘I will explain’

Boy, ‘I finally beat up that boy and then I went up to the teacher and told her that it is me who has written all those bad things about him on the bathroom walls.’

The boy now removes his specks and looks back at his father with a coy smile and continues,

‘And you know what dad, I also told the teacher that she is very beautiful and I really like you Miss Ann.’

The mother gets furious at hearing this but before she could react, the boy tells her,

‘Mom, there’s no point in screaming at me.’

He looks at his father and then addresses both saying,

‘Dad, mom. This boy has been bullying me since the past three months, he has been eating away my lunch box every day and not only that I have been punished every other day for the mischief’s that he has been doing. I have been suffering but did not know what to do?  So I thought why not stand for myself and get back and teach him a lesson. Do you still want to scream at your son on his decision?’

The mother looks at the father perplexed.

The mother asks the boy, ‘why did you say that to the teacher?’

The boy looks at the father and tells him, ‘dad, please handle it, it’s a matter of the heart, and she is really beautiful.’

The father is concealing a smirk.

                                                  *********************************

Following morning:

Father and son are in the car outside the gates of the school. The boy is looking down, not getting out of the car. The father puts his arm around the boys shoulder and tells him,

‘Be a man’

                                                                                                                                         The Little Man.