Angry Young Men and Old Fools.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I thank Akshara for having this note read out verbatim on my behalf. I was ready to turn back half way from Honnavar to do this myself, as I consider Ninasam too important a part of my life to have left it with the feelings I had yesterday.

I will start by saying this. I found every moment of the feedback session to be useful in the extreme – as I said to Akshara, “this session was a real life experience for me”.
On my part, I had much to share about discoveries I made in the process of directing Othello - discoveries which pertain directly to the topic of this year’s Culture Course. But I didn’t. Actually, what happened turned out for the best, as it gave me a much greater clarity on the inter-generational problems I faced when directing Othello.

I was shocked into silence by the last comments made about my production, and the perfect timing in the delivery of those comments - namely about my exploiting the Ninasam Actor. When my moment came to speak, I was robbed of any ability to articulate myself. This well timed low-blow is an old rhetorical trick used in debating and debilitating your opponent - and it was deployed with devastating effectiveness. I know it well, I have used it myself.

The result of this, was that it closed off any desire for me to respond at all, my anger and rage would not have allowed for any kind of dialogue, and I would have engaged in a knee-jerk response and come off as the angry young man who simply says, "Old fool, what do you know?"

AND THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE TRAGEDY. The young man would be too angry to see that the old man was not a fool, and the old man would just dismiss him as being an angry young man not willing to listen to any sense at all. It does neither generation any good - and it definitely stands in the way of a conference centered on the young generation.

Now, I can exercise my right of final response as the director, coolly, calmly and in the sprit it is intended, to open rather than close dialogue.

Just so you know, staying calm and considered in such times is something my Grandfather taught me, so it’s not as if we don't listen to our elders. The question I ask here, is do our elders listen to us?

I invoke my grandfather as it gives me my first example of the dynamics at work when trying to understand younger generations. I am always touched and honored at the consistent allusions to my relationship to my grandfather, and I thank Aithal’s and Atul's when they bring up the connection. It helps me keep his memory alive, and I am truly grateful for that.

As is Gopi Deshpande, when people recollect who his father is (A famous Ninasam actor in his own right). But consider this. In the well- intentioned act of relating to us through our fathers and grandfathers, do you not lose sight of seeing Gopi for who he is? Or me, Jehan for who I am? How do you get to know about us for whom we are? Rather than whom our fathers were?
I argue that the act of looking at us through the connection of our lineage is a symptom of constantly trying to relate to us on terms and connections that you are comfortable with, rather than trying to relate to us as who we are.

But we’re all a generation above the next one, as Gopi and I found out. This is what I wanted to share with you yesterday.

Both of us had a major problem throughout our process with the Tirugata actors. All theatre requires a group-cohesion and an ensemble sensibility. We constantly felt like we were struggling to inculcate this into the actors – we struggled with our need for them to ‘get it’. To understand us and our point of view.

They just didn’t seem to hold our values on how to build this unity. My biggest anxiety was centered on this inability of mine to communicate this rudimentary sense of what I rightly or wrongly call tandatva - to the group.

When I shared this anxiety with others at Ninasam, they would tell me about the changing dynamics of the Tirugata troupe across generations. About how it was becoming more and more challenging to work with them. What did we not understand about them? Why could I not get through to this new generation of actors?

Yesterday’s session answered this for me. I’ll tell you how. After hearing the positions of the generations above me – I realized with much greater certainty that I indeed knew what I was doing.

This meant that the Tirugata actors, a generation below me ALSO knew what they were doing. It was never for Gopi or me to try to understand anything about what makes them tick, as individuals or as a group.

Ultimately, in-spite of our struggles, group cohesion did exist amongst the troupe … and that was clear in the actors work on both plays. What I realized yesterday, was that the New Generation’s ensemble dynamic is driven by entirely different values from the ones that drove mine or Gopi's. Their dynamic is theirs and theirs alone, and for all intents and purposes, it works, even if it remains opaque to us. In fact they would get irritated when we tried to suggest how they improve group dynamic.

I carried this unnecessary anxiety for 30 days during rehearsals, and it was a relief yesterday to realize it wasn't mine to carry in the first place. I left the feedback session, called a meeting with the actors and told them, you know, Gopi and I still don't understand you guys entirely - this new generation of yours - and we probably never will. But you seem to have become a group in-spite of us not being able to get you there. They looked at me, "we know". I felt like the Old Fool.
Which brings me to my last and briefest point, about the production itself, of Othello, and OUR version of the play.

I say this in all humility, and in the honest desire that you just use this example to reflect upon the positions from which you speak when talking to other generations.

You effectively and eloquently covered everything there is to say about Shakespeare, what his intentions were, and the many themes that Othello stood for, other authoritative productions that you have seen, and what you expected that our production of Othello should have attempted to tackle.

But I ask, did you give yourselves a chance to see and look at what OUR production of Othello was TRYING to be? What WE, me and this next generation of Tirugata actors were trying to say? What story we intended to tell?

This production was formed from the actor’s responses to the text. From what about this story captured their imagination, and what they felt about the story that motivated them to want to share it with an audience.

In our case Iago was the prime fascination, and his unrelenting and unrepentant nature (not to forget the fact that this is the only Shakespeare play in which the villian has more lines than the title character). Thus, "Iago" not "Othello" was what WE wanted to communicate, and I thank you for corroborating our position by stating equivocally and across the board that this play was not Othello.

And here’s the rub. I cannot help but compare what you were doing to Shudra-Tapasvi . Your invocation of the scripture that *is* Shakespeare, and what Othello should be about, was really not so different from the Brahmin telling Ram how the scriptures are the main authority on who should and should not do Tapasya. You run the danger of dismissing us and our authority to invoke our own interpretations.

You deny us our voices; you end up with us denying yours.

We must speak to each other, and we must do while taking into consideration the subjectivity of our own positions, and the need for flexibility in our own points of view.

For the younger generations this is important, so as to learn from our elders and to build upon that knowledge and better ourselves, we have a lot to gain from them…

and for, the older generation…

… it’s so that they do not run the risk of being forsaken by the generations below, abandoned in the wilderness, with nothing but a fool for company.

Sabers of Paradise.

All I know is that I finally got to see Fuji. After seven weeks of being in Japan, and at least driving or taking a train past it 10 times, looking out the window, impolitely disturbing the driver and passengers all of whom reacted to me like an inconvenience they should pity. I would point and gesture out of the many wide-view windows and ask, “Simimasen, Fuji-san doko des-ka?”

Show me this mountain that you all are so spiritually connected to, show me this mountain that can be seen on a clear day from as far away as Tokyo, show me this mountain that you all revere that lies at the heart of being Japanese.

The frustration of looking in every direction, out of all the windows, as we sped past exit after exit, or station after station, each with Fuji in the name. She would never reveal herself through the low clouds that blanket Japan during the monsoon.

I was staying in Matsumoto, a city in the foothills of the Japanese Alps. “It’s so provincial" my grant officer would say to me every time I met her in Tokyo. I suppose I agreed, as I would put myself on a bus or a train out of there every time I had a chance to. But it was beautiful, and I loved it - not just Tokyo, which for the most part was just another example of many people negotiating a big city – but all of it, every single bit of Japan, at least, that’s what I would tell anyone who asked me.

“What is it like for you?”

I would answer with phrases that could be expected from anyone going through this experience; “interesting”, “eye opening” , “a new perspective” never really satisfying them with any specifics. “I saw a shrine today”, “I went for an Onsen”, “the students taught me to cook ramen.”

“But how does it feel?”

When pressed, I would answer, “I’m just taking it all in, and I guess I’ll know after it’s over”.

Yet, when it was, and I returned, conversations didn’t fare much better. They would start and... peter out… moving on to more present things, of being back, what things needed doing, concerns of life and returning home. There was no storytelling over drinks, no transporting anyone vicariously to the place I had just been. Everything I articulated about what I had seen or done seemed so… hollow.

For the most part, those who asked, got a disappointing sense that I hadn’t really been affected by my trip to this entirely different new world and new people. Not once could I answer questions about Japan with any excitement, or with feeling that suggested I might been touched somewhere, somehow. I mean, how could it not? How could anyone be so untouched?

I still wonder about it. Did I even go? If it wasn’t for some souvenir, a pair of chopsticks, nice shoes, a small piece of technology, the photographs, which all insist that I had actually been there, I’d say no.

What happened to the experiencing of seven weeks? Of directing a play with 30 Japanese students, where working with each one was, at least in my rational mind, a unique and meaningful interaction in and of itself. Of exploring and engaging with this incredible culture in so many different ways, walking somewhere new each day, of seeing, tasting , smelling, touching, feeling? The memories of experiencing continue to elude.

Except one, which I still find hard to share with people, the only visceral memory I have of Japan, the only experience which I know and feel was real for me, that actually tells me that my entire being was, if only for a moment, actually there. Even now, each time I think of it, I am as overwhelmed as I was the first time it happened.

Flying out of Narita, heading south along the eastern coastline of Japan, I looked out of my window, and there she was, her single flat peak clearly visible above a sea of clouds.

you wanted to see me,

all this time,

now as you leave,

look, here I am,

this is what you leave behind.