Krazy Kochi

If used with the right intonations, gibberish can appropriate the garb and grammar of any developed language. And how! Rajat Kapoor used it to perfection in his play Hamlet, The Clown Prince that was staged in Cochin. Almost mocking the literary intellectual, the play began with a dose of gibberish-Shakespeare was reduced to just that. And yet the language of nonsense was used craftily to bring a new meaning to the classic play. Rajat Kapoor speaks his mind in this interview. It is obvious Hamlet, The Clown Prince is very dear to your heart? How much research went into creating this brilliant play. Not much research. No research actually. That is not my way of working. But a lot of work on stage- in rehearsals- the process was great fun, never work. The use of gibberish, the language of nonsense, can be used so well in theatre. What made you use this for this script? Well, that is something we discovered in the earlier play - C FOR CLOWN. And we continue using it in this-it was good t...

Hamlet, The Clown Prince Hamlet, The Clown Prince, is an award winning play directed by Rajat Kapoor. It is a laugh riot. However, it cannot be left unsaid that this play in English and Gibberish, is made of several layers that is profound in meaning. And even while you laugh you cannot stop thinking. It seeks to look at things in a different perspective. The play: A bunch of clowns is putting up a show. They have taken the Shakespearean tragedy, ‘Hamlet’ and are trying to enact it. They sometimes misinterpret the text, sometimes find new meanings in it, sometimes try to understand it and very often make a mess of it. They choose to use phrases from the play mixed with gibberish. They even edit th e t ext, throw out important scenes and often reverse the order of things. But through this all they look for the essence of Hamlet and try to find a context in our own times. It is performed by The Company Theatre and the performers are Atul Kumar, Puja Sarup, Sujay Saple, Namit Das,...

Free masonry- the 'spiritual society' of sacred brotherhood with its origins in antiquity has always been shrouded in mystery. Their initiation rites, rituals, symbolisms, secret signs and code of conduct have further enhanced the aura of mysteriousness. Is Free Masonry a remnant of an ancient religion that worshipped the Sun or is it just an exclusive, elitist boy's club that indulges in secret charity missions? In 1961 the Grand Lodge of India, which is an off -shoot of the Grand Lodges of Scotland, England and Ireland was constituted. The Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of India Mr.Arun Chintopanth was recently here in Kochi to preside over the meeting of the Regional Grand Lodge of Southern India. In an exclusive interview with the Grand Master sought to demystify the Masonic Lodge. Arun Chintopanth in full regalia. Dont miss the apron. What is Free Masonry? It is not a service organisation. It is not a religious group. It is not a mutual benefit society ...

Swati Kaushal Anuja Chauhan Meenakshi Reddy The romance of the quick and spicy chick-lit (ingredients and flavour totally desi) is spurring the Indian market to buy and read like never before. And it is the pretty-young-things with their saucy, smug and sexy writing that are accelerating the sales into dizzy new highs. In most other genres—a struggling, breathless 3000 copies are applauded by publishers as best sellers while this savvy, in- your- face lit is instantly pulling readers and pushing over 10,000 copies per month. Aha, what have we here? Even as Indians writers are snatching worldwide attention with their heavy-weight literary fiction, it is this emerging breed of young authors that is likely to laugh all the way to the bank. For decades, Indian readers with an inclination for chicklit had to make do with the import of romance rapidly fleshed out by Mills &Boon, Harlequin etc… Neither the location nor the TDH (tall, dark and handsome) protagonist...

That's Kapil for you-I am sure you can recognize him from behind too It began for Kapil Sibal (Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences) quite unintentionally. When he wrote poems for judges who were retiring, the verses were always laudatory—“At the bar, the golden rule, in order to seek discretionary relief, is to be exceptionally laudatory about the judges. I did not, after their retirement want to deviate from this well-accepted norm,” he says in the introduction of I Witness, Partial Observations, his first book of verse. It unleashes unbridled wit and scorn, nostalgia and angst of this lawyer-politician turned poet. At an evening of poetry at Landmark, Kapil Sibal in conversation with Kanimozhi explains, “I never thought I will write a book on poetry. It was result of boredom on long flights that I decided to pen a few thoughts mostly for self- entertainment.” When Kanimozhi asks him how he feels as a poet, he replies, “It would be too presumptive of m...

The Power Of The Glance The military generals, we are talking about geniuses here, are said to have a certain “coup d’oeil” — roughly translated from French, it means the power of the glance. In the military sense it is “the ability to immediately see and make sense of the battlefield” under high stress. The power of the glance is often undermined and considered to be irrelevant in a world where theory and study hold a hierarchical and privileged position. But Blink by Malcolm Gladwell pares away at those theories and proves that our power of assessing something in the first few seconds—our gut reaction can be absolutely correct, bang on. Interestingly Blink continues to dominate the prime areas on book shelves even though it was first published three years ago. I went into a re-read here because one of the bookshops in the city was having a discount sale and they were offering it for Rs 45 less. This is one book every one should have on their bookshelves, so go get it. Written powerfu...