New Members on my BookShelf, Iqbal, Barista & other things

The weekend gone by saw me visit the best Barista in India (the one in the Leela in Bangalore) twice, see Iqbal, attend the book release of the 2 volumes of Collected Plays by Girish Karnad and generally try and freak out.

Iqbal was not as good as I had hoped it would be. But the kid sister impresses. Shreyas Talpade as the protagonist is also good. The movie lacks a punch and is perhaps a trifle longer in its narration than one expected. The music by Salim - Suleiman is barely noteworthy.

The book release function was a treat as it was also meant to be a discussion on Karnad's evolution as a playwright. It was good fun being told by a critic that Bangalore's audience is almost as good as Calcutta's (with the disclaimer that she was neither Bengali nor Kannadiga)! Then there was the really fruitful discussion with Karnad on the Indian myth theme which dominates his works albeit with little known legends ex, The Fire & The Rain. Karnad also briefly discussed his life, England, NY etc during the discussion and other people like Brooks who has himself done a version of the Mahabharatha. He ended the session with a quote attributed to Robert Frost on the travails of translation - "Poetry is what gets lost in translation" (sic) since he originally wrote mostly in Kannada and then translated to English.

It was good fun for me since I am not much of a theatre person (I can count the no of plays I have been to on my hands!)
And then there were the celebs in attendance not least of which was Nandan Nilekani of Infy.

All in all, great fun