 It happened, it's a sunny day here, even so a bit cold. It was about 10 degrees Celsius in the morning and we woke up to another day in the middle of the corona time, another day. And the day how we spend our days is how we spend our lives at the moment. And it is still full of questions. Signs look good and better. The smoke signs in the US indicate that perhaps we are turning a corner. Yes, talk about opening on Broadway. Theater is on September, even so it's not really clear how this will be done there. And our assurance is, of course, that the theaters will be full. But small productions have started to work in the park and controlled environment. So we are seeing a change, bars, restaurants are opening here. Meanwhile, around the world, we have seen and we are witnessing catastrophic turns, things that are going from bad to the worst and perhaps the darkest spot on planet Earth at the moment. The heart of the darkness here is India. It is what New York City used to be last year around this time when we were the center of the corona crisis and the world with the most losses of life. But what we are witnessing in India and now it's also moving to do too bad is a catastrophic. Already last year, we had a seagull talk and it was one of the hardest, if not the hardest talk for me as a moderator to get through and really wrap my head around with us today. Again, it's Abhishek Majumdar, a playwright and director, one of the great artists here in India. Abhishek, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Frank, for inviting me again. It's a pleasure to be here. So where are you? What time is it? I'm in Bangalore, in my house, and it's 9.30 in the evening. 9.30 in the evening. Normally, today, we also would have the great, great, great puppeteer, puppet designer and director Anu Ruparoi with us who joined us also last year. She's a master, a grandmaster of her craft. And unfortunately, she is suffering a case of Corona, so strong, she is not able to talk, her entire family got Corona, her father is very, very, very sick. She thought she could join us, but she can't. Abhishek, what do you know about Anu Ruparoi? At the moment, she's quite unwell, but she's recovering. There was, I think, you know, her father was quite unwell three, four days ago, so we were all actually looking for a hospital bed for him, because like in most big cities, Delhi is also very badly affected and there aren't enough beds for people. So there was that, but luckily, I think, thankfully, they have received the medical care that they needed. And everybody in her family has received the care that they needed. So she's at home, but she has fever and she's in bed at the moment. So she sent a message to me asking also to convey to everybody that she thought she can't make it this time, and she wishes everybody, she sends her best wishes to everybody who's on this program. Yeah, it is sad, sad state. Let me tell you a little bit about Abhishek for those who do know, he's a playwright, theatre director and cinematographer. He is the ex-artistic director and the founder of the Indy Nozomal and the Basha Center for the Performing Arts in Bangalore. Now he works at the Nalanda Art Studio in Bangalore and he's working around the world, kicked up his global reach. He, of course, has been with that at the Sega Center many years ago, two times, I think, but he's creating new work for the Royal Court Theatre in London, the great play co-company here in New York City with St. Louis Ballet, one of the few, could not be dedicated to work from international theatre artists. It's a great work, what they put out there in Abhishek is one of their collaborators over almost a decade now. But he also teaches at NYU University in Abu Dhabi and he is primarily working in English, but also in the Hindi, Bangalore and Nalanda. His work has been translated into many, many languages, Marathi, Rujarathi, Spanish, French, Czech, Kashmiri, Bangalore and many, many others and he holds the title of the Associate Professor of Arts Practice at NYU University in Abu Dhabi and is a visiting fellow of Delhi University. So you live in Bangalore and Abu Dhabi and how close are you to New Delhi? Where are you? Tell us a bit about Bangalore. How is the situation? Bangalore is in the south of India and it's a two-hour, two-and-a-half hour flight from New Delhi. At the moment, Bangalore is the epicenter in India of the coronavirus. If you are, it's the epicenter. Yeah. And what has happened is that in Bangalore, till about two weeks back, I think it wasn't this big a crisis that people saw. There was clearly, Delhi was much more affected, Bombay was much more affected. Do you hear too much background noises? I don't know, it's a regular sound. One second. So I think we have to reconnect to Abishak and he will with us in a moment, yeah? Yeah, okay. So yeah, right now it is the epicenter. The numbers have erupted. There are cases in like 10,000s right now. 10s of thousands and every day there are these many cases. This is in a state called Karnataka, which is one of the big southern states of India. And we are in a situation where essentially, although Bangalore is the capital, there, I mean, the thing that everybody is telling each other is that we are gasping for oxygen at the moment. That's what's going on. So we are running, me and various other colleagues are running these volunteer groups, which are trying to map people who need beds to the number of beds that are available, to ventilators, to ICU units, to oxygen concentrators, oxygen cylinders, all of that. And it's a massive, massive, massive task. And we are awake every night till like five in the morning and then we do shifts and somebody is, so there is somebody manning it all night, all day. And every day is mixed in, every day is like, I mean, today since morning, I think we've had six or seven cases which were positive, by which I mean that we were able to find a bed for them. And there were at least six to seven deaths within our group. We heard about those cases that we were following. And this is the fraction of a fraction of what we are talking about. So that's the state. I mean, unfortunately, it's an apocalyptic situation. I mean, I have no other words for it. I don't think anybody has ever seen anything like this in our country where people are lined up, even crematoriums and burial grounds. There's a queues of hundreds of people outside to go in and bury their people. And sometimes they're not able to do that. They're not able to cremate or burn because nobody in the family can come out and either they're no more or they're COVID positive so they're in isolation. So then other people are doing this work for them. So yeah, I mean, it's quite bad. It's quite hard in Bangalore. It's in Delhi, in Bombay, in all the big cities in Calcutta. But at the moment, it seems like Bangalore is the epicenter of this thing. So to understand why theater artists like you are not really thinking how to reopen and writing a new monologue, creating a new video or a passport, you are staying up day and night on a hotline where you kind of connect sick people, friends or family, friends or artists who need help with hospitals and that. How does it work? How do you say we stay up all night? What do you guys do? Yeah, so what we do is that, we have these, so for example, I'm connected to eight or nine groups which have people in them and it's a three-step process. So the first part is that, you know, patients, they don't have to be friends, family, artists. They're essentially anybody will send us, there's a format in which they send their request that they have, we have something called the BBMP, which is the municipal corporation of Bangalore. There's a centralized system through which people are supposed to get beds. But the number of beds available are far, far less than the number of people who need the beds. I think the ratio is one is to 300 or something like that. At the moment. 300 beds are needed, one person don't get it. Yeah, it's almost that. And I'm talking about like ventilator beds, beds with oxygen and ventilators which will help them do that. So what happens is the first step is that people write to us, send us their requests saying that this is what we're looking at, after they have logged into the central system. So they get a number once they have logged in. Now, our main job is to look at criticality and try to push these cases, try to find out which hospitals are getting free, which hospitals have two or three beds empty and try to get these people the information to be able to get to that hospital, right? The second part of it is that there is a whole bunch of data on the internet which is updated about the hospitals, about who are the oxygen suppliers, who are the vendors, what kind of ambulances, oxygen ambulance, non-oxygen ambulance and so on and so forth. The data is so large that if the attendant tries to verify each of those calls, it's gonna take them a humongous amount of time because all the numbers are engaged, right? Everybody is falling right now. So what happens once the number comes to us, our team, which is in each of these units. So now I'm talking about totally maybe 100 people that I'm connected to on various teams across the country. They will make these numbers. With a few hundred people, you are uncomfortable. Yeah, I'm in contact with 100 people who are working and today I have about 115 cases on my phone, just tonight, like tonight after this call, like before I came onto this call, I went on Facebook, I sent a message to my entire team, all these teams that I'm going to be on a talk for an hour, hour and a half. So if it's urgent, call me and I'll pick up the phone and take it, but if you message me, I'll miss it because it's that much of, it's a race against time, literally we are, our teams are racing against time. We have to keep track of what is the oxygen level of each patient, whose case needs to be escalated and amplified on social media so that the municipal commissioner can look at it and they can say, okay, this one has to go higher. And that's the kind of thing that we are having to do. A whole bunch of people also verify the numbers because there are so many numbers on the internet. Many of them might have stopped working. People might have switched it off. They ran out of oxygen. So it's just to be able to save time for the families which are trying to reach out and to be able to escalate cases. Sometimes we are successful, sometimes we are not. I mean, this is unbelievable. So let me repeat, so I understand that right after you hang up with me, which is already about 10 o'clock in the night, where we are talking now, we will work all night to find that this oxygen machines for about 110 people who reach out to your group and you will go to bed at four o'clock or five o'clock in the morning. Are you paid for this? Is this part of a hospital work of the state or Bangalore of the city? How does that work? No, this is completely wrong. All the people that I'm talking about, they are working because we need this. We just need this in the city right now. So those of us who are healthy, those of us who are alive, those of us who can afford to do it, many of, I'm sure many people can't afford to do it also and yet they are doing it. Are really doing it because we just need to do it. There's no two ways about it. Also, when I say these 100 cases, they are with me but there are teams working on it. So right now, for example, yeah, for my job, mainly what I'm doing is I'm trying to see the cases after the first calls have been made by these, you know, various teams I'm part of and then to see which one should we escalate, what are some of the other solutions we can look at, which hospitals and which doctors should we connect to? So I'm not actually making the phone calls myself. I'm sort of overseeing where things can go for, you know, eight or nine of these groups. And in some cases, you know, which are mostly in rural areas or small, smaller towns, there I'm taking some larger groups. Like for example, today I was working on an orphanage which needed support. Like there are 17 children there and there was a COVID situation. So what happens then, who is isolated? How do we find out the RTPs, the tests and all that? So I was working with that orphanage today for the last part of the day. So most of the times the ones that I am personally engaged with are the orphanages, the old-age homes, the places where there is like a bigger group of people. But our teams are looking at also many, many individual cases on which I'm monitoring them. In that group of volunteers, you happen to be working in theater but the group of groups comes from all walks of life, all different professions or are you a theater? All walks of life. No, all walks of life. But I think the groups that I'm associated with are majorly populated by theater artists because that's my circle. Tell us about that group of theater artists. How do you know each other? How do you work together? Why do you think we have to do this and not put on a play or anything? I know it's a stupid question but still I would like to ask you. Yeah. Well, how do we know each other? We know each other over the years. I mean, there are people from Delhi, Bangalore, Calcutta, Bombay and all places where we've known each other for years. There are new people joining in every day who we don't know but other people know them. Someone knows someone. I think a lot of theater people are, a lot of theater people are involved. And this was true even when we were speaking the last time you and I and we were talking about the food relief, a lot of theater people were involved. Look, I think there is no question of putting a work play right now. It's not even thinkable. Till I opened my last play three weeks ago, no, four weeks ago in Bangalore, we had a premiere and it was already like the, like we got through the, just before the door shut. The theater shut in three days from then. And we were really glad that we could premiere it but then it was right at the end of what was known at that time. But right now it's death. We are dealing with death, literally death. We have volunteers dropping out because they can't handle it. It's very difficult for many, many people to handle it. There are people who have dropped out in two or three days and gone to therapists and sought help because every day we are following up with families. We think that we will be able to get this person to just do some life support. And you almost develop a relationship, right? With the family, there is a relationship there. And then the person dies. So the cost of like going to sleep right now, you know, the cost of going to sleep is very high. So for instance, last night, I slept off while my phone was in front. I was sitting. I hadn't slept the night before. And last night I was very, very tired. In between a case, I slept off. Like when we were messaging a volunteer from our group who's also a playwright. His name is Ramneek Singh, he's a very good playwright. He was handling a case at night. And he was talking to me about this case. In fact, there were two cases running. Both of them are playwrights. That's the kind of world I'm talking about. Both playwrights are handling these cases, which were two patients in the ICU world. And while discussing, they were coming back to me with scenarios, what should we do? Should we say this or should we say that? Who should we talk to? While doing this, I slept off. And then when I woke up with a nightmare, you know, and I checked my phone, I felt, my God, I don't know what has happened in these three hours that I have slept. Because what if we have missed something? What do you, you know, we don't know. And actually, unfortunately, I have to say it with a very heavy heart that today we lost both those people. We worked all night, but one of them died about three hours ago with a multiple organ failure. And the other person died in the afternoon. So it was quite a devastating thing for the team as such. But we managed to solve the case for that orphanage. We were able to sort that out. Nobody was, nobody had a serious problem over there. But this is our life right now. So the person who died, you know the name, you know the name of the family members. We have talked to them several times. Yeah, I mean, in this case, Ramnik, who's the playwright and Ramindra, who's the other playwright, they spoke to them. I wasn't speaking directly to the family. I was speaking to the sources, which would get them the bed. And I was in touch with them. And I was in touch with the family through them. For example, I was in conversation about whether we should now, if we don't have a ventilator, should we go to a different hospital or should we stay in this hospital and try an oxygen solution? Like what is the kind of, sometimes, you know, I mean, now in the last three, four days we have access to doctors 24 hours because of some groups that have been formed. But otherwise it was shooting in the dark. I mean, the medical system is hugely pressurized. Doctors are working 24 hours, nurses are working. So many nurses have died. There is a reason why we are not able to set up many home intensive care units, which otherwise is a good option because it avoids infection from the hospital because it can be at home. But we are not able to do that because there aren't enough nurses. I think substantial number of nurses are dying. And at the same time, we are all writing, you know? Weirdly, this is a time where a lot of writing is going on. I think a lot of writing is on the social media, actually, more than anywhere else. I think people are writing about what they are seeing, people are writing, even connecting political ideas to ground reality. Like today's death, the one in the afternoon that I'm talking about, I wrote about it after that, you know, that this is not a natural death. A person looks for a bed for three days and three nights and then gets to the hospital. And on getting to the hospital, they are denied admission because the data that had come said it was less severe than what they are now, which is obvious because the data is at least one and a half days old. And then the patient waits the whole night and then she gets in. And then after that, she doesn't get a ventilator. She gets this oxygen. Then she gets medicine for one dose and she doesn't get medicine after that. I mean, this is a murder by the state. The state has ensured that, you know, in the months from the last time the lockdown opened to now, the government of India set up the Ram temple. There is a multi-million billion dollar central Vista project, which is a new parliament. The government has still not stopped it. They are going ahead with the construction of it. It's a multi-billion dollar project. They were fighting elections in multiple states, spending crores and crores of rupees. And there was no money invested on, you know, the preparation for the second wave when everybody knew the second wave was coming. The second wave had happened in so many countries before it happened in India anyway. And now we are overwhelmed because we don't have any preparation. And even now, the government is saying things like, you know, look at, you know, they have the prime minister, the ministers of this party, the BJP, they have their pictures on, you know, vaccination cards and these kinds of things. They're so narcissistic about this entire thing with no facilities and people are just dying left, right and center. So I think a lot of writing is going on about how this is not a pandemic. Like you can't blame this anymore on, you know, it's a pandemic and it would have come. There is a, the writing is becoming more political from all walks of life and questioning the government. That is, it is just incredibly used towards murder by state. And it is hard to think if there would be a trial you know, theater artists like Milo Rao would stage a trial against the government of India. They would be found guilty of negligence. They would be found guilty of not doing the most to find practical solutions for what was obviously coming for our viewers. We spoke last, I think, September. I don't remember October last year. It was pretty heartbreaking. And I remember Anu Rupa saying, I looked out of my window, 500,000 people, they help us, the people who live in people's homes and health and pain. The weak is of society. They have been pushed out because of quarantine. They were prepared to walk up to 1,000 kilometers home with a suitcase and a baby on the arm, a biblical exodus and with very little food only to be returned at the next state border because of the states that we don't want people to work for our place. They had no place to go. Anu Rupa said she is taking care or trying to work with a village of artists, theater artists, mostly puppeteers, 10 or 15,000 families of theater artists. And she says, the time was not corona, the big problem, but the foods, they should have been trying to distribute food. There is food there, but as Abhishek pointed out, the organization isn't there. Theater people stepped in. Hugh Abhishek said, I have a list of 1,000 people in my cell phone tonight where I could go to deliver the 15 or 20 meals I cooked. And you work, you have a daughter, you have to work at the university, you're a playwright. It was unimaginable, it was already and it broke. So many people also spoke to me about this. It was not so clear also from the media, but you were saying what is now, what you're experiencing with the less, with oxygen no longer available, people dying, chromatoriums, not even be able to burn the people, hospitals, refusing it, but it's apocalyptic. It's a horror scenario, although the science fiction film we nobody wanted to see. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is a horrible scenario, it's apocalyptic. You know, also I think that it really turns on its head, this notion of post-truth. I don't think we can make that claim anymore that there is, we are in post-truth. I think we have in very concrete historic moment with material reasons and repercussions. And the repercussions are different for different classes of society. You know, I have to share this with your viewers that you and I, you were just talking about the time and all these hundreds and thousands of migrant workers were walking from one class to another. Very recently, a study was published about the billionaires of India. During the same period, the wealth of the top billionaires of India has gone up by 35%. She is the same period, 35% of the top billionaires. They have made so much money during this period. When the pandemic, this time, when the second wave started, just the day before the lockdown, the super welding of our country flew out in private jets to London, in private jets so that they wouldn't be caught in this scenario. And these are the people who support the government. These are the people who fund the government. These are the people who get the contracts from the government. It is a bit like, I don't know, it's a bit like what we, like when we thought of, when we speak of African nations after independence, often we speak about dictators, Idi Amin and that whole range of dictatorial governments who had their hands in neocolonization. I think we are in that neocolonization moment in this country at this point. And the farce of philanthropy. Philanthropy is such a big farce of the super age that it's not fair. The wealth tax is, I mean, I was reading Thomas Piketty's book on capitalism and ideology and he talks about, he argues for wealth tax and the most significant rise in American wealth and growth was when the wealth tax was actually at 90 something percent as compared to more recent times. And he argues against the American model and for the sort of European model of wealth tax. And one has to see this in relationship to India and China and various states in Africa, like Kenya and Nigeria to see how little is the wealth tax in these countries. So obviously we are not taxing the wealthy but we are so grateful all the time. We are grateful to everybody. We are grateful for those in a 500 seater, non ventilator oxygen bed facility that they will give out. We are so grateful, but it's our money. It's the work of our people. There are places in India which have been set up, which have oxygen beds. And you know what the ad says? It says there are 500 beds, but you should come in only if your oxygen level is above 85 because nobody wants anyone to die again. What use is a center if people should have oxygen level above something? This is the nature of philanthropy. So I think it's apocalyptic, but it's also apocalyptic in a very Marxist sense. This would be Marxist view of apocalypse. It wouldn't be the sort of, the Fukuyama view of apocalypse. I think that's what we are inside. Yeah, and it was probably super rich. They will have 10 oxygen machines at home in the basement, just in case, and they might need it. You know that very rare ones were bought up also in African countries or Arab countries, you know, for those families who will not even need it because they live in London, but just in case and instead of creator. It's a shock, as you say, that India didn't prepare. It looked so good. India was a world modelizing. It has a incredibly high output of vaccination and production. Normally, but things didn't go right. It went wrong and that the preparation was not taken seriously. And like everywhere else, the Corona crisis magnified the problems, existing problems. The truth is concrete. That's what you said. That's what Hegel said. Kant said that and now we see that the reactor, it has a nuclear explosion. The roof is off, as Richard Chapman said. We will watch it and we see it. And it's unbelievable what you're talking. I think we at the Seedle Center will think about a way to create at least short compassion to do a fundraising for you, Kool, for these artists who get together, sacrifice their nights of sleep to save people within Bangladesh. But mostly also in rural villages where there's no health, where there's no hope and the compassion you show in Seedle Artists show which represents the view we have in our profession of the world. In this extraordinary, let's see what we can do without burdening you. Maybe do a 20 for our marathon. I don't know yet if you will see. But really Abhishek, we want you to know what you do is incredible. It's heroic and it makes me weak to think about what you are going through day by day that since last year when we spoke that it hasn't really stopped and now the body count comes up. Here often we talk about representation on the body on the stage, what it means, gender. What does the representation of bodies in the morgue is mean, in the crematoriums, you know? And how do you bring those worlds together? How do you teach at NYU Abu Dhabi and how do you connect this to your life spending nights finding hospital beds for farmers from rural villages? I don't know how to do that. Yeah, that's a great question. Actually, you know, last year, before the whole migration crisis happened before we had our conversation, I was at a moment in my life where I was really thinking that I read a lot, but am I reading properly? I had a mini crisis. I was thinking that, you know, I'm reading all these things I've been reading for so many years in two or three languages. But I felt that I'm reading all this stuff, all this theory, all this material, all this fiction, but where do I place it? What is my world inside which this will stay? And at that time, this whole crisis had erupted and we were out on the streets. We were in the slums, we were distributing food and so on and so forth. And we really had to come out of our small kind of bourgeois sort of middle-class life. And suddenly I thought that this was very selfishly and extraordinary school for me. Suddenly I could see that, you know, Ambedkar and Gandhi and, you know, Nussbaum and every philosopher I've enjoyed reading, their work made, started speaking to me in a very immediate sense, because it had to help me make sense of where I was and what I was doing in a place where people would either get their meal that night or not. So the debates in my mind had to be significant for that night's meal for someone. I think now it's become even more immediate because how do we process this? How do we think about a country? That's the first question. What is this idea that we are a country where we say that, okay, you know, let's say, we say, okay, vaccines are going to be available to people in this city or you have to show your nationality and your card to get a vaccine. So what happens to a poor person if they don't have a card? So they don't get the vaccine. But if they don't get the vaccine, are the families of the people who have the card safe if someone around us doesn't have a vaccine? So in a way, what I think has happened is it has forced the different worlds to come together. There is this extraordinary line I once read somewhere that it said that the difference between Walter and Rousseau is the unfinished work of the Enlightenment. And it was speaking about what is the role of the philosopher? Like, do you then go and sell Swiss watches to the Russian queen or do you engage in sort of active activism and politics? And so what is this thinker supposed to do? I was also reading, while all this is going on, by the way, I have been leading a coast of Utopia, Tom Stopper coast of Utopia. And, you know, there's this extraordinary line I read last night while all this was going on where Belinsky is asked, you know, Belinsky is told about the success of writers in Paris. And Belinsky said, but what is this success? You know, in Russia where I write stuff gets censored, but much before it comes out, there are students standing outside the bookshop waiting for that pamphlet to come out because it means something so active. So you people think that in Paris, you're successful. Is this being a successful writer? Ask Belinsky what is it to be a successful writer in Russia? And if you don't have that then, and it suddenly makes sense to me. It makes sense to me that even this tension of what is success, what does it mean to succeed as an idea, as an artist, sorry? The questions in that play, the coast of Utopia where, you know, there is Marx and there's Belinsky and they're arguing about nature of, you know, what does it mean to be a thinker? I think we are living inside that moment, at the moment, you know? NYU Abu Dhabi actually just, my classes just got over and it had gotten a bit hard in the last two weeks to teach, I shouldn't make because we were hit by this thing. But I have to say that my students and colleagues were so tuned in to each other's energy, even inside this Zoom space that it made life much easier. Like there was this day, I was, I taught a course this time called Silence. It was dealing with silence and its many dimensions. And I sat and I was about to start my class when on my messages I got a thing saying that this person has died, right? And this was two weeks ago. So I saw it and I shut my eyes and I sat like this. I thought there's nobody there. I mean, nobody has come in, you know? And I didn't know that the window was open. So after some time, I opened my eyes and I saw all my students. They were sitting quietly because they understood exactly what has happened. And I felt in a way so fortunate to be in the company of young people who have a three-month course which thinks about silence and architecture, silence and music, you know, silence and poetry and silence as a way of being. And after those two months, when they sit on the other side of Zoom, they can actually create a silence which can hold the space for someone on the other side. So in a way, this is coming together weirdly. There is not much of a dissonance. Maybe also because of the profession I'm in, because I teach and I make theater, both of them are so connected in one sense to the world. That it gives me tools to survive. I don't think I would have survived 10 deaths a day if I was not reading Post of Utopia at the same time. Do you even think about upcoming work? I think about it. I think about it definitely. I mean, I always think about upcoming work because I think it's very much a part of my day-to-day life. Like I've been, where we are right now, it is so, so fascist a state that I've been reading a lot about the Frankfurt school, you know, and the tensions of the Frankfurt school and you know, the study done by Eric Fromm about how, you know, what leads to Nazism and what went there. So I've very recently actually written up a proposal for a bunch of theaters, which deals with that. Then I'm directing this Japanese play called Water Station, Otoshogas Water Station. I'm directing it as a film later this year. So obviously I have no time to actively engage with that work. I'm not able to sit and write or, you know, do anything of that sort. But there's something churning. There is something. No studio time could give me this intensity that I'm bringing now. I don't think this is, I don't think I'm trading. I don't think I'm trading experience. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just responding to my time. And I think that's the one thing the theater has taught us very in a very, you know, concrete way that you have the job as an artist to respond to your time and at the same time be able to have a view which is slightly bigger. But that doesn't mean, I think when people generally use this word that, you know, a slightly bigger view, they mean it in the pacifist sense. That the moment I say there's a bigger view, we say, okay, there's a reason for pacifism. But that's not true for the theater. I think theater artists have never been pacifists in its history, whenever they've had a, whether it's Brecht or Meyer-Holl or Stanislav, whoever, like around the world, in our country. It's never been a pacifist view. And I was thinking the other day, you know, after some, I was looking at some images of people being burnt and I was reminded of Suzuki's production of Trojan Horse. I saw it in Trojan Women, sorry, yeah. I saw it in Japan a few years ago. And then he spoke about why the Trojan Women was important for him to speak about his work. And I was thinking, yeah, you know, sometimes the answers do not lie in your newspaper. Our newspaper right now can only tell me what's happening. It cannot tell me actually what's happening. Really what's going on. There is what's happening and there's what's happening. I think the real what's happening is maybe in Suzuki's Trojan Women. And that is, you know, I'm sure everybody has their own, you know, hooks to plug into the world. Obviously my hooks are these, you know, this is what my breathing life is. So I am processing the world through that. Yeah, so it's hard to talk about art and theater. It's just so incredible what's happening in your country, your place. Here people, you know, are New York for good reasons also. So, you know, they are putting up, you know, work online. It was the new monologue or wisdom. So new people, out-of-the-world performance of less unrest at the Madison Square Park, the opening of the Ghost Forrest by Maya Lin. She planted trees in Madison Square Park, dead trees, pine trees to remind us of the ongoing crisis. There are things are happening. And everybody looks, perhaps, you know, we will go back to what it was before the novel and we learned some lessons. But hearing what is happening in your place is a shocking reminder and also how things can turn. It didn't look so bad in between. There's also, if I understand right, it's a new virus modification change, the Indian one, it hasn't arrived in the US. What will happen if it comes? And we'll Broadway open and say, but nobody from India is allowed to see it. Well, America said, we have to close our borders. We are now, everybody is vaccinated, but nobody comes in. 80% of all viewers on Broadway are actually tourists and people from Connecticut and New Jersey. What is going to happen? We really do not know, but you now talking to me, perhaps, you know, cannot give your energy that someone might stay alive. Someone might die as a result of it, you know, that you put an hour away of your time to talk with us. It is just an incredible moment. Would you say in the history of India, it's darkest hours of the midnight children would talk about this more? It is the most complicated one since the inception of the state? I think so. I think so. I think for a variety of reasons, that is true. And you know, like during the British rule, they were great atrocities. If I think of the famine of India, 1943-44, there was food grain for the people. But Churchill had moved all this food grain to feed the troops in Europe. And it created a famine which by 1945 had killed 7 million people. 7 million people who had actually grown this food, which is a large number, which is almost as large as the number of people in the Holocaust. And we justified that in a way by saying, okay, he was Churchill. He was a colonizer. He was their prime minister. He was not our prime minister. So we have independence. But now what? What is it now? We have never had the moment where systematically for 10 years, almost 10 years, the country has been pushed this close to war, to communal violence, to Muslims being lynched. Lynched, people being lynched and killed. I mean, what is the history of lynching in India? I mean, I was watching this documentary about this song. What is that song? A Strange Food, about lynching. I mean, that kind of historic thing which used to happen is happening now in our country. And this is not something which has sustained over the last 70 years of independence. I've never heard of people getting lynched in this country like that just because they were carrying a piece of meat and somebody suspected it or something. What the virus has done, not only in India, but I think in many such countries, we know this Turkey, we know this in Hungary, is that it's given dictatorial regimes an opportunity to crush any kind of defense or any kind of protest, any kind of otherwise by saying that, at the moment, we are already in a very big crisis and you cannot be questioning the state while the state basically keeps operating as if it was a political party. There is no difference right now between the political party and the state. And I think this is the darkest hour because this time, the church here is not in England. He's here, he's our own, he's betraying his own people and his followers, it's extraordinary. People are saying that there was this huge thing recently about spread positive news. You should spread positive news, why are people spreading negative news? And I was writing one day, I wrote a small piece saying that during Nazi Germany, newspapers were filled with positive news. There was so much news about free, we read in Guntagrass' work about free shipwrites that are being offered by at all fitler to people and people are thinking that there's a classless society that is being built or during Stalin's time that in Ukraine, you couldn't basically have an obituary column in the newspaper. If a government starts saying that spread positive news, it means you are in a deep, deep crisis. Historically, the only reason why a government insists on positive news is because the crisis is so deep and so rotten that any negative news is true. Otherwise, I would imagine a state, a democratic state would say, tell me what's wrong. Tell me what's wrong, I'm here to fix it. Instead, what the government is busy saying is tell me what's right, because I can't fix anything. That is really dark for the world's largest democracy. In terms of a number of people voting, we are the world's largest democracy. And for all the people, I think who have shunned different systems of the world, the Khalifa system, the Marxist, the communist system by saying, oh, look, this particular country didn't do that well and look at Saudi Arabia and how can that work and look at Russia and how can this, look at India. And question democracy, is this a viable solution to the world? If you look at it, we have an elected leader and we are celebrating that there are people saying, no, it happened because people were not wearing masks, really? Is that our answer? And people are being put in prison for opening their mouth, for saying things against the state. Everybody's on surveillance. What is this? I think this is definitely the darkest period in modern Indian history. Yeah, it's only a mention. I cannot even imagine what it must feel like. If you know it or you think about it, you have to experience it day by day, because being confronted with deaths, everybody in your family could get the virus. I know you had it, your family had it, but it might be mutation, you're not immune. Clear consequences of political actions and now we know it makes a difference. We all know that democracy is to come. It's never there, it's never perfect. And the idea of radical equality is that you always work for it. I think who says it is perfect, it's lying to you. People say it's black or white, they are lying to you. I think Thomas Ostermayor, the Berlin director, talked about that. He said there's this kind of socialist, or Soviet realism of the happy farmers and the society moving forward, everybody knew it was alive. And there's capitalist realism. You buy the coffee and your family is happy. You get this sneaker and it will be as good as Michael Jordan, it's only up to you. And you know, create an app, do more meditation, do more yoga and everything will be fine and you might be lucky. And this capitalist realism is also a big lie by so-called profit in a way from the system, as you said. I did not know that billionaires, instead of staying at home and investing money and building up factories to produce oxygen machines, they're going to London on that flight, it depends, it's shocking, it's wrong. It's against everything mankind could stand for. It's against everything theater artists fight for. And we are hard on the right side of freedom and democracy. Democracy is a constant struggle, it's slower. You know, people go back and forth. It never moves as fast as the dictatorial system but ultimately decisions aren't better because they get discussed. It is stunning to hear what do you think art will come in? Will art come back in the next decade in India? What do you, what hopes do you have? I know last time you said, Frank, I know my art is important because I get censored. Just that there's TV stuff, millions of people see it, films, nobody cares. My place gets forbidden by the government so it means, it must mean something. But what do you think now? What do you see the future of performing arts in India? I think performing arts in India is a part of day-to-day life by which I don't mean people going to the theater and buying tickets and watching a play in the evening. That's a very small part of what performing arts in India is. I'm talking about music and performance, traditional performances which are not necessarily for an audience in that sense. But also, I mean, everybody has acted in something, in the neighborhood, in the school, in the everybody has performed at some point of time or another in a play, for example, maybe a mythological claim, maybe a realistic play, whatever. So, and we are a storytelling country. We had a very old storytelling tradition. We pass on, we have very little written even today. One of the challenges of studying Indian history is that a lot of the stuff is not written. It's not archived in the way it should be. But it is oral history and oral tradition. So, as long as there is one Indian, whatever that means in the world, I think the notion of performance and storytelling, whatever that means in the Indian subcontinent is going to continue. Because it's like the color of our skin. There is no replacing it. It's not also, it's an interesting thing that we are not all the same color of the skin in this country. Similarly, we don't all come from the same storytelling tradition, we're very diverse. I think what is, that is going to remain. But what it is up against is not death. What it is up against is the hegemony of storytelling. Is forces which want us to tell just one story. That is the contest as far as storytelling is concerned. But of course, you see all the Indian epics, they are somewhere at the heart of it is the question of life and death. What happens in the Mahabharata is so much about, it is full of metaphysical questions about life and death. Ramayana is full of metaphysical questions of life and death. So in a way, there is a view of death which exists, I think in the culture, which also sustains a lot of things. I think it makes people pacifist a lot of the times. A lot of this acceptance of, oh, okay, this is fine. Because life is like that and things are unpredictable. There is a basis of that in the stories that we grew up in. I think many characters in our traditional stories don't have agency. And when a hero has the agency, it is because of something that gods have given the hero as opposed to something the hero has built himself or herself as a protagonist. I think these are problems in our storytelling tradition also which we need to challenge. They have helped maintain structures of caste and class for thousands and thousands of years. And we have worshipped, we actually don't worship gods. I think we worship storytelling structures. We have a love, we worship the circular structure. There is a problem when we worship the circular structure. We believe that things will repeat, that we will go back to where we came from. We believe in the inevitability of destiny. And the reason why the Vedic Aryans could take over this entire country was also by usurping and appropriating other people's mythologies. And then calling everything all of that Hindu. When all of that was not, all of that was different. So I think our storytelling tradition will continue, of course, but it needs to ask very fundamental questions of the structures that we have, the protagonists that we have. I think they have led us to this point as much as this government has. A lot of traditional storytelling has been taken over by television, right wing propaganda. There's one interpretation, as Anu Rupa spoke about it last time, home hierarchy tries to reinterpret the existing perhaps from a different point of view from the female heroes and others. That this is something that needs to change and has to change. There's incredible work ahead of you, not only in this crisis, but also in theater, how to reinvent to do something meaningful. I read this piece by Idua Luy and it was interesting. He talked about shame, the shame of the artist. One should feel like the quote Jean-Paul Sartre who said, what does art mean? If you look at a starving child, you look at a face starving child in front of you, what does art mean then? No, it doesn't mean we have to stop art. It doesn't mean we have to stop doing this. And we have to have an awareness that there is a bigger context as is a global context and that art also has to reflect that an artist should be aware. Every artist in the world should know what you are going through, what you put out there. I could be your place, I chance you could be where I am, but we are connected in that way. And I think what we is right and he says, this is something we have forgotten about and we don't care. And it's a lead art form that takes pride that it's not the right way approach it or not creates meaning. Everybody can understand that we have so much education and that says, no, we have to rethink it and this crisis points it out. So there is no end in sight. In India, it might take a year or two years to come out of this. This is what observers are saying, it's so vast, so big a country. And I'm speechless. I don't know what to do, but I think I would love from the Segal Center and our New York theater community to do something in a symbolic way to help you guys and show that you are not alone and maybe do a little fundraising that towards your organization of theater artists who help to bring oxygen to people, what more as a metaphor of art can one think about what to do to help people survive in this crisis. And what do you feel? What would be most needed now? What helps you to get through this and what help would be welcome? I think there are various layers to this. The first thing is that we, I very strongly believe that this is not a fiscal problem. This pandemic is not a fiscal problem. Like I said, our country is spending hundreds and millions of dollars and crores of rupees on things that are purely symbolic, which are narcissistic, which are symbols of power while denying people vaccines, while denying people. So it's not really a fiscal problem. We are faced with a tyrannical system. And one of the things that I would really, again, this is something I wrote about a few weeks ago, is that what would people do in the world if they were alive during the Holocaust? What would they do if it was not in the past? They would they continue to live their lives as if nothing was happening? Would they bother to verify and check what is going on really? Who would they believe because they would be different versions of the truth even then? The first and the most important thing I think is there needs to be an international pressure on our country, on this government, which is moral and ethical. It is not a fiscal problem. It is an ethical crisis. And we as specially artists community around the world, which often is at the forefront of ethical dilemmas. I think should be very clear in taking this position and examining it for itself. We have so many political prisoners who are academics and writers right now who have not been released, who are there and who are suffering because of this. So this is not to believe this, not to believe me on face value, but also not to believe the farce that this is the democracy, that things are all, this is some kind of natural crisis which has just become amplified because of our inherent social inequalities and so on. This is created, this is the Holocaust. This is nothing short of it. And I am not being, I'm not being dramatic about this in the wrong way. I think I'm being dramatic about it in the way that it sends the message across. So if there is a genuine need, it is that for people to come to that. I think that is longer. It has to be more sustained, but people need to have the courage to do it without feeling this thing about, like what is the problem with modern politics is identity, right? We sit there and we don't want to, a lot of people wouldn't want to step into this because immediately a bunch of Indians will say that, oh, but you are all, you know, you are from America. What do you know? You shouldn't get involved. And this is exactly what happened in the Holocaust before the armies were formed. Nobody was saying anything about it because it was somebody else's problem. This is a moral and ethical low in the world right now. And this is going to affect everybody, everybody. So first thing is that. The second most more immediate thing, which I think, you know, in a way, if you're talking about a fundraiser, I mean, I appreciate that. Then there was a lot of efforts running in terms of rural initiatives also, which can gain by that, which is fine. But I'm personally always, you know, a bit skeptical about fundraising in this way. And the reason is that that becomes very simple. The equation there is that the West funds something here, you know, because the currency difference is greater and so on and so forth, which might be helpful. That's not, I'm not saying it's not helpful, but that's a very simple solution. That's, you know, that's like just, I don't know, that's the appetizer. That's not really the mean. And this kind of thing can absolve us very easily of a crisis when it is not that easy, actually. Yeah, I know we are discussing this since yesterday and I would love to continue to have the conversation with you. And I think the spirit of what you're talk saying, the spirit of what you're saying is infinitely more critical than the fundraising part of it. The thing that you've been saying since our conversation yesterday, Frank, about solidarity and how do artists come together and what are we asking, is really going back to the heart of storytelling. Why do we listen to each other's stories? Why do we empathize with, you know, some character from the seventh century? Is that we feel that we are ready to take those actions which those characters are taking. We understand why they are doing what they do. We are willing to put ourselves in their shoes. And I think this kind of financial help, although might be welcome in an immediate sense, but it doesn't help anybody get into anybody else's shoes. It creates a very comfortable transaction. I don't think we are in that comfortable moment. Yeah, no, I really hear you and it reminds one of Middle Ages, you know, where the Catholic church said, just pay for your sins, you know, and they are forgiven. And they had very clear amount of money, just custom tailored to your status in society, how much you could give or not. It was so you could just pay for it. And it was done. I think that was once a project of the Italian weekly magazine and they pretended to be mafia bosses who killed people or did other crimes, corruption. They went to different churches in Italy to see how much would be the punishment, you know. And more thousands got, it was a little bit less than Alfa Maria's, almost absolved. And they said, you know, God forgives you. And perhaps that fundraising part was also in a way if someone could really help if Amazon could fly in one million oxygen machines that would make a difference. But perhaps we do have 24 hour being at your side, you know, you are up all night in India. Yeah. So the day of reading of material, let's say, you know, symbolically we stay up and reflect and maybe people read the stories, they close lines from Tom Stopper and say what they mean to them. And that we show you, you're not alone. It is a shocking history. And as you say, this is a systematic failure of a state that pretends to be democratic but it is not. And India, of course, is in the big competition. Also with China to see what system will be better and working. So India should look at the truth. As you say, this truth is out there and there's no longer ideological. It's very obvious what went wrong. And they have to be, people should be taken to responsibility and I think theater artists have been on the right side on the fight for justice, the right side of free speech, on the right side of the progress, social progress, justice and of democracy. And I think you are part of that. What you're doing and your friends is incredible and it's easy to talk about it fast to listen. I just think that you have done this one day, two days, one week, one month, five months, six months, night after night to go through, you know, that list of 150, you can just for this night and that this is what you do as a volunteer. It gives a completely different dimension what it means to be an artist in the time of Corona. And you are such an accomplished artist. Your plays are shown around the world. If you come to New York and Playco shows and Kate Leuval finds the money to put them up, by the way, it's shocking how complicated it is in the richest country of the world to put up a play where the playwright is not from the US or from London on the UK. We should be open. The majority of people in New York City, they are not white European. They don't look like me, but we don't see them represented. And there's also a connection to that. Those stories don't interest. They are not important. We once had the great Vijay Tendulkar at the city center, a master passed away. 20 people came. I was so embarrassed at the time. And I think, you know, companies like yours and your work contribute to that. We need to need a global awareness. These are global crisis. They are no longer also just national crisis. And so we feel we have to do something, but maybe that idea to just be with you for one day, for 24 hours, maybe that would work. And if someone wants to give some money for action too, but not put that into the center, that could be a good idea. And if anybody is listening, if people have ideas, maybe how to reach out. We have never done that. But social network can help how to get the word out. And just to raise an awareness and perhaps say no, the international pressure on the government of India to really change things and to take that series and maybe it's a small contribution towards that. Abhishek, so what's happening now when you hang up, you say goodnight to your daughter? Is she still up and your wife? I know you're in your apartment. Will you, what's, and then sit at the same table and you pick up on your iPhone or smartphone? No, my daughter has gone to bed. Yeah. So I'll see her tomorrow morning. After I keep the phone, actually, I'm going to go down around my apartment for a walk with my phone. So I'm going to make all the calls that I have to make for the last 100 hours. What has happened so far and if there are cases that need to be escalated or maybe to find solutions for some things. And also follow up on some equipment that we are supposed to get, which we can potentially send to the hospitals. So yeah, those are the things which are next. Yeah, incredible. And we have Tom Stoppard's play next to you. If anybody listens and knows them, let Tom Stoppard know what that means and perhaps he comes one day to Bangalore and helps to create this in a community center that play, what it means, what do you mean? It might have again Abhishek really saying who are taking the time to talk to us. And I know that you missed you, but I said it's also important to reach out. And we are clueless often. It's our own fault. We do not know enough. And this is one way, in a small way, for a single team to be part of a change. But we need to be the change. We want to see you really be part of it actively. Thanks for finding us always. Yeah, it's always a pleasure to speak. And I will have to ungroup. I hope she will be fine. She will survive this. And we'll talk about it in a minute. Numbers are devastating. They're coming out of India. They are only the official numbers, as we say. They do not really cover the whole devastation it is. As in New York City did, but the governor suppressed numbers. We do not even know the real numbers, what has been there. But people say 90% of what happens doesn't end up in the paper. 90% of what's in the paper doesn't get read. 90% of what's read doesn't get understood. Often 90% is written in the paper. It's a lie. It's not the truth. So we need to find new ways to communicate and to come to an understanding of the understanding and take place. So thank you very, very much. Tomorrow, I mean, I don't even know how to make that transition. Tomorrow, we're going to talk to key artists from Germany, curatorists. You know, the world, the greatest thing about the festival of the world is to take place in the Wuergebiet. And everybody is ready. Companies are ready, but there's a complete lockdown in Germany. Everything has put on a whole catalog, and the program has been published online and in print without dates, without starting time, unimaginable. So the Teate der Welt Festival, as well as the Wuerfest Festival, they are on hold. So we're going to talk to the curators what that means. Also everybody gets paid. I just heard from my colleague Bettina Mills, who works for the German government, who also will take this. They gave $200 million to artists just in that region to support them, to sustain them. It is incredible differences. You know, if we look at the planet Earth closely and what is happening. And then on Friday, we're going to join in with our students here, the graduate center of the Budo, they give out an award to meaningful, important theater artists and academics and think of what have made a contribution. And they're going to honor Diane Taylor from NYU for her groundbreaking work at her historic center institute and so moving all day celebration. So this is the rest of this week. But Abishek, again, thank you. And I feel, I don't know if we will also help us do something about energizing the need to help to change the possible ways some of the others are there. So we hope to stay in contact, find a way that we can, if you will also, if you are a regional people are watching you, are listening to you, are on your side, is all the people are listening to you, and by the way you are really, that will help to ensure their survival. Thank you. We really appreciate your support, Frank. Thank you. Of course. Thank you. And thanks to HowlRound for hosting us. We play and we are in the world of the series to make this happen. You viewers, there's so much out there. So many talks now. When we started last March, we were already the only one globally in us much more. But I think as we heard today, it is important to listen and to understand and also to support with the right people. So thank you all. And I hope we will be able to join us tomorrow and I wish you a good night. And I hope you will help to solve those 115 cases who you are working on just for tonight. And there will be, I guess, another 100 cases on the next day. Thank you so much and goodbye.