An evening with Mr.Hitchcock...

When i got a call from an unknown number, i least expected it to be from Reni, of Indiblogger.. duh, i have at least three mobile numbers against his name already :| So What Reni did was entice me with tickets for a play at the Museum Theater.. Play: Hitchcock by the Stray Factory... Catch: i had to find a company all by myself.. bwahahahahaha... that was a tough one... so anyways i let the issue sleep and went about my regular work...

10 pm: Texted Feline to be my scape.. ermm company... well the cat accepted and was well trapped :-P buhahahahahaha..

we reached the venue a bit earlier (lets not go into the details :( ) so anyways we reached early and got bored by various activities which went something like below, not necessarily in that order.

• walking around the Museum Campus
• me recognizing a Cement sculpture as a stone carving *facepalms*
• chased by and chasing mosquitoes 
• listening to Bournville ad nauseam ( you have to y-earn a Bournville, sigh i want chocolate.. *lookz longingly at the almost empty Nutella jar)
• watching the promo ad ad nauseam ( sigh i even noticed the price of Joint family prices, which was cleverly disguised, thanks to typography... Tenga to anyone who thought they were free badges.. and to any one who is interested, they were priced at Rs. 40 each)
• analyzing the design and build of the auditorium (Class 8, Physics - I love you)
• and so on... (ok i zoned out a bit.. :D)

and finally, a gregarious figure walked over to the stage and started talking... if he had recited the whole lecture of Computational Mathematics with that voice, i would have listened to every word and would have said "How sweet.. awww..." So as i did later learn, this was Freddie, our emcee of the evening...Sigh...  ahem well as i was saying, he captured the crowd with his well rehearsed act, some spontaneous wit and clever weave of humor into his words... we love you,Freddie...

Act I: 

First play  was "The Right kind of House" directed by Mathivannan Rajendran... the crew had a minimal of 4 artists and it was brilliant.. Loved the girl Sally(Lakshmi Priyaa) who played the Assistant.. perfect... Mr. Hacker(Aditya Gopalan) came across as bit to harsh or enthusiastic for my taste... i felt he was over reacting at places :| Mr.White(Sharavana Raghavan) was well... Mr.White(Mr.Waterbury in the original)... his adorable looks wouldn't have let him qualify for a murderer he is in the play, in real life... Evelyn Mulwray(Sadie Grimes in the original) played by Aiswarya added just the crunch needed for the play...

what i loved was the slow mix of past and present by using the two sides of the stage... brilliant use of space available..

Act II:

Next was Triggers in Leash directed by Vivek Hariharan... As Feline quoted Maggie(Nisha Krithivasan Subbarayan) is cute ;-) i would like to say she is an actress extraordinaire... They couldn't have chosen any more perfect actors for Dan and Red... played by Sandeep John and Rajiv Rajaram respectively it was fun to watch them duel, well almost :-)

ummm Maggie did u really serve them eggs/ham/breakfast or was it fake food?? Red ate it with gusto :-P


Act III:

The final play  was "The motive" directed by Gitanjali, Vivek and Mathi... previously i was always stunned by Mathi be his adaptation of "The Coffin’s Too Big for the Hole" or any other... but this time Vivek stole away the limelight brilliantly... and what expressions.. the scene where he plans to commit his motiveless murder, wow impeccable expressions... no words can match the act he put up...

Mathi was his goofy self today :) loved the play of shadows!


On the whole it was a brilliant evening.. and a brilliant ending... Sigh, yes Freddie winded it up...

Dear StrayFactory Entd, your plays were brilliant, but if you really care plz to start your plays on time... Don't follow IST (Indian Stretchable Time).. i guess we all do it at times.. 5 - 10 mins, any one can wait.. but a mind numbing 40 mins wait was dumb.. and the play was 90 long minutes without  a break.. what were u thinking?? be merciful to us poor souls who reach early... (no there were no early bird prizes! :| )

and i do hope i got the right names for all  the actors.. if i didn't, kindly point it out... either in comments section, or u know where to reach me...

Mysteries of a Human Brain...

or something to that effect :D

i think it was 3rd standard when we were taught evolution of man... Right from how he used stones to hunt animals, eat them raw, used the hides and skins as clothes and so on... i later learnt that there was this huge fire which burnt birds and animals... the incident which mad man develop a taste for cooked food, yes ancient Barbecue chicken.. only the chicken was not a chicken :D This solves the mystery of cooked food, well at least the barbecue part...

next comes the eternal question of "who the hell thought i-will-drink-the-next-thingy-that-comes-out-of-that-udders?" This is justified too.. Given we are breast fed as kid ourselves and we also see the calves drink up the milk... so i dont have any qualms there either.. Milk, though i hate, i love it as Icecream ( yay three scoops of Chocolate Lovers from Cream and Fudge, plz... no? ok pretty plz with cream and cherry on top!!)

Necessity or rather hunger made man chomp on various fruits and vegetables and sometimes die in process consuming the wild poisonous ones... All well, all well..

What beats the hell out of me is the process of extraction of rice from Paddy.. my poor brain vaguely remembers the month long process of extracting rice from paddy from my village days... first the harvested paddy is beat by hand or by machinery (One very old friend claims he used to use elephants in his glorious days i.e. when he had acres and acres of lands).. then it is sent to the "vat" (colloquial name) to be parboiled... now this dried at covered yet dry places for at least a month or so... the final step is to beat the paddy again to loosen the outer husk.... voila you have rice... if you beat it very fiercely, you may get "pacharisi" aka the broken rice.. otherwise you get the proper "puzhunga arisi" aka the parboiled rice...

Wiki gives a different yet similar story... (saved my shin:D)..

but what beats me black and blue is the fact that how the heck did our ancestors figure this out?? yeah i accept that the life was simpler and there was no need to out perform your colleagues or be the first one to own the latest gadget or err whatever... but still, they had all the time in the world huh?? sigh...

now i worship and admire every single grain of rice i eat.. i simply worship the land they marched upon... so much hard work for such simple rice... sigh..

Food Glorious food, MARVELOUS food..