Twitter Mahabharat (140 characters or less)

By Rajiv Nema · Monday, May 18, 2009

Lot of sex, any1s dad unknon, 5bros hv 1wyf but 100kuzns want her. They fite. Krishna is w/ 5; sez do ur duty-dont wory bout rezlt. 5+K win.

Twitter Ramayan (140 characters or less)

By Rajiv Nema · Monday, May 18, 2009

King of A sent son R1 2 4est w/ wyf S. Baddie R2 kidnapd S. R1 defeatd R2 w/ hlp of munky H. R1, S retrn 2A. Diwali. R1 king.

As I sit in the church.......

The Hindu me and my Catholic wife are tolerant to each other's religions and support each other by going to temples, churches and participating in occasional religious activities. I am sure my wife gets all kinds of thoughts in the Hindu surroundings including the "guru" whose feet her husband is touching needs a serious 'pedicure' but she doesn't tell me everything going through her brain.

 

Here is what goes through my Hindu / Indori / indian mind in the Catholic surroundings:

 

• the 'HOPE' sign reads 'POHE' to me (especially torturing as we go to mass empty stomach) 
• I see all the clothes in front of me and only thing I can think is if they were all hung on hangers, will make a nice GOODWILL STORE
• as we wish "may peas and carrots be with you", I am thinking of nice 'mattar-paneer sabji' waiting at home
• as the priest raises the 'holy bread' (which is really a tortilla - so, 'was jesus mexican....?' is another thought i wander off to) I wonder where I can get that kind of 'chapati maker' to make them perfectly round
• there is a nice fantasy game I play, pick 1-2 people every Sunday and based on their back side "imagine their faces" 

(to be continued)

Reverse Transformation in 60 seconds

                               Dr. Koop                                 IK Gujral                              Rajiv Nema

 

Each performance is different.......

Three months of intense rehearsals - the whole goal is to get to a point where each of us can consistently deliver our character. But come performance time, you as an actor feel very different about every single show. 6 of 7 shows for TUGHLAQ are done and I have felt different after each show. So many things can affect it: Pre-show warm-up or last minute missing prop or a fumbled dialog or even a word or just that invisible / intangible something.

You tell yourself to block all the distractions out, get in the zone, don't let little (or even major) things affect you. The players psyche themselves - you see baseball pitchers talking to themselves on the mound, football (the World kind, not the American kind) getting in each other's face, Harbhajan Singh & Shoaib Akhtar throwing profanities at each other heard by the worldwide web audience.....all to get the adrenaline going, help excelling on the job, performing above and beyond any rehearsal, practice sessions they may have. That's what we do:  on the way to the performance in the car and while getting make-up done and in the pre-show warm-up and right before stepping on the stage.....then.....

.... then.... that invisible/intangible thing hits you making or breaking the performance - in YOUR mind. The audience loves them all but YOU as a performer can rank each of the performance from top to bottom. What is that thing?

Hindu, Muslims, Sikhs....... we all are ONE!

Looks are deceiving. Any of us can be anybody. Look at me! In 19 days, with the facial hair, certain kind of clothing and some accessories, I suddenly change from a Hindu "looking" guy to Muslim "looking guy". Add to that some learnt mannerisms, appropriate diction/pronunciations and you are a Muslim "sounding guy". One of the actors in TUGHLAQ is a Sardar - but cut his hair long time back.....he looks like me. I didnt know he was a sardar until he told me. Aren't Sardars supposed to be "different"? Aren't Muslims supposed to be completely opposite of Hindus? I just realized the answer - NO!

Different people at different times in our existence started drawing lines, created divisions - sometimes out of necessity and sometimes purely for power - and here we are. In different shades, different beliefs, different this and different that. It's all perception. The reality is .......

....... WE ALL ARE ONE!!!!!!

And the beard keeps on growin ....

Facial hair day #17. Longest ever these things have stayed on my face thus far....i have attempted to grow them in the past but didnt last beyond 10 days. Those things made me even more hideous. But this time......things have changed. I love it. I look so dashing that  Hrithik Roshan and Shahid Kapoor were calling me for tips. But I had to put them on hold as I was talking to someone by the name Amitabh Bachchan or something that sounded like that.