Dad loves quoting these 'rules' that decree actions which can lead to 'a better life', 'success', 'joy and happiness', etc. One of these rules is, "Always walk 25% faster". Okay? I tried it. Didn't really help. All it did was made me conscious of my walking speed and got me to places I did not want to be 25% sooner.

Pretty soon, while doing this, I stumbled upon something freaky. While it is very easy to pick up the pace when walking, it is virtually impossible to walk 25% slower!

Try it.

At lunch, the other day, they were serving this dish called [ Chola Batura ]. Now, this is a North Indian dish which was being served in South India and had been cooked, in all likelihood, by a South Indian.

Standing in the queue behind me was this couple, and as the line progressed, the following conversation ensued:
Guy: You're not having the chola batura?
Girl: What, you think these people know how to cook the chole?

These are the succession of thoughts that ran through my head at that moment:
1. This girl is from North India;
2. She has tasted chole cooked by both, North Indian cooks and South Indian cooks;
3. She has a particular 'taste memory' for North Indian made chole;
4. She has held on to that taste memory so tightly that she cannot let go of it; cannot enjoy the experience of a different taste of the same dish;
5. She will never know that chole tastes good when cooked this way too;
6. Ha. People are such morons. If only they could... Hey! Hold on just one second!

The next thing to hit me was this perennial argument I have with my flatmates: books vs movies.

It has always been my contention that movies are a poor, poor imitation of the book they are adapted from (the only exceptions, in my opinion, being 'The Shawshank Redemption' and 'Die Hard'). I think the Godfather movies are highly overrated. As was the abysmally poor 'Slumdog Millionaire' (the original book was utter rubbish, but the movie was way, way worse!). I have a host of other examples all lined up for presentation.

Whenever my movie-buff flatmates pop in another DVD of an adapted tale, I close my mind to what the movie has achieved. I keep comparing it to how the book went at every point and deride how incomplete the movie actually is. One of these flatmates even contended that my observations were irrelevant as they were based on comparisons with the book - and not based on treating the movie as an individual unit, separate from the book. In the lunch queue the other day, I could not help but realise how right he was.

Looks like I had my own taste of South Indian chole, huh?

(Oh, when saying that my observations on a particular movie were invalid because I was comparing it to the book, the flatmates and I were discussing Slumdog Millionaire. Fortunately for me at that point of time because, book or no book, that movie sucked big time!)

My theatre group handed an opportunity to me to make my... ahem... directorial debut.

The troupe regularly inducts folks by conducting periodic workshops. At the end of each workshop, the team just 'graduating' put up a show. Given the frequency of workshops being conducted, it is not feasible to open these shows out to the ticketed public for the premiere; that privilege rests with the 100 odd members of the troupe.

So, for the most recently graduating bunch of actors, the team was split into three -- each handled by one director for a play (Another long-serving co-actor lost his directorial virginity along with me this last weekend). I had effectively three hours of Saturday to put together a piece depicting the conflict between rationality and emotion in human beings -- an idea I do wish to expand on in the future.

I chose to step beyond the conventional method of direction (scripts, strict blocking, I-am-God-here) and move towards the approach of Rough Theatre. I had the basic movements and the rough sequence of events in mind -- and I ran a mini-workshop for exploration with my actors. They explored various movements, patterns and expressions in order to portray the varied facets of rationality, emotion, the conflict therein and steps to resolve this conflict in various scenarios.

I then took the liberty of incorporating some of these movements along with some I had envisioned earlier and build compositions based on them. Given the time I had to work with the actors, I would say the end result was satisfactory. The actors were thoroughly committed and, more importantly, held trust in me. That helped a great deal!

Of course, I could not fit all our explorations into the three-hour practice slot, so the resulting play was very short in duration (timed in at 7 minutes for the scripted portion of the play). All in all, though, I feel I have not done justice to the efforts put in by the actors. If we find more time to expand, I would love to add on the 3-4 other scenarios of conflict to the one that was presented this weekend.