I guess the spirit of blogging (writing these notes) has been at the lowest for the past 10 days. I was only doing two things after-work on weekdays, one: Prepare for GMAT, two: Worry about GMAT! It sounds ridiculous, but the more I read it, the more I feel I suck!
I was reading an article online yesterday that put two words at the very top of the list of things to concentrate on during GMAT preparation, it is “Don’t Worry”. Almost everyone who has taken it insists not to worry about low scores and unsolvable questions. I am feeling much better.
This past monday, we had been to Bombay Dreams, the broadway musical show, with music by world famous and our own AR Rahman. It was the very first show, a preview for the upcoming season. We were totally taken by surprise to see the turn out, when we reached the theater in Times Square. I didn’t think so many people cared about an Indian musical to show up on the first day. Even more interesting was, there weren’t too many Indians in the crowd. While standing in the line to collect the tickets, we overheard two guys behind us, talking in Tamil. They were talking about some guy who just left them to pick up ARR. They might have thought we wouldn’t know Tamil or ARR, but I knew both. Harini and I were just nodding at the each other as if we meant ‘Woh Woh! They know ARR’…I was already feeling like a celebrity(or may be they meant some dumb ass A. Raja Ramamurthy who was lost finding Times Square!). Inside, It was totally packed, at least from where I was sitting I couldn’t see any empty seats, though I wasn’t sure about the lower level. We were on the upper level, the cheapest of the seats, but even that was $60. The show was just resplendent(very much worth the low preview price). The cast, again surprising to me, was mostly American Indians(so called ABCDs, apologize if it hurts anyone) around New York area. I didnt know the performers would sing the songs on the stage in their voice. I was little skeptical at the beginning, trying to search for the “real” singers around the stage area, but I soon realized the people on stage were indeed singing, with the music played by the orchestra right in front of the stage. The Vocals were definitely not as good as the original singers in the movie, but were close enough and melodious indeed. The lead male and female cast, were apparently professional musicians, with a bunch of US stage performances to their credit. The guy is an expert Sax player trained with the famous Kadri Gopalnath and the young lady seems to be an accomplished pianist, both incidentally from pittsburgh, whose parents knew each other thru their visits to Indian Temple. In fact, All the actors did a wonderful job with flawless dialogues and singing. Sriram Ganesh, who played a half (male & female) was unbelievable. His body movements were close to natural(After the show I couldnt believe when I saw him walking out from the backstage in a slick jean and winter cap). Ayesha Dharker was outright sexy and gorgeous in those few scenes that she made a guest appearence. It was bit confusing as to who was actually Ayesha(and I was specifically confused as to who actually was gorgeous!) as another look-alike played the same character in rest of the scenes. The English accent was fittingly more Indian, perhaps not that difficult for a crew with Indian origin, but made some laughter come long after us. Rahman’s music added the cozy ambience to the sentiments in the story and couple of solo pathos, though sounded more like in Opera, drew roaring applause. It can be debated if Rahman’s music is truly Indian in its purest sense, but nobody but him could feed the newyorker’s music appetite with a collage of Indian rhythms with a subtle western touch. The song lyrics were, as in most of Rahman music, unrecognizable. Apparently for reasons I can only guess, the guy who wrote the English lyric for songs chose to stay off from ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ and the song was left with original Hindi script. Though the theme was the usual Indian movie story line, the screen play(or should I say sceneplay?) was well arranged and spiced with catch songs that it didnt feel like dragging at any point. The choreography was excellent more so because one of the two dance directors is Farah Khan. The crew (assembled just for this show) performed well in synchrony as if they were professional troupe from Bollywood. Two sardrajis surrounded with Indian percussion instruments were stationed on either side of the stage, with blue lights underneath them, to accompany the orchestra with real base effects. I was surprised their timing with the scenes were perfect, without the conductor, who was with the orchestra below the stage. The stage sets for all the scenes were breathtaking. The water fountain for the wet sari song(that was must i say!) just blew me away and Whoever it was, most likely a high profile new york stage designer, did an awesome job of blending the scenes from clumsy slum to the gorgeous Bombay night skyline. On one of the scenes, I was feeling bad that they spent a million dollars to recreate a typical Mumbai slum (I could write another blog on this thought!). The make-up and constuem design didnt grab my attention until the very last scene, when the marriage ceremony takes place. The main characters were in a fabulous, bright, colorful and traditional Indian attire just stood out catching everyone’s awe. The upclass new york audience enjoyed it thoroughly. An old African American lady in the front row was totally into it that she started dancing and screaming towards the last few songs. Harini who was sitting right behind her seat was happy noticing this lady’s excitement and totally ignored the fact that the lady was too big and blocking Harini’s view of the stage. In all, It was a perfect team work, as has always been in most broadway shows. Both of us were screaming at our highest pitch, with everyone else when the whole crew came on stage to give their salutations. Before the show, I was more excited about Rehman than the show itself, but I soon realized his music wasnt everything in the show. The show didnt miss any chance to compare New York City with Bombay, but its probably New York and Hollywood combined and much more. I came out feeling proud about everything from bombay to bollywoord to Indian music. It was an enjoyable evening and well worth the time.
Until next…
