The Kala Ghoda Art Festival 2010 kicked off to a rollicking start on Saturday. After sampling a bit of literature, visual art, music and food through the day, I finally settled on theatre for my final course in the night. The play ‘Dance Like A Man’ was being staged at Horniman Circle at 7.30 p.m.

I’ve attended music events at Horniman Circle before, most of them Kala Ghoda Art Festival events. It is an unconventional setting, a stage in the center of a park. But it works really well, more so for a play than a music concert given the intimate interaction that is possible between audience and performer.

A bench-painting event had been conducted earlier in the evening owing to which all the seating en route to the stage bore ‘Wet Paint’ signboards. It was too dark for photography and I was eager to get to the stage before the play started but I passed some interesting art on the way. (I hope one of us will be able to post photographs soon).

Just as well, I suppose, since we got there just about five minutes before the play began. All the seats were taken so we sat down on the grass and that’s how we watched the entire play. Normally, I would not consider squatting on the ground for a play but like I said, this was an unconventional setting. The stage and seating area were edged on one side by ‘Lotuses of the Floating World’, an art installation by Sabrina Mascarehas. As I approached the area, I first thought they were diyas floating in a pool. But I soon realized that there is no water body inside the park and the temperature was the uncharacteristic cool of February rather than the heat of a hundred lamps. The installation is actually…(Click here to read the whole post)

The festival is on till Valentine’s day :), 14th February 2010

Download the Schedule here.

http://www.kalaghodaassociation.com/kgaf10.pdf

What you can expect : Kids playing with Colour, Bench & Umbrella Painting, Gallery and pavement shows,exhibitions, literary events, music concerts, dance performances, a food fiesta, and a buzzing street festival bring in audiences and participants from all over the city & world.

After seeing all this you should drink at Gokul,Cafe Royal, Mondegar or Leopold and eat at Bade Miya’s :)

Sharing some colors and images shot at the 1st day of the Kalaghoda Festival.

The missing Kala Ghoda is back, though minus the jockey :)

Save water!!

Wish our Khallipeeli’s were as colorful as this.

The Bombay Dabbawalah Cycle

Save Water

Don’t mess with Nature

Heal the World

Bench Painting @ Horniman Circle

The Great Indian Mango Trick

Nice paintings for Sale

No its not Iron Man.

Ragpicker admiring Photos.

Banian Art!!
For Larger size images click on the Pic and Also do feel free check out & comment on  The Flickr Set for more pics

Happy Sapling Family, originally uploaded by Bombaylives.

Location : Parleshwar Temple – Vile Parle

The Sapling Project done yesterday,

Distributed saplings at Marine Drive – Shivaji Park – Vile Parle (e) – Andheri (e) – Goregaon (e) – Kandivli (w) – Borivli (w)

Sharing 294 Hi-Res pics,, Do feel free to check out, share and download.

http://is.gd/77ATM

Mumbai -- Sapling VAN across City starting from Churchgate to Borivali

9:00 AM — Opp Pizzeria Restaurant, Marine Drive

9:45 AM — Outside H2O, near Girgaum Chowpatty

10:45 AM — Opp. Barista, Cadel Rd., Shivaji Park, Dadar(w)

11:45 AM — Parleshwar Temple, Vile parle (e)

12:45 PM — Wellington Business Park, Andheri Kurla Road, Marol, Andheri (e)

2:00 PM — 24/A/702, Bimbisar Nagar, Goregaon (e)

3:00 PM — Mahavir Nagar, Opp. D’Mart Kandivali (w)

4:00 PM — Kinny’s Corner, IC colony, Borivali (w)

Bangalore — 11:00 AM At Lalbagh Botanical Garden

Chennai — 10.30 AM At Dr.MGR School for the Speech and Hearing Impaired

11/13, Mgr Garden, Durgabai Deshmukh Road, Ramavaram

School phone numbers: 22490629, 22490562, 26150313

Do sign up to participate

http://thesaplingproject.com/

See ya at the Sapling Project :)

Sapling Project Wall Paper, originally uploaded by Bombaylives.

Click on the Image to download the Wall Paper make your Desktop Wall.

Also please share it with your friends and colleagues :)

See ya tomorrow at The Sapling Project.

Movies & Music with Bombay Elektrik Projekt

I was at Café Goa this Wednesday (20^th January) for the UTV World Movies & Music event organized by the Bombay Elektrik Projekt. As it was, the trek to Bandra is a formidable thought (and I stop short of saying ‘unrealistic’ since that’s what’s I call travelling to town). In typical Mumbaiker fashion, I aim for efficient usage of time so I clubbed this with another event – meeting a longtime friend/reader of my blog. We decided to skip the movie in favor of coffee & chat and come back for the music performance.

Gillian Grassie

The opening act was by Gillian Grassie, a harpist from Philadelphia on a year-long tour of several countries including India to study the relationships between new technologies and independent music scenes around the globe. I managed to catch only the last few minutes of her act and what little I saw was quite mesmerizing. The harp carries associations of white-clad angels and an otherworldy, semi-religious feel of music. Gillian’s music was none of those things but managed to bring a sweet freshness to instantly hummable tunes. Her fingers seemed to be feather-touching, almost dancing on the strings of the harp (which was almost as big as her..and here I thought the harp would be a much smaller instrument). The harp provided only a very soft background to the songs which primarily rode on her voice. It’s quite impressive to create a song purely from one’s voice, virtually unassisted by the grandeur of an orchestra and Gillian pulled it off, holding the audience spellbound. I do wish I had made it to the venue earlier to catch her entire performance.

The headlining act of the evening was Dischordian, a venture by Garreth D’mello (also of Split). Dischordian is described as ‘an attempt to move away from the wall of sound and aggression and testosterone that makes up most rock music, an attempt to strip music down to its basics’.

Dischordian at Cafe Goa: 20 Jan 2010

Garreth was accompanied by Howard Pereira on his guitar and Agnnelo Picardo (Aggie), the percussionist/trumpeteer. The last began the evening, hugging a trumpet close to his chest while listening to Garreth and Howard spark up the show. I’ve never seen a trumpet that close. The advantage of a place like Café Goa is the proximity it provides between the performer and the audience. So I kept my eyes trained on the trumpet, an instrument I only have vague associations with, of loudness and some sort of stiff-necked wedding band. Thus it came as a pleasant surprise when the trumpet actually made its entry into the music at ‘The Old Whore’. Aggie led it in with the kind of regal dignity and grandeur that you would associate with a quiet, well-built black man who surprises you with jazz. Yes, jazz was unmistakably what I heard in Dischoridian’s sound everytime the trumpet was a part of it.

Garreth himself has tremendous presence on stage. His face is boyish and manner as laidback and easygoing as his Goan roots. But when he begins to sing, those notions melt away as you are carried off in the power and forceful magnetism of his rich voice. It’s a deep voice, the kind that sounds mature and all-knowing with wisdom that comes from having experienced excitement and grown past it. Possibly because of the selection of songs and the jazz feel that I described earlier, it also felt like a strong but gently caress, the sort that can crush but knows how not to.

I’ve heard ‘The Old Whore’ before, live as well as a recording. It has a classic country-western feel to it. Some artists sound much better in person than on the polished finish of a recording and Dischordian is certainly in this category.

‘Scourge of Love‘ revved up the tempo and suddenly the audience was drawn into the performance, before we even knew it, thumping our feet and trying to sing along (or hum along at least). This is when Swati who had accompanied me clapped her hands and called Garreth, India’s answer to Kurt Cobain (which elicited a weak smile from Garreth when I told him later, followed by a hasty retreat).

The piece de resistance of Dischordian’s performance has to have been ‘Bucket of Blood’ (I actually thought that was ‘Bucket of Love’ when I tweeted about it);-). It’s a racy, foot-thumping number, all adrenalin and blood-rushes. I’ve not seen Garreth in his former avatar but several people I know have given me a pretty graphic account of his rockstar days as a tee-shirt ripping stage-stud, girls screaming et al. His shirt stayed firmly on and he remained seated but this song was a more than adequate hint to those days. And yes, there were a lot of people screaming, even in that tiny room in the café, men and women alike.

Agnnelo Picardo of Dischordian

The trumpet was replaced by a sort of bongo (hand-drum?) for the same song and served to showcase Aggie’s talent. All artists are trying to communicate something in their own ways and media. Musicians face that challenge by appealing to something whose response can’t often be quantified in words – melody, beat, the combination of the various sounds made by wind and strings and voice. Some instruments like the guitar and indeed, the human voice make that connection a lot more easily but it is a greater challenge to connect with the audience with the more distant (but grand) percussion. Aggie displays as much presence as Garreth does, in a different way. As the lead guitarist and vocalist, albeit with his own brand of showmanship, Garreth is the flash-and-dazzle of Dischordian but Aggie makes his presence felt subtly and yet, noticeably. It’s an impressive talent and makes for a great performance.

Garreth solo

Garreth performed solo on ‘One of these days‘ and ‘How I wait”, which while melodious, didn’t quite send me into rapture like the earlier songs. They could just be the kind of songs you’d prefer to listen to within the intimacy of headphones and in solitude rather than with a big group of people. Fortunately Howard and Aggie returned to perform ‘She lied to me’ and a cover version of Jello Biafra’s ‘Are you drinking with me, Jesus?‘ which really had the crowd howling in appreciation. The other songs they performed were ‘Same old conversations‘, ‘Your Right Heel‘ and ‘Baby, Maybe’.

The performance closed a few minutes after midnight.

The neighbors are complaining. You wouldn’t think an acoustic band could make much noise. But apparently we can.

was Garreth’s wry observation as the audience begged him for an encore.

In sum, the evening was well-spent and totally worth the trip to Bandra. The second half was good but I think the first few songs took away the show. Dischordian is great, live in action and I’ll gladly make the trek again to hear them. I would also like to hear their recorded songs to be able to compare it to their live performance. But my feeling is their real talent lies in the tangible connection they are able to make with their audience when they are right in front of them.

The BEP Movies n Music event at Cafe Goa

* Dischordian is on Facebook and Twitter. The Bombay Elektrik Projekt is on Facebook. My tweets of the event are hashtagged #bep.

I went for the Dharavi Tour on Saturday with Dhruti and her colleague – The new trend in  reality tours compared to the usual Bombay Darshan Tours.

The Dharavi Tour has become quite a hit after Lonely Planet recommended it and also thanks to Slumdog Millionaire.

I was asked by the Tour Guide Sunil, why as an Indian and Bombayite, I was interested  in the Tour,  I had a few reasons :-

a) I wanted to check the 665 million US$ Small Scale Industry.

b) I wanted to check if the tour guys were portraying Bombay and India correctly or we they marketing poverty and exploiting the foreigners.

c) My Dad had lived in Dharavi for a while when he came to Bombay 40 years ago.

Something I liked and disliked was that Photography was not allowed, I was carrying my Camera and couldn’t click, but then I respect the tour guides view that Photography would lead to Poverty Marketing and all other kinds of exploitation and issues.

Industries and Stuff  shown on the Dharavi Tour

• Plastic Recycling Unit
• Kumbharwada : Clay pots & Pottery units
• Embroidery and Tailoring Unit.
• Bakery
• Leather Tanning
• Pappad making
• Soap making Unit
• NGO School

The tour is safe and people are very friendly, but one needs to watch out for narrow alleys, pipes and wires hitting your head, open gutters and at times shit.

The sad part is that even though people of all religions work together they live separately in their own Ghetto’s (Muslim area, Tamil area, Kumbharwada – Gujarati Area, Maharashtrian area etc), can’t blame them the ghosts of ‘92 riots might be still haunting them.

Dharavi Tour Group Read more

Shawarma @ Carter Rd, originally uploaded by Bombaylives.

One of the better Shawarma Stalls in Bombay.

Location: Carter Rd, Bandra

Dhobi Ghat : Bombay washes here!!, originally uploaded by Bombaylives.

Location: Near Saat Rasta, Mahalakshmi.

I’m just home from an amazing weekend. Actually it was only one evening but it packed in so much that it feels like I had an entire weekend.

My friend Reena got married yesterday to her longtime sweetheart Melroy. I met Reena through Adi and bonded with her at The Wall Project. If you visit the Tulsi Pipe Road stretch just to the left of Matunga Road station, you’ll still see our works of art.

Reena’s is the first one after the tree and is very much like her…pretty, graceful and romantic. It says,

You are one big fairytale waiting to happen.

Spitphyre's Fairytale

Read more

It feels like in this time-starved city, it’s hard enough to fit in one interest (I have two) along with a career, family life, social life and love life. One prioritizes so I picked books & writing while a lot of other wonderful things got left behind. But every now and then you run into one of them and it’s like meeting someone you believed you could be in love with if there had only been the time.

I have never really been a part of the music scene barring the occasional Roger Waters or Mark Knopfler concert (okay, okay Bryan Adams as well…sheesh..). But that’s stuff that EVERYONE in this city does, it’s practically a ritual. But to truly enjoy something, you need to be able to experience as many variations of its existence as possible and not just the well-marketed ones. So I jumped at the opportunity to check into the music scene.

I was at Zenzi Mills last night with Swati and Sumanth for a gig by three bands – The Mavyns, Sridhar/Thayil and Medusa. I was there courtesy my friend AmZ who plays bass with Sridhar/Thayil. The event was to launch Stupid Stupid Stupid, an album compilation of various young and upcoming Indian musicians including the three bands that played. I got there too late for The Mavyns and didn’t catch much of Medusa so I’ll focus on Sridhar/Thayil since I was there through their entire performance.

Amit Ahuja (AmZ)

Read more

This is Kenneth Lobo. Apart from the fact that he organizes a really cool event or two each week (Movies! Poetry! Music!) as a part of The Bombay Elektrik Projekt, he looks just like a regular guy.

The Bombay Elektrik Projekt dude

Ah, but appearances can be deceptive. Does this look like the face of a man who waltzes off to Ladakh on a whim? And breaks a toe while making tea? Ah, again. What’s he hiding? Turn around Ken, and let’s look at your back instead. Read more

Sharing some snapshots of Christmas from my area ( I.C Colony, Borivali, Bombay)

Mary & Chapel Read more