 Shall we continue? So, we start off with the second act. Like before Christ and after Christ, my life could be neatly divided into pre-14th April 1944 and post-14th April 1944. A new dance ballet called Kovalan was coming to Bombay in April. It was supposed to have a bit of Kathakali, Bharat Natya, Manipuri and what not. One of those modern Kichdi's. Very fashionable. The story of Kovalan was the story of my life. It was about a man, Shankara Panikar, who was torn between two lovers, Brinalini Sarabhai and Nandita Kriplani. But that was odd. In real life, I was Shankara Panikar and the two women were Yajwendra and Comrade Shashi. It wasn't 14th April Shashi Ji's birthday. Maybe she is having a Sheera and Pova birthday party. Maybe I should stitch a new bush shirt for the occasion. Maybe I should carry pedas. Maybe I am not thinking straight. Maybe Yajwendra has returned. Gala seat is not happy with my work and wants to substitute me with his nephew from Bachao. That reminds me, I better go and meet Kanwar Saab and get a list of ships visiting the docks. That way we can plan our provision supply. These are difficult times. The black market is flourishing. One gallon of kerosene costs one rupee. Imagine, the war must end. Mount Batten is planning to make an all-out effort on Japanese positions in Burma and Malaya. The Bombay port resembles the military headquarters with officers and men of the fighting wings of the Allied forces. Armed with my special permit, I take the train from Wadala to Baladpur on 12th April. This is a special train. Otherwise, my third-class monthly train pass of rupees 8 from Churchgate to Khad would have sufficed. Love is such an irregular idea. It is so difficult to express it honestly. Why? I mean, look at man and his progress. He is planning to travel to the moon. Explore the depths of the ocean. Discover a cure for TB. Do jugglery with numbers of the stock exchange. And yet, man has not been able to come up with a better option than, I love you. It is so unfair to reduce all the great whirl and twirl of grand emotions to three bland words. I love you. Plus, when do you utter it? In the beginning, after three meetings, after a lifetime? There should be a handbook, especially for first-timers like me. Unless ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. How complicated is everything. Love is too hazardous a business to leave to the discretion of humans. So, I examined the ships in the Manila folder in Convarsad's office. He returned for lunch, hungry and angry. Apparently, he had examined the British ship, the Fort Steichen. A single-screw coal-burning vessel of 7,142 tons. The ship had unusual cargo. Convarsad had made a meticulous list. He showed it to me boastfully. Convarsad, in hold number 1, sulphur, weighing 325 tons and cotton weighing 268 tons. Above the sulphur bags, there live fresh manure. And 13,163 pieces of timber. In hold number 2, 187 tons of category C ammunition. Plus, cotton weighing 769 tons. Then there were 11,537 timber pieces, crap iron, 42 old dynamoes, cases of wireless sets and 168 tons of super-sensitive category A ammunition. 1089 small drums of oil. Hold number 3, 573 tons of lubricating oil and 58 tons of category A ammunition and 20 tons of RAF's inflamable aircraft dope, along with 214 drums of oil. Hold number 4, 523 tons of explosives. 405 tons of cotton along with dry fruits. Hold number 5, 196 tons of cotton, dry fruits plus raisins, pieces of timber and 6,220 drums of oil. But, what grabbed my eye was a tiny detail which mentioned that number 2 hold had an interesting consignment, gold. 1 million pound sterlings, addressed to a bank in Bombay. 31 wooden crates of gold. Love is like gold. And all that glitters is not gold, I suppose. One of man's genuine failures has been love. He hasn't been able to remediate or find a solution. Man has had three grand failures. He hasn't discovered a saucer and a cup that does not spill tea, a pressure cooker in which the handle does not come off, and a proper protocol for love with rules and regulations. Convarsad was furious with the captain of the Fort Stikein for not abiding by rule 46 of the Port Rules of International Code, whereby a ship carrying dangerous cargo should display a red flag. But Captain Nye Smith of Fort Stikein did not want to advertise the cargo of the ship to the enemy. Everyone was expecting a Pearl Harbor attack on Bombay port. A few days ago, Madras port had been bombed. That evening, on my way from the hospital, I picked up ace lime juice from the shop. That, along with potato power, Bhelpuri and Chivra would be a fine nashta for Comrade Shashi. D-Day arrived. It was 14th April 1944. It was 14th April 1944. There was something unusual in the air. German defences had collapsed. The Black Sea coast was about to fall into Russian hands. While I was reading the newspaper, I had noticed a very young chap. His name was Devdath Pishorimal Anand. He left Lahore in 1943. He got down at Bombay Central Railway Station with only 30 rupees in his pocket. He had managed to get a clerk's job in military accounts office. He wanted to become a movie star, it seems. What a thought. He had nothing going for him. Except he jumped all over the place, talked a lot and hummed in suit. I thought Nehru was much more handsome than him. Anyway, this Devdath was raving about a film called Jawa by P.C. Barua. I asked, wasn't Barua the director of Devdath's? You know, I failed to understand why anyone should make a film about a drunkard. Then Bapu Rao Pendharkar. He told me, I'm a Buddha. He said, Devdath's a big hit. Even a hundred years from now, people will say, now that was the name of Pendharkar's film. He never lost an opportunity to publicize it. 14th April 1944. It was a sweltering hot Friday. Every year it gets hotter. Something must be done about the pollution from the motor cars, the mills, really. I was stuck in a procession in Tadar. It was the 51st birthday of Dr. Apeetkar. There were huge crowds. I followed a group of women. Perhaps with a bit of enterprise, I could have placed a garland of flowers around his neck. Mother would have been proud of me. 14th April 1944. I mustered courage and entered derby talkies. The name it was rumored came into being because the owner had won a jackpot at the derby. The film was Jawaab. This was my first movie. I could have watched V. Shantaram's Mali at Novelty but that was not to be. Fate played a part. Anyway, it's not as though cinema lost a big russique in me. Subsequently, I saw only one other film. Gandhi by Attenborough. I never sat through either film. In Gandhi, I left the movie theater. You know, I could not tolerate the assassination of Gandhi ji in the first two minutes. It was very real. That's why I say art must never imitate life. It's not good for the health, you know. 14th April 1944. I was passing through the streets. Everything was as it should be. Automobiles, spare parts, Kanti Photo Studio, Anaj Ki Dukan. Two men were sipping tea and discussing how Bhohiwara United defeated Makabi Sports Club by one goal because the match was fixed. That the referee was purchased. Men will be men, no? 14th April 1944, Jawaab was okay. It had a rich hero called Manoj who sent to his future father-in-law for a rescuer. But Manoj loses his way and is offered shelter by a railway station master. This master has a pretty daughter called Kanan Devi whose main objective in life is to make funny faces and sing songs. Manoj falls in love with this Kanan Devi. And then, even as the love story was about to climax, there was a huge explosion. The screen was ripped apart. 14th April 1944. It was five minutes past four. I had reached Razak Chamber. Just then, there was a tremendous explosion. Ahvaldar was standing on the pavement. His head was chopped off by a piece of metal that had flown through the air. I was stunned. People were running everywhere. 14th April 1944. It was ten minutes past four. There was a stampede in the theatre. Somehow I managed to jump over the gates. The sky was filled with flying white hot metal. 14th April 1944. It was ten minutes past four. Buildings were trembling. Shattered windows. Flakes of hot livid ash and fire were falling haphazardly. I couldn't recognize Bujwala. A few minutes ago, he had a lovely wavy black hair. Now he was bald. He kept shouting, the jabs have come, the jabs have come. Run, run. I believe he ran all the way to Bandra. Full speed. 14th April 1944. Burning bails, nafta, debris, dense smoke and one huge boiler blocked the road. I ran and ran and reached an open ground. Burnt limbs, soot were falling all around me. 14th April 1944. I limped and scrambled over the rubble. I wanted to get to Teen Sakina Manzil. 14th April 1944. There was a second explosion. 34 minutes after the first explosion. Louder and much more brutal. 14th April 1944. In front of my eyes, Teen Sakina Manzil was crumbling. There was a big hole in its centre. A piece of molten lead had crashed on its roof and fallen through and through all five floors. From roof to ground floor. Baba's shop was no more. Where was Baba? Where was Comrade Shashi? In the open ground, my mind was racing. Someone mentioned the explosions were from a British ship at the docks. I put two and two together. It must be the 4th Stikein with its hundreds of tons of explosive bombs, oil, cotton, timber, sulphur. 4th Stikein was a time bomb. Convarsal was right. The ship laden with explosives should not have been allowed into the docks. It was illegal. An accidental spark would have triggered off the ammunition in the hole. I was hurt. I put some iodine in the bag. And a painkiller. I needed to get to a hospital. St George was the closest. But it was in the dock area. What do you know? So I decided to go towards GT Hospital. In the gutter, there was a dead man clutching onto a copy of Mumbai Samachar. He had been charred by the heat. I picked up the dead man's cycle. It was scorching hot. I raced to Teen Sakina Manzil. It had a hole in its heart. Where was Shashi ji? At GT Hospital, I was treated. There I heard the ARP which used to organize drills as prevention against air raids was hiring temporary nurses. I volunteered. I was taking in a fancy Victoria to Baikal la. Everything was destroyed. People were running around. With their little things. I reached the dormitory. We were short staffed. So, unmindful of the glass cuts in my face, I got to work. Every minute, more and more injured persons were brought in. Every fourth person would die in front of us. The Bombay Dock explosion. Even today, at 6 minutes past 4, I have nightmares about the Bombay Dock explosion. If I'm sleeping, I wake up. I'm trapped in a fire. Everything is ablaze. Me and 5 black skeletons which dance. Flaming drums of oil, the hurtle towards me. My hair bursts into fireworks I run. But blazing bales of cotton chase me. I dive into the sea and a huge fire envelops the ships and warehouses. From a cloud, Comrade Shashi appears like Kanan Devi and tries to rescue me. Just then there is a blast and a tidal wave lifts forth, stikens 60 feet into the air and smashes it down on Comrade Shashi's head. Both drown in the sea. Forever. This nightmare plays and replays in my head daily. That's why I have stopped sleeping. It's easier. Rather sleepless than anguished. 14th April 1944 was the day of the Bombay Dock explosion. The official count was 336 dead. 1798 injured. Two days later, I saw some men come crawling towards me. I thought they were mischievous. When they were near, I realised they had lost all their limbs. No hands, no legs. Day after day, the flow was unabated. As usual, the unofficial guesstimates were 10 times the official count. All bodies except those identified were buried at Worley. The Bombay Dock explosion. When I visited the docks to search for 3 of Gala Seth's Masdoors and Convarsah, the whole area was filled with European bodies. When examined it was found out all of these were Indian dock workers and fire staff. Their outer skin had peeled off. That's why they looked white. I shifted to Munjo Kaj. This after had helped Nehru's daughter give birth to her first born. They named him Rajiv, Pony Baby. While sitting in the first class bogey and being cooled by ice slabs, Baba told me the Bombay Dock explosion had transpired on the 32nd anniversary of the day the Titanic struck an iceberg. How much did they beat the Titanic? And this is us. Almost all the fire engines belonging to the Bombay Fire Brigade were destroyed by the first explosion. Firemen were moved in from Pune, Thana and Nashik. Soldiers destroyed specific buildings with army tanks to prevent the fire from spreading to new localities. Petty Officer T. Lewis of South Wales steered a truckload of ammunition out of the docks. The truck had no windows, no windscreen, no tires and no steering wheel. The Bombay Dock explosion. The truth has never come out. The English were fine. It was their agenda. But why were we so careless? Why? How? The whole thing was shrouded in security because of the war. News was suppressed. Every time the same drama was played. Innocent lives were lost. Beggars, workers, street entertainers, hawkers, street women, family, friends, foes. It's scary. The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. The Bombay Dock explosion. The sheriff, Shantidas Askuran, requested people not to pay heed to rumours. But you know people did not pay heed to the sheriff. One man was arrested in Sholapur for rumour mongering. Food go downs which were built in 1875 were destroyed. 55,000 tons of food grains were lost. Lawyers fitted with loudspeakers informed 2 million Bombay Walas that there would be an uninterrupted supply of food grain. No one believed them. There was another irony. Merchants who were engaged in the black market lost heavily because they had kept items illegally in the go downs. The Bombay Dock explosion. I recall the overhead tram wire snapped. Local train services to VT station were suspended at Baikalar. It was a boom period for taxi drivers. Baba says a meteorologist in Shimla recorded a tremor on the station's seismograph. I can believe it. On that day the world shuddered. I lost a piece of me. My soul lost its stirrings. The government couldn't ever compensate that. But it was keen to compensate owners and tenants of ruined buildings and so it decided to forgo paperwork and proof. This was because it wanted to earn the goodwill of the people during the war. One Harshad bhai took advantage of the loopholes and made an unscrupulous claim for a non-existent building. Up to that time the government had paid 85,000 rupees against claims for damage by fire or blasts. Traders like Gala Seth who had shops on the ground floor of the buildings never locked the cash pity. In the days after the Bombay Dock explosion he lost his money, valuables, jewellery due to vandalism. Since then the sellers of safe locks and keys have profited in Bombay. The Bombay Dock explosion. There was fire on the horizon for three months. All the buildings in a couple of mile radius of the dock smoldered. The fire had spread rapidly. Although everything was wrecked the people showed courage and fortitude. The city bounced back to life. But not me. After 14th April 1944 my life was shattered. You see I am not a strong person in any case. Just did enough to keep body and soul together. I left the city, travelled for many years. There were so many disasters since. But the Bombay Dock explosion was the worst. Everything turned into a dull shade of grey. My night had begun. I never saw Comrade Shashi again. I never met Shashi ji. She must be living happily with Yaju Vendra. Must have raised a family. Opened three more shops. Built one more building. Got insured for health. Started a nursing home. Managed finances. Become religious at a late stage. Hey Bhagwan what a calamity. What a mistake my life has been. Come on mouth. You must not utter such despicable things. Can't go around with such a negative outlook. Shut up. This is not the time for regrets. I have seen worse dumps. Terrible tragedies. Mine is a fairytale in comparison. One I loved and the other I lost. Sad no? Comrade Shashi was the apple of my eye. And Yaju Vendra was missing in action near the Naga Hills. The two men in my life both vanished into thin air. My dear mouth strange as it may sound. Unbeknownst to you good things happen too. You recall that filmy chap Devdutt. He didn't report to work on 14th April 1944. I am told he became a movie star. Changed his name to Dev Anand. I am hoping he is earning some good money in the movie business. It's such a fickle industry. But much more importantly there was the gold. I see some of you are waking up finally. Sitting bold upright. Should I get on with it my dear mouth? Well here goes. Due to the Bombay dog explosion the gold bars in the 31 crates in Fort Steichen flew into the city. Yes sir. It rained gold bars. The rich, the poor, the cheery, the unhappies. So many people benefited. As gold bars crashed through their roofs and onto their heads. As it is said. When God gives it. He gives it. Barjoji, Kuberji, Motivala who was a retired civil engineer in Bombay dying returned the gold ignored. I know. Since I used to pass this building. Kukana house in Girgaon. He was rewarded by the authorities. Shashi Ji would have said Barjoji to bought Kandani. But the fact is of the 130 gold ignits only 43 were found. That too after a three year search of the dogs, the surrounding locality, houses. So what do you have to say to that my dear mouth? 83 gold ignits and perhaps 83 million millionaires are out there somewhere. As for me. I was half-deaf after the explosion. I never married. Remained a Brahmachari. I loved once and for me the first was the best. Unless there's a miracle and Chumantar, Kali Mantar. The tattered screen at Derby talkies comes alive and the lady with the funny face sings a song and brings back my Shashi Ji to me. That was then. 14th April 1944. It's now 14th April 1994. I told Dr Bhavnapareek. I'm a birthday girl today. She wished me happy birthday and said I'm still beautiful with beautiful eyes. Sound is a bell. Except for some respiratory trouble. But I'm covered medically that is. All those years as a nurse is benefitted. See I'm repeating myself. Bad girl. Then even as I'm exiting the doctor's clinic, I hear the sound of hiccuping. Comrade Shashi. That must be Comrade Shashi. Oh no. I've become senile. Comrade Shashi must be a happily married grandfather with 101 grandsons. What did he pass away at the Bombay talk explosion? I never heard about him since. No, no, no. Perish the thought. Oh to hear him talk after he had downed the glass of two of ace lime juice. Talked as though he was Gandhi Ji the second. Today, if he were alive, he would be walking out of the dispensary together. Hand in hand. He would say, Chalo Shashi Ji. Khara jaana hai. Ya, hum latest film dekh sakte hai. Suna hai Devdas wapas bhen rahe hai. Oh hai. Kya iti ratko taxi milegi? Hai. The inexhaustible reservoir of sorrow. Why am I hiccuping? Shukar hai that old woman has left. Or else it would be embarrassing. Shup. What's that? The old woman has left something behind. Oh hai. What's this? Ribbons. So many of them. Navar asa, Navar bhava, Navar atana. It reminds me of someone. Shashi Ji. Ah, come on, don't dream your impossible dreams, silly fellow. The girl must have married Yajuvandra and must be living happily ever after. Ah, now, now, don't value and sell pity. Eyes cry your last. The drying up of a single tear has more of an honest frame than shedding seas of gore. Often have I wondered what if Shashi Ji and I had kept her appointment on 14th April 1944. I would have lived a different life, no? But promises are like the full moon. If they are not kept at once, they diminish day by day. Maybe one day I should go to Tin Sakina Manzil. I'm told it's renovated and is up and about. Perhaps one day in the near future to relive old memories, the possibilities, the missed opportunities. But time is passing by in a hurry and men like me cannot see the reflection because the water runs rapidly. I need still water. Yes, still water. That's why I swim in this day and age in the sea. Oh, how I wish the sea cupping seizes. That must be the doctor. It's my turn finally. Coming doctor, coming. Don't go away. Do wait. At least someone wait for me. Sure, okay. I want to ask you what was the motivation behind the play? Why this story? And sir, how did you go about documenting and collecting the facts about this? Okay. So the story was not known to me. I wasn't around when this had happened in 44. And so like I mentioned in the introduction, there's a very dear friend we have who was a film guru for a lot of us. He used to run a film society club in the good old days called Screen Unit, Amrit Gangar, Amrit Bhai. So he was very familiar with this entire incident and also knew a few of the people who were important. So you know some of these names like Gala Seth, Himmat Bhai, some of the names that are mentioned in passing is also a tribute to a few of the people we had met. So initially it was basically we divided the work on the play in three parts. He wanted me to make a film. Unfortunately I don't know how to make a film. I know how to write plays. So I said that I can write a play and then whatever happened, it happened. So we divided the work on the play in three parts. Initially it was some reading material that he shared with me. Some which he had collected, there were a couple of books. There was one by a cadet officer which was documentation but from his point of view and his perspective. Then Amrit himself had taken a small handheld camera and done a very amateur shooting of the area and actually the area in which the sort of you know one of the, this thing, the parts of the ship had fallen through a building you know to those like Lucky Mansions, Safia Manzeh. Some of those places we actually visited. Then we went to the Jew, to the synagogue because the boiler had fallen there and they were not able to take it out for almost a year to two years and children had turned it into a kind of children's park because you could go and slide inside and so on and so forth. Then for example Sanders wrote a lot of the path for Wedgden over there. Some of the path that had flown in near the railway station, railway tracks. It's still over there. So that was one part of it. Then the second part was meeting some of these people which was the most important because fantastic stories to tell. Each of them they had lived that you know like this central character, you know somebody had lost his hearing simply because of the sound of the explosion and don't forget there were two explosions. The first one at 4.05 and then immediately. So a lot of people escaped from the first but because of the impact of the second they got affected because they were caught in the middle of the whole thing. And then the third was documentation at Asia Tech which was the hard work which was to go back and see what else was happening in terms of context in other parts of the country, other parts of the world, what was happening with the Indian Congress movement. So these are the three, this was the methodology and I mean the characters and things had not come at that time. It obviously evolved much, much later. But a lot of hard work went into it in collecting of materials. So there was enough material to write say probably a 100 hour play or a 200 hour play because you know there were so many people who were affected by this and businesses were affected, people's lives, marriages, you know all those sort of things. And then the topography of Bombay at least in that part changed quite a bit after post 14 April. So a lot of that and then of course one thought of these two characters and worked on that. Are your characters based on the documentation that you did? To some extent, yeah. See there was a challenge. I write sort of very boring history based play. So there was a challenge given to me by some friends saying that you make love story. Love story is traditionally something I don't like. I mean I like great love stories but I'm incapable of writing. So this was my effort of writing a love story. So I said that okay this is the best I can do. I have a boy, I have a girl and if they were caught in a situation like this what might have happened. So that was the kind of a starting point that I would try to write a love story which was unrequited love, not love that is realized. And a lot of people have also asked why is the ending so tragic? Why don't they just meet at the end and why don't you resolve it? And the answer to that is very simple because those six and a half months the amount of anguish that I saw and the kind of tragedies that people have gone through, it's unfathomable. And so one wanted to get a sense, at least share a sense of that with the audience or the person who is reading the play. The tragedy that unfolded in those few months was unfathomable and that it was beyond your own realm of understanding of things. To give a sense of that, the personal in a way becomes a sort of universal in that sense. The story or the fact that they are not able to share so many things and so on that becomes a representative of the story of Bombay in a way. What happened to people in this city as well. So that was one of the main reasons for that. So it was a risk that we had, we took. Along the way did you feel that this might be one of our contributions or this is a way in which we could bring out the stories of these people and was it your, what should I say? Was it your aim to just tell the story of what had happened in 1944? Yeah, I mean that is of course one part of it. But if I had only done that it might have become a documentary, a pure documentary about which I personally don't have a problem. But the idea was also to make a connection with what is happening in Bombay and I knew that the play would be performing in 2004 in India, in Bombay, wherever. So there was always a need to also look back at this whole process of history. The more important thing is that the way we are fortunately or unfortunately taught history or anything in our classrooms or the way the process of pedantry is that we always look at the mainstream history in a larger sense. So the little stories, the smaller characters are never sort of in the context we're never able to understand the contribution that they have made to our entire national building process. So there's another play that we've written which was performed here called Mahadev Bai. So again that was an attempt to look at what was the second and third tier in the Congress hierarchy. We always get stuck with Nehru, Gandhi, Sardar, Azad and the fact that you know whatever it was the Congress at that time when they've created that whole thing it was a very strong Kedobes party and there were innumerable other people down the line. So when all these great national leaders were in prison the movement was continuing. There was obviously a reason for that, that you had fantastic men to follow up which is a problem we keep calling saying political vacuum, political vacuum. So an attempt to also look at what is happening below the scene in a sense, not the obvious. So this play Mahadev Bai to some extent Cotton 56, that's another play that we've written. So in that again we are looking at this history from the other perspective. That the obvious history is there and then there is always the other history which nobody talks about because it's not convenient to talk about it or it makes people uncomfortable. So that is the history which one tries to represent on stage. But important chapters in our life which we should be talking about, shouting about. So yeah. Sir, plays like Mahadev Bai and Tri Sakina Vazil. They are not based on contemporary history. I mean they are a stage far behind in history. Also the people who know about the history can say connect with those plays. But what about you here said that these plays are staged in Europe etc. How they connect with the play? That was just four or five shows, not too many shows. With Sakina Manzir I don't think they had a problem. I mean it's a love story, so I mean a suggested love story. So at that level it interests anyone and everyone. I mean the great stories are, I mean the great novels, the great cinema is based on that. So you use that as a device to tell the other things that you want to discuss about. If I went into any place, even if I go to say Bikaner or Bhopal and start talking about 1944 dog explosion, it will not make sense. It's just the characters that hopefully is a peg to bring the audience, track the audience. With Mahadev Bai what we've tried to do, I mean how successful we don't know. But what we try to do is that the story is told from the point of view of one of you. I mean it's a very young man who's telling the story. And the story keeps going back and forth in time, but the times that it's happening is now. And again it's very interesting, you know since you've seen the play there is that bit where he talks about Godara and that it was the symbol of Hindu-Muslim. And when the play was staged it happened precisely I think four and a half, five months after the Godara incident in Gujarat. So you know the location of that scene in the play and the context of that suddenly brings the whole play alive. That you are talking about an incident 100 years ago, 50 years ago, whatever. But because of its importance and relevance otherwise who would have bothered about that particular convention. It's a very small convention that took place in the Panchmahal in Godara. So it's the location of that history in today's time that makes it relevant or makes it come alive. So for instance even she discusses a lot of things like her character that is that automobile, motor pollution or there's too many migrants coming into the city, refugees, these are all today's issues as well. So even the discussion or theory on urbanization, what we have been talking about, you realize there has been no momentum that has taken place in the last 60 years in the city. So in that sense the issues then and issues now broadly are similar. You said that the play was also translated in other Indian languages. That's right. Did you feel if you were part of the audience that there was a distinct difference between the audience that saw the play in English and the audience that saw the play in other regional languages? So when it was translated, Marathi was translated by a friend. It never got staged but we had a reading. This was again a very close friend of mine called Chetan Datta. He had translated it. So it's seen the production, he knew me, he knew his Bombay very well. So there was no difficulty in that part of it because he's probably as passionate about this incident and we both share a common love for the city itself. The problem surprisingly was in Dutch. The problem was not really with the text or the characters or the incident itself. The problem was with food items. Things like when she talks about Seopuri and all these other local... It was very very difficult to explain to them what these things are. So initially we showed them some photographs but then again taste is relative. Then Kinari, that's my wife, she had to join me later. So she actually packed some of this thing and brought it two weeks later because we were seated in Brussels. So she got some of these food items and they shared and they ate it. Not that it sort of improved the translation but suddenly it started making a lot more sense to them. What is this roadside food? So food was one concern that was there and then again the sense of their idea of organization and our idea of city planning is sort of vastly different. So when we talk of these things and we talk of lack of civic sense or overcrowded or the sort of lack of planning, when we talk about it we can compare ourselves to a Cairo or a Rio de Janeiro not to a Brussels or to an Amsterdam. So that was again an issue that they had. And of course the savageness of some of our city politics, that is something that they don't understand. Could you also tell the students about the stage setting because you have something very specific that you have mentioned about the stage setting of this. So Teen Sakina Manzil was produced by a group called Working Title. It was directed by Gemini Patak who played Mahadev by those of you. So Gemini was someone with whom I was working with and I was writing a few plays for him or his group. And Pooja's character was played by Suruchi Aula who was married to him at that time. So the stage direction was that keep it very simple, keep it absolutely minimalist. Let it be like a storytelling session that you have where somebody seated under a tree and narrating a story. Let it convey a sense of that, don't get into too much. Around 2003-2004 we were all going through this crisis in Indian theatre that actors act too much. So we were all trying to sort of find a way in which or a mechanism or a method through which they can cut down on their acting. So one of the things we were trying to do with Sakina Manzil was ensure actors don't act. So if they are playing the old characters they don't do this whole Sriram Lagu, very overstated and overdone kind of a thing. Or when they are falling in love it's again gushing and so on. So the idea was to play the lines, tell the story. So this was the one big brief. The other thing which I think from Gemini's point of view was very scary was he was getting two pages at a time. And this was I think opening at the Prithvi Festival and there was a deadline and a date given to Prithvi. And these guys were obviously rehearsing the play so they didn't know what was going to happen next. And they were getting these two pages, three pages by email, they would be rehearsing it. After two days the next two pages would come and till I think the very end they didn't know what the end was. So I remember when I finally wrote the last scene I had to fly out, I had to go to Egypt for some reason. And I was in Egypt and I got an SMS, no they have to meet and they have to remarry, this can't be the idea. There were sort of used protestations but they had no time, they had a week to open so that was it. And then I think the opening happened, it was pretty good. There were a little sort of rehearsed for the opening shows. Then as the play they kept performing they grew and I think that was the music was fairly minimal. They used just two chairs and so that was the area. And then to depict the dogs, explosion, they had a mat on which they just threw some red light. And then they played with the siren as a sort of soundtrack. So that was what they did. There was nothing sort of overdone that, you know, Lashay Giri or Khun Kraba or anything like that. It was left to the imagination of the audience that the words would hopefully convey the sense of whatever it was. What is the writing of these interlink monologues? You conceptualize this right from the beginning or it sort of happens slowly as you were working on the script? Yeah, I have no clue. No clue. I mean I have no memory. I know it's a good question and sometimes when I read this play I say, wow that's really cool I mean but I have no clue how it was done. I knew who my two actors were, Gemini and Suruchi. I knew what their strengths are broadly speaking. I also knew that we are going to play it in a particular way. So these were the givens for me. I of course had the material and the story. No, I don't remember this at all. Any special reason behind naming both of them Shashi? My mother's Shashi. So yeah and this is sort of typical Indian thing, you know, Kiran, Shashi, Divya. These are names you never know the gender of the, so it was just playing on that. So in every play I have characters who are people from my life or around my life. So it's a small way of saying thank you to them. So this was for my mother. And she was very thrilled because when she saw the first show she saw it with Shashi Kapoor. So she was maha thrilled because after the show she walked up to him, introduced herself and said, hi Shashi, I am Shashi. So she was quite happy about it. We are all undertaking a course in creative writing. So can you give us some tips or some exercises which we should practice to improve our writing skills or something? Okay, right now. Yeah, no, I mean we can sit and doing it here is a bit difficult. I mean the best thing and I think everybody would say this to you is to keep writing. Number one and the second thing is to read a bit which we are sort of increasingly turning into a sort of... Sure, sure, sure. Because this is also meant for people who are not likely to interact with us. True, true, true. I think the question if I understand you where it comes from this desire to sort of this curiosity also about other writers. Each one will have their own mysterious pathways. But is there something that you would like to share in terms of how you got started writing? Is there something of the process that you can share? Sure, so three things. In my case I am slightly fortunate. I belong to a college which was very strong. In Bombay you have a tradition of the intercollegiate. You as a sort of Marathi would know about that. So it's a very strong tradition. So the tradition helps you in many ways. In the sense you know for certain that what you are going to write will be produced. Then you are broadly working with a bunch of friends or colleagues from your class or the neighbouring class or whatever it is. So it helps you to write this 30 minute thing and you are able to rehearse for X amount of time for which to call it commits some amount of money and space. So that was a big help and the other thing is because you were part of Mithibha it had a tradition of you know having an Ashutosh Gavarikar and Anushil Mehta and Mahendra Joshi. The seniors would always be around to guide you. So there was always this process of mentoring which is a very Indian way of doing things. There was always someone around to mentor you. So if you wrote a really bad play there would be somebody there to tell you to rewrite it or to redo it or save the play if you know they didn't have time or something like that. So broadly speaking you would read a lot of other plays and so you knew that these were the 25 to 50 really good one act plays that had been you know produced or published in this country. That is and so basically what probably some other young person in another part of the country might have taken 3 years you learn all that in sort of 6 months time during that intercollegiate phase. And that is invaluable experience and once the play is staged you know because the amount of resources and all that that is pulled in that plays a big role in doing all this watching the process of rehearsal. So again I was very lucky I wrote a play in my first play I think it was called I Am I and we had a fairly noted stage director in those days called Akash Khurana. So he had directed it and so two things happened one was he brought in a professional expertise. So it was good to see how a professional theatre director is dissecting your text and you know adding elements to it which you never thought and imagined. So then you know the process became automatically the level goes up straight away from you know playing gully cricket you go straight away into timeshield and kangali you know. So that helps you straight away and then after that you go up the thing. The other thing about writing is you know it's hard work. I mean there is no mystery to the process. It's hard work is very lonely work all the great writers that you whether it's a Marquess or it's you know Bashir or Premchand they would have a you know they say that it's a job of whimsical and you know job inspiration higher. But a lot of the great writers have been known to get up at 637 follow a very very hard ritual write for four hours come what may good bad indifferent learn to reject those texts. So that habit of writing for four hours daily is invaluable. You could write whatever you want you could be writing letters to the editor you could be writing short stories you could be writing poems songs for movies whatever but the habit of writing is a constant one and it's something that you can get you know good at only when you keep doing it day in and day out. So and I think most of the greats do it even now. I mean there's this fantastic book I have of Borges is a biography one of the writers I admire and even though he was blind he would constantly be writing you know and that is you cannot you know it's like Tendulkar going to the nets and doing it every day. So it's like the writers have to write there's no escaping that. It's Milton and Milton. Sir the people who were there in 1944 and whom you talked to Sir did they have a chance to watch this? Some of them did some of them yeah. It's a bit difficult because a lot of them were very emotional about the whole experience and for them it all came back. So they obviously did not look at it as a piece of theatre or a piece of art or anything but for them it was much much more. So it was at two levels one was a certain amount of catharsis because of what and you know they were meeting them after the show used to be a terrible experience because you know they would be very very stirred by the whole experience. The second thing used to be that they were very grateful that you know somebody had taken the effort of recording this whole thing documentation which is something as a country we are quite careless about. I mean not just this incident but innumerable other things we are very shabby about that whole process and that they were I think quite grateful about. Sir when you had these conversations with them were they sort of spontaneous or did you record them or something? No no never record yeah. What's spontaneous? See I told you I had two friends Amrit Bhai, Amrit Gangar and there's another friend of ours called Dharamshi Bhai who's like the age-old Socrates of Bombay. So I've been very lucky with all my plays that I've had someone like that who has opened up sort of doors for me. So that opportunity was there. So I had access to people who otherwise would be a bit difficult. Also the other thing I'm slightly lucky is that I can speak about 6 or 7 languages. So the it's not that you know languages is a great sort of so English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil whatever. So in this case it used to be a lot of Gujarati, a bit of you know broken Marwadi and so on. Those are little things that matter. No recording because people get uncomfortable. No making notes while they're talking because then it becomes a kind of formal space here. Here this would be interesting and you know these are wonderful people so they would sort of if they felt adequately they would jump into a cab and say Chalo apde Godi par jaai hai and I will show you ki kyaan shoot hai you etle whatever. You know so those kind of things or a place where they have eaten so when this Keshav Rao Naik's incident which I mentioned where he meets him in the wayside and one of them actually took us to that and today even today the statue is still there in Paidoni of Keshav Rao Naik. It's there in that Basti and so on. And you know again it's typical Bombay because they have built a tea stack around it and so that whole thing is undermined but that's actually a legacy. If you look at it historically it should be something that we should celebrate because you obviously contributed a lot to labour law in that particular area but those kind of things so they would feel inspired and actually take you to those spaces. And this one gentleman who I had met he was fantastic because he was about 87 or 88 and he used to in the morning I said I go to Chowpatty for a swim and you know and he was 87 and his body was very very weak but he would do the swimming exercise every day and for an hour so when I met him I actually met him at Chowpatty and then from there we went to his home so those kind of things and he had lost about partial eyesight because the second blast when it took place the glasses had smashed in the house and then some of those pieces had So the multi-linguality that was there in your experience of gathering the... Was shared. Yeah. Was shared. And then it also came into the play right. That's right. Right and in the text again we are confined because of what is written but the actors played that up a little more. Did that a little more. Gemini himself is multi-linguals likewise Suruchi was. So we play that up a little more. I mean you know today whatever one may say about Mumbai I mean we hate it and whatever it is love it or whatever the choice is but the fact is it is a beautiful city and the fact is it did a lot of things normally and you know very very in a very casual way which a whole lot of other cities have struggled to do and this was one of them you know it this whole thing of shared histories and many stories you know being able to exist simultaneously that's a wonderful thing it doesn't happen in other parts of the world you know and that so that was something that we got a sense of when we were there and what we did with the actors was we spent a lot of time not a lot of time we spent some time because actors are actors they need to do other things they need to rehearse plays and learn lines but we took them for a small tour around and a couple of these people they met so they got a sense of you know where all this is coming from. One last question. The very exact information that you have of the cargo on the ship. Yes. That was got from the. So that was got from this one book that I picked up on the carrot and then I cross referenced that and I got that from the Asiatic as well because there is the gazetted there is something called the gazetted I have my notes somewhere but something called the gazetted in which there is a documentation of this whole thing and that cargo was yeah that's exact there's not an item which I have removed nor an item which I have added and it was very interesting you know speaking about translation in other languages when we you know and I used to always feel very uncomfortable with that scene because even Gemini commented you know just rattling out this is like statistics and audiences will switch off and when Rudy Rudy is this friend of ours in Brussels who translated the play into Dutch and when he saw it I said so now we come to the really tough part of the play and he said why why do you say that and he said this is poetry you know and it is because if you read the items in a row it's such a unnatural sort of gathering of eight totally different items in that one whole and how could that have happened I mean how can a human being even think of doing that so and yeah but they played it very differently in Dutch they had these two here the actors are much younger there the actors are much older there was there's this apparently very sort of renowned actress over there in Europe I forget her name but she is like the like the Meryl Streep of European theatre so she and this other gentleman who was retired actor but had come out of retirement to play and then they had this one man on sax who was there to give the resonance to the whole thing but they played it they didn't move from their chair and I mean I don't understand I don't understand Dutch at all but it was a stunning experience very very beautifully done and they used they used a huge screen it was an enormous stage so if you've been like to the Jamshed Baba theatre it's as big as that in terms of state space so there's just two solitary actors and then just these scraps of paper keep coming and I don't know how they do that but the scraps of paper keep coming and at the end of it there is this mosaic on the floor and they have this beautiful backdrop which keeps changing very slightly done it's not as if it's Bombay Bombay but there's just a touch of that again very nicely done very very but it's very understated it's very European it's not like us you know we are a little Thank you Thank you