The Three Fearless Men

in
Here is an interesting story about three men who had a common problem : Fear. 
Fear has the power to get the worst of the best of us. We should throw it out of our lives. Doing that isn't that difficult. This story might tell you how. ....
There was once a wise man who lived on top of a mountain. That place was so high that there no vegetation or wildlife could grow there. There weren’t even any insects there. He used to live there all alone, occasionally climbing down to get his food and water. He would sit there and meditate. People all over the country had heard about him. They thought that he could solve all their problems. But it was difficult for everyone to go high up there, so rarely anyone visited him.
In a village near that mountain, there lived three friends. All of them had a common problem: fear. Fear had conquered their lives. They couldn’t sleep, eat, drink or work with ease. They decided to visit that old wise man up the mountain. Then they started off on their journey to the top of the mountain, or rather journey to answers, answers that would help them to release their fear. They went from village to village, forest to forest and reached the Nadir of the mountain. It was all uphill from there. They began climbing the mountain, fighting off all the obstacles that came in their way. Finally, after 9 days of incessant travel they reached the top of the mountain. The old man was sitting right there, meditating. The three friends went near him and seated themselves. The old man opened his eyes almost instantly, as if he had sensed that they were there. He asked them why they had come and they told them how they had traveled all the way to solve their common problem: Fear. The old man addressed the first friend and asked him, “What do you fear, young man?” The friend replied, “I fear death. I sometimes even lose sleep over it.” “Hmm…... Death. Now I will take out the fear from you. Death will not come for you until you are ready for its embrace. Know that and you will have nothing to fear.”
This calmed his mind and he feared death no longer.
Then the old man addressed the second friend, “What do you fear, young man?”
“I fear my new neighbors. They do strange things. They observe holy days different from mine. And they have too many kids. They listen to weird music that sounds like noise. They are complete strangers and I don’t know them at all. I am afraid of them. What should I do?”
“Ah, strangers” said the wise man. “I will take away this fear. Return to your home and make a cake for your new neighbors. Get toys for their children. Become friends with them. Join them in their songs. You will become familiar with these neighbors and your fear will go away.”
 The second man saw the wisdom in these words and knew that he would no longer fear his new neighbors.
Then the old man turned to the 3rd friend. “What do you fear, young man?”
“O wise man, I fear spiders. At night I get bad dreams in which I see spiders climbing on flesh and biting it. I feel terrified.”
“Ahh……Spiders……
No shit! Why do you think I live way up here???!”
THE END

P.S.- Fear will get the worst of the best of us so I suggest you throw it out of your lives. J

My Jumbled thoughts, A Day After The Workshop...

in
Yesterday was the final day of my theatre workshop (Apna Shakespeare). I performed two scenes. It marked the end of a wonderful experience that we had together. Everyone did really well. We had a lot of fun. But then it was time go home, go home but not return again. It was time to say goodbye to all the fun. I said bye to everyone, hopefully not for the last time and rushed for tennis. Later in the night my blog hit a 1000 pageviews. There couldn’t have been a better way to end such a wonderful day, a wonderful day full of fun, excitement and joy. Life was going great. Everything was going the way it should have. Just perfect.
But now, a strange fear has haunted the brain. A fear, that life won’t be the same anymore. The days of fun are passing by it seems. A fear, that something dark is gonna happen. A fear, that life won’t be the same anymore. “But why? What is wrong?” I ask myself. I will miss all the fun. I will miss the friends that I made. “But that’s no reason to fear” I tell myself. Sure, the workshop has ended. But my relationship with theatre and Shakespeare hasn’t. I can still stay in touch with my friends. We can meet up once in a while. What's’ the big deal? Why the fear? Is it because the schools are gonna start? But so what? I have to find the best in everything and enjoy myself. I just gotta have fun. Life really is too short, if I am not gonna have fun then what's the point. I can’t always think about going to college soon so that I can get out of school. I have to start enjoying in school. Enjoy what I am doing. Have fun during science class. Just start appreciating the wonderful things around me. I know I can do it. It is in my hands. I just gotta have an open mind and a willing heart. I have to let all the negativity pass. The external environment is usually not the cause for depression or stress. It is our inner being that causes us to feel like that. If we can control our emotions, we will always be happy. We should appreciate everything that’s around us. Have fun in whatever we are doing. Enjoy the present. Not worry about the future. Not cry over the past. What's done cannot be undone. Enjoy the journey. Don’t fear about tomorrow. “Success is a journey, not a destination.”
I begin to feel better. I see a ray of hope. The fear has gone. I have become confident again. I should look forward to the good things, but more importantly enjoy the good things that are happening to me right now and appreciate them.

My Experience with Shakespeare and the others

in
It was a Monday morning. I was at my computer searching for some workshops on the net. I didn’t realize at that point of time how valuable that search was gonna be.
I found an interesting workshop which was starting on that day itself, so I wasn’t sure if there would be a seat for me. I called them up, luckily registration was still open. So I went to this school, shishuvan, where the workshop was supposed to start. And I registered myself.
So that’s how this wonderful journey began; an interesting, fun-filled, enlightening journey with through Shakespeare. The first day, I was a little nervous. In an hour the nervousness was gone. It didn’t feel like a classroom at all. It wasn’t like I was listening to Jaimini Pathak, the great director. It was like sitting with a group of friends over tea, discussing Shakespeare. Though it was still a classroom. I was still in a theatre workshop. It was Jaimini Pathak who was teaching us. Yet there was something sort of unusual in this whole thing. The atmosphere was different. He was not teaching us anything but he taught us so much: through the games that we played, the interpretation of the scenes, the times when we were giving feedback.
In the days that followed we played many games. Many of them didn’t seem important in the beginning. In fact, initially I thought some of them were kind of stupid. But as we played along I understood the significance and relevance of each game to theatre. And like Jaimini always said, “theatre is about doing stuff”; as we did play along we understood everything.
 My favorite game of all was the zip-zap game. In this game a group of people stand in a circle and imagine they have a 100 degrees burning hot iron ball. None of them can hold it for long. So they have to keep passing it quickly. Remember it’s not a real ball. Also, when they pass it to the person on their left they have to say “zap” and when on the right they have to say “zip”. And if a person gets a wrong signal, he/she drops the ball. In  this game we are doing multi-tasking: many things at the same time. We are imagining there is a burning hot iron ball, we are passing it to the other person, we are giving the signal to the person next to us, we are listening for the correct signal, we have to drop the ball incase of wrong signal is given and so on. This is basically an alertness game. An actor needs to be alert on stage. He has to listen to what his co-actors are saying, he may have to act as if he is doing some work, he may have to run/walk simultaneously, he has to remember when to speak his lines; all of these at the same time.
There are other cool games too, like the 1-30 game, the status game (in which a person has to change his body posture as his status/rank keeps changing during the scene), the ball-in the air- game. Each of these has its own significance and relevance to theatre.
We explored five different scenes from Shakespeare’s different plays. The first one that we did was a scene from Julius Caesar, in which he is being murdered. After reading and analyzing the scene we realized that this one particular scene could be interpreted in a zillion different ways. That is the beauty of Shakespeare. And that is why he is alive 500 years later. Our final interpretation of that scene was of a mafia gang. In that scene there is a roman empire, a ruler, a senate; none of that was there in our interpretation. In our scene we have the leader of a mafia gang (Caesar), and his gang members who conspire against him and kill him. But, mind you, we didn’t change a single word of what Shakespeare has written. We used the exact same words of dialog, but interpreted the scene and characterized it in our own way.
Then we did a scene from Macbeth. It is the scene in which Lady Macbeth is going crazy after murdering the king and many other people. She is imagining that there is a red spot of blood on her palm, which is the blood of Duncan, the king. She is sleep-walking, trying to get rid of an imaginary spot, she’s shouting on her husband, Macbeth (who isn’t actually there), then she is cursing the king, then she’s thinking about Banquo’s ghost. Through this scene, we learnt about multiple focuses and change of thought in theatre. There are external and internal focuses; we learnt how we show the audience that the focus is changing by changing our body posture. This scene also involves the gentlewoman and the doctor who are observing Lady Macbeth as she sleepwalks and says all that crap about banquo and Duncanand Macbeth.
Then there was the king Lear scene which I performed. It is scene in which he is really angry and on the verge of madness, this is because he has been thrown out of his own kingdom by his own daughters. There’s a storm going on and he is taking out his anger on the elements of nature. For this scene we had split into 3 groups. The other two groups (apart from mine) got some positive feedback and some negative feedback but when I performed everyone spontaneously said “awesome” at the same time (Excuse me if I am bragging here). That was a lot of encouragement and I felt really proud of myself, at least at that moment. This scene basically involves a high level of energy and anger. I just had to feel angry and go and shout. But what made it even more attractive apart from my dialog delivery, were the special effects that the other kids had done from behind. For getting the “stormy” effect one kid was switching on and off the lights (lightning), someone was running with a stole hovering in the air to get the “wind” effect, someone was making a “wind” sound”, someone was producing the rain sound from some clay balls, someone was producing thunder by banging the door in a particular manner. All these special effects really enhanced the performance and made the audience feel and see a storm. The best part was that we did all this without any “technician” or “special effects person”; we didn’t even get anything from outside, we just used whatever we had in our room.
We did another scene from Macbeth, which is the dagger scene. Macbeth is going to kill Duncan, the king. He is hallucinating. He sees a dagger which is not actually there. He starts talking to the dagger and then talks to himself and calms down. It is soliloquy. It is perhaps the most difficult to scene to understand out of all the scenes that we did. The language is intense. And there is a continual change in focus between external and internal, sometimes there is both external and internal. In that way, it is a very complex scene. Nevertheless, one of us was able to perform it. And she did a great job.
There was another scene that we did, but could not perform due to the time constraint. It was from “A midsummer night’s dream” a comedy. This is a scene that made me realize that Shakespeare can be hilarious if you open your eyes and let them explore. This scene is truly hilarious. It also teaches a lot about theatre indirectly. In the scene, a group of ordinary workers perform a play in front of their king, since they are not trained actors they do a really bad performance. There is a play inside a play. We had some great laughs while analyzing this scene. I also came to realize: Shakespeare can be fun; by the way this is not a pun. (hey, that rhymed!)
This was, in a nutshell, what we did in this awesome workshop.
Honestly, before this workshop, my attitude to Shakespeare was not a very welcoming one. The thought of Shakespeare would remind me of his uncanny, old language (thou…Thy…doth…thee...etc). But now that has suddenly changed. Because of this workshop I feel I have become capable of appreciating Shakespeare. It involved some work, some play and gradual widening of the intellectual horizon, especially as far as language is concerned.
Today’s performance marked the end of this beautiful experience we had together. I will miss those afternoons with Jaimini. I will miss those games, I will miss the friends that I made. Sure, tomorrow will be just the same. The sun will rise, the clock will hit two, but I won’t have the “Apna Shakespeare” group anymore.

An Interesting Story...

in
There was once a poor tailor, mullah nasirudin. He was able to satisfy his basic needs but he wanted to be rich. He had a habit of taking lottery tickets. Everyday he used to buy a lottery ticket which would cost him 10 rupees. After a year of incessantly buying the lottery tickets, one day the postman came to his house. He said,” Congratulations, you’ve won the lottery!” “Really?!!” “Yes…you are going to get five crore rupees (around 1 million USD)”. Mullah was very happy. He got his money, and then he shut down his tailoring shop and threw away the keys. He started doing all that he had thought he would have done when he became rich. He started drinking every night, gambling, eating out everyday, he bragged to his friends about his wealth.  And gradually he started drifting away from his friends and family. They began disliking him. After a year he realized that he had finished all his money, his health had deteriorated and he had lost his wife and kids. He was regretting everything he had done in that year. He was broke, without family and friends and emotionally shattered. He got his shop’s keys made again. He reopened the shop. And after a year he was back to his good old days. But still he did buy lottery tickets everyday, it was his habit. After a year, the postman again came to his house. “Hey! You came again to my house?! This time I haven’t won the lottery, right?”
“Yes, you have!” “Oh no! Now I will want to do that drinking and gambling and all that stuff again!”
The story ends here
The lesson here is: “we should always know where we are going, but more importantly, we should always remember where we came from”
Know matter how much money, wealth, fame we accumulate, it is important to stay grounded and remember where you came from.