Sultana Daku - Gulab Nautanki Company, Kanpur

IHC's Bards and Minstrels Of India Series presented - Sultana Daku, a comic account of a dacoit on a mission by the Gulab Nautanki Company from Kanpur

The Gulab Nautanki Company was founded by Gulab Bai: The Queen of Nautanki Theatre. Nautanki is a folk theatre tradition peculiar to the North India region. Nautanki can be considered a precursor to Bollywood as entertainment for the masses. This particular production of Sultana Daku was directed by Madhu Agrawal, daughter of the legendary Gulab Bai.


The tale itself is quite straightforward - Sultana Daku is a desi Robin Hood who shares the wealth he steals from Zamindars with the poor. This also buys him their loyalty and makes it impossible for the Indian police to catch him. Mr Young a British detective/inspector visits the area charged with capturing Sultana Daku which leads to a cops & robber (chor police) chase.

For me this was my first experience watching Nautanki and I was quite fascinated for the most part. My inlaws who were with us have watched more performances and my Father-in-law had the privilege of watching Gulab Bai herself. According to him, in Nautanki the whole performance is sung and there is very little dialogue. This particular performance was split 50-50 across songs and dialogues.

When it started off, there was high energy, but this began to flag half way through. With hardly 45 people in the audience (unexpected rains and not enough promotion) it must have been a dampener for a cast used to larger audiences and continuous audience response.


The scene where one of the dakus on guard relays messages between a mysterious woman and Sultana Daku could have flowed better with a split stage rather than entire sets of characters walking on and off to change the scene setting every 3 minutes.

The script could have done with a little tighter editing and the episode with the zamindar and his daughter could have been avoided completely without losing track of the story.

Some performances were brilliant - The actor who played Sultana Daku for one  and the person who played the bumbling policeman - was an absolute stand out.

There were some really funny dialogues and the script itself was quite amusing and entertaining. Just a little tighter editing would make this play completely outstanding.


The accompanying orchestra

The daku hideaway

Sultana Daku and his girlfriend - played by Madhu Agrawal

The guy who played the chaddi clad policeman was excellent!

Mr Young appears on the scene to begin his machinations against Sultana Daku

Sultana Daku and the Zamindars daughter

It would be great if IHC could give more coverage to these events before they happen, (poster on the notice board etc) so mpre people can attend and encourage our fast dying folk forms.

The Butcher of Quietly - Actor Factor - Sunit Sinha

The invitation for the Butcher of Quietly introduced the play as A woman’s skull buried deep down in the dark pages of history. A secret investigation leads us to the first ever murder committed in cold blood in a jungle kingdom called Quietly. The play reflects on our current politics of indifference and power based on total ignorance of the social good. The Butcher of Quietly is at times poetic, at times rip-roaring funny, mostly theatrical, and quietly dark.

Sounded promising and since this was at 7pm at IHC and promised to be 75 mins long, I bought the tickets as I felt we had enough time to reach NSD to catch the 9:30pm show of Little Big Tragedies.

Most theater plays start on time or a maximum of a 5-10 minute delay in extenuating circumstances. We reached the Stein auditorium by 6:45pm. But we were all requested to continue to stand outside (guard politely declined permission for anyone to enter the auditorium premises) until "The Womb Ensemble" finished playing.

"The Womb Ensemble" is a noble initiative to bring pure sounds from around the planet on one stage and the musicians Shashwat Srivastava, Arnab Das and Vaishali Chakravarthy were good. But they kept playing until 7:10pm and the audience was forced to stand outside and shiver in the cold waiting for them to finish, so we could finally enter the Stein auditorium.

The play finally started at 7:25pm and by 7:35pm sections of the audience had already started walking out.

We stayed on hoping things would improve, but the script was weak, what were intended as jokes (urine and crap related with the jester sniffing butts and crotches) were crass and fell absolutely flat, the music was piercing and painful during what were supposed to be crescendos. Varoon Anand as Soola was the only decent performer, but even he couldn't do much with the dialogue that he was given.

Each dimming of lights, saw more people rushing to the exits and by the time 30 minutes had passed, half the audience had walked out and unfortunately we felt compelled to do the same. This is the first time, we have ever walked out halfway through a theater production.

This is a play that should never have been made.

First The Leela Tapes which was average and now this. I don't think we will be watching their productions anymore.

The Leela Tapes

Watched The Leela Tapes this evening.

Performances were average, but the script was weak

Won't ruin it for you if you are planning to watch it. So spoilers tomorrow :)

Screening of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

I was selected to attend a Swedish Crime Fiction writing workshop with celebrated author Hakan Nesser on the 19th of April. Unfortunately, because of the Volcanic Ash eruption, he was unable to arrive in India and had to cancel all his lectures/workshops in Delhi and Bombay.

The Swedish Embassy quickly put together a revised schedule for the 2 days, but hearing a Delhi Univ Prof talk what she thinks an author is trying to say, is not the same as the author telling you about his thought process. While I'm sure the substitute speakers were very good, given my time constraints, I decided to utilise my time on more pressing concerns. The only exception was the screening of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo This was the Swedish version (obviously, the Hollywood version isn't due out until 2012 and they still haven't finalised a credible heroine for the role of Lisbeth) by director Niels Arden Oplev

I am a huge fan of the books and couldn't wait for part 3 (Girl who kicked the Hornets Nest) to come out. It was a huge relief that Larsson had a chance to detail Lisbeth's past in this book. It went a long way in explaining how her character came to be so complicated.

All 3 of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy (they were meant to be 10 in the series, he unfortunately died after writing the 3rd book and they were all published posthomously) were made into movies last year in Sweden.


The audience at the Habitat Center were privileged to watch the first in the series, on a big screen (well medium sized, but still better than the largest tv)

Anyone who has read the book, will know that the story is dark and violent, so it came as no suprise that the overall setting of the movie was dark right down to the lighting. The only scenes that were lighter, were flashbacks from Blomkvist's childhood memories of Harriet Vanger.

This was a rare occassion when I genuinely felt that the movie measured up to the book. There have been a few minor changes to the story line with a few details from parts 2 and 3 being slipped into Part 1, but they are so minor, that no one can really object to them as they only help build the story, rather than detract from it.

It will be interesting to compare this version with the Hollywood version, when it comes out. The violence in this movie is measured, its more about what isn't shown, than what is shown. Lisbeth washing her mouth out with soap, the trembling of her hands as she lights her cigarette. The lighting, the pace, everything combined together wonderfully and brought the book to life.

The casting is excellent. Noomi Rapace has done such a wonderful job of slipping into the character of Lisbeth Salander, that there are supposedly talks of her acting in the US version too. It will be difficult for any other actress to slip into her shoes for this role. It's like she was born to play this part.

Lisbeth's first meeting with Nils Bjurman is nothing short of chilling. Inspite of knowing what would happen next, the whole scene sent shivers up my spine. Lisbeth could have been the inspiration for Elin Woods in the golf club scene.

The movie doesn't show anything dramatically obscene, but there is no mistaking what is going on. Menace is writ in each of those frames. I noticed, that female nudity was shown only when it was by her choice and never when it was against her will. Small details that added to her character.

The casting as I said before is excellent. The acting and direction brilliant. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who loved the books and anyone who loves movies, even if you haven't read the books (yet)