Four wrongs & a right - an exercise in diplomacy

The hole in the wall barbershop that I patronize is owned by an old guy who runs a kind of assembly line of hair dresser aspirants from the interiors of UP. These young, fellow Muslim, wannabe Jawed Habib's join him in the city, cut their teeth & the hair of customers for a while before eventually moving on to bigger & better salons with ACs where they get to work with "Old Spice" rather than "Gold Spice" shaving cream.  

While waiting for my turn I once had occasion to witness a fascinating interplay that only India can provide. The shop is one among a collection that would be at home in any neighborhood. The guy from the adjoining Kirana store breathlessly rushed in carrying a box of sweets. He announced that he had just bought a bike & offered "Prasad" from the Puja. The reactions of the barbershop owner & his 2 acolytes were a study in contrasts. The old man recoiled, mumbling incoherently as if he had been bitten , one of the young apprentices very transparently lied about suffering from some kind of an allergy & the other guy took the offered sweet & set it aside saying that he would have it after he was done with the customer he was attending to at the time. It became apparent that even he did not really intend to eat it only once the proud bike owner had left the shop.  

Sitting there with nothing to occupy my mind I indulged myself by applying my own value judgement to their actions. 

1. The bike guy could perhaps have been more considerate - it's possible that if he had offered sweets calling them a token of his happiness rather than as a symbol of a religious ceremony he may have spared his neighbors the moral dilemma & himself the hurt feelings.

2. The shop owner, especially given his greater years should definitely have been better prepared to deal with such occasions & would be better served with large dose of pragmatism.

3. The first apprentice betrayed his inexperience but maybe that's just a part of growing up & he may well be better equipped to deal with morally ambiguous situations in the days to come.

4. To my mind the other apprentice was the hero of the situation. Even though he lied he did so to protect his own conscience while still considering the other guy's feelings. A white lie if there ever was one.

There is so much instructional value to such a scene - so many things to learn about interpersonal relationships, conflict resolution & diplomacy. Anyway - that's my opinion - what's yours ?     

All Men are like that & all women too - A review.

Priya & I caught a play over the weekend - given that I have been working evenings for the last 8 or so years & that I've been lazy and / or culturally challenged for all my life before that it's been a while since we did that. The play was "Salt & Pepper" - written & directed by Vikranth Pawar & starred Darshan Jariwala, Mandira Bedi. Kuki Grewal & Vikram Kocchar. It was set up as 9 - 10 episodes of 10 minutes each revolving around conversations between a guy & a girl at different stages of their life or relationship. I thought I would give a shot at reviewing the play - my own personal viewpoint of-course.

The last 2 occasions I went to the theater involved big, over the top musical productions with incredible production values & big name movie tie-ins - Singing In the Rain & The Producers. This was about as far away from that as you can get - the sets were simple but extremely well designed & very flexible given that they had to be subtly altered between each episode. They lighting also played an important role - highlighting the characters rather than the background & in some cases switching from character to character with the ebb & flow of the dialogue. The music was minimal - only as interludes as the episodes switched over but it was fun to mouth the half forgotten lyrics of old Beatles & Elvis songs.

The episodes themselves had a distinctly urban bias with a strong tilt towards modern relationship questions. I also detected a subtle positive thread running through the episodes - only 1 of them, the episode of the old man & woman arguing with each other entirely in their minds, ended on a slightly downbeat note. The opening episode was of a lonely urban woman contemplating suicide & her conversation with a previously unknown neighbour who tries to talk her out of it - the acting by Mandira Bedi & Darshan Jariwala was quite strong & set the right note. The episode itself was perhaps slightly predictable but the crisp dialogues kept the interest alive. In fact the dialogues were a highlight of the whole play - very witty & flowing but real at all times. The succeeding episodes were successful in keeping up the interest level & touched on different aspects of modern relationships - a young couple fighting with each other during a meeting with a marriage counseller & finding the solution to their woes themselves while doing so, a middle aged man wondering what might have been if he had taken up with his college girlfriend while talking to her in his imagination, a past secret being hilariously revealed when a couple goes through a Cosmo quiz together, a lonely middle aged man & a lonely woman getting stuck on the top of a giant wheel & the suspense as they eventually find each other, the inner compatibility of a superficially incompatible young man & woman getting revealed as they go through a series of conversations at a speed dating event before they finally meet each other & so on. The play ended on a high note with an outstanding episode featuring Mandira Bedi & Darshan Jariwala as a couple wondering if each other's "hard coded" gender quirks meant that they are fundamentally incompatible & discovering along the way that life together gave many reasons to look past these quirks & perhaps even to celebrate them. This episode had some wonderful "laugh out loud" moments - I am adding "blackbelt in conversational judo" to my vocabulary right now. 

The interesting thing was how the issues & irritants the couples were dealing with seemed so familiar - I guess it really is true that all men are alike but it seems clear that so are all women ! We were left wanting for more when it ended - always a sign that the production worked.

All in all a Saturday evening well spent - I would happily recommend it to anyone that does get the chance to watch it. On a side note - I aim to take advantage of my newly liberated evenings & that may mean more such reviews so keep watching this space !

(More details at : Salt-&-Pepper-(English))