17th February 2015, Tuesday.
A dramatic evening of words and music
‘Strangers on the Shore’ is Randhir Khare’s fifth novel. It deals with the tender, quaintly amusing and hysterical lives of ordinary people who experience the extraordinary in their everyday lives. Their paths cross and re-cross, dramatically negotiating each other and the myriad lives who touch them, weaving an intensely emotional and psychological story about people who find themselves and lose themselves in an effort to discover who they really are.
The interweaving of dramatic readings, music and song came together beautifully to create the mood and atmosphere of the novel. Randhir Khare’s novel was brought to life with dramatic readings featuring the voices of Saurabh Dalmiya, Priyanka Menon, Neeti Pherwani and Sumedh Sarojini. The dramatic readings were from different chapters in the novel, like ‘Half and Half’ where Arnie meets his step-sister for the first time with ensuing hilarity. The reading of ‘Fire in the Belly’ also received a lot of laughter from the audience, about an Iranian refugee arguing with Arnie about ‘the gurl’. The excerpt from ‘The Blue Mermaid’ was whimsical and endearing, on Christine’s reflections at her resort in Goa and its inhabitants.
The gifted musical trio of Sandhya D’mello (vocals), Aubrey Dias (keyboards) and Sunil Rodgers (saxophone) played classics like ‘As Time Goes By’, ‘Bewitched, Bewildered and Bothered’, ‘I’ve Got You under my Skin’, ‘Angel in the Morning’ and ‘My Way’ which all perfectly complemented the mood of the passages and the characters. The audience was transported back to another era with the soulful melodies.
Mr. Khare revealed his inspiration behind the novel and the people he met all over the world which formed the basis for the characters. The author then signed copies of his book and answered questions from readers and admirers.
Following is an excerpt from the novel:
Dark
After a walk along the beach, I sit down on a boulder and look out at the sea change colour and the sky turn from a flat impersonal blue to a shredded orange blistered with yellow and red. Boats with their sails on fire move across the shimmering waters and dissolve out of view. Quite suddenly, light fades. The sea hardens to dark steel, the sky is powdered with rust and a flock of sandpipers swirls in and settles on the water’s edge, only to be ruffled into flight as a buffalo with sweeping horns staggers down the beach along with two young men chatting loudly. Their words are tossed into the air by a wind that swims through the gathering dusk. I can smell the breath of the night as it crawls in on its belly over the hump of the hill. It reeks of dead fish, seaweed and salt-drenched sand.
It’s dark now and time to go home but home isn’t the house I once was so scared to live in, the house so crowded with memories and bits and pieces of the past, pieces that didn’t belong to me. But then the house isn’t far away from where I live now, it stands right there a few yards outside my door and constantly reminds me of all the baggage that I am trying hard to get rid of. Through the sun, wind, rain, night and grumble and roar of the sea it stands, with its enormous tiled roof resting on weather-beaten walls, windows with pealing blue paint flaking off their wooden ribs, cracked panes and geckos scurrying along the roof of the veranda. My armchair still rests out there in the open. I had decided to leave that behind. No point in carting it around. Besides, it’s falling apart and needs to be repaired. It was my ancestor the Great Mathew’s prize possession, given to him by a Portuguese sailor somewhere in the past.
Not sure when the tenants are going to start renovating the house. They are supposed to be turning it into some sort of a boutique resort with a rock garden and lily pond and outdoor restaurant. Honestly I don’t care what the hell they would like to do with the place so long as they keep doing up my place and fit it with whatever I want. And of course so long as they keep giving me a tidy rent.
My place is small, sure, but who cares? Once a storage shed in our compound, now my new home. They did a good job of the place. I mean who’d ever guess that it was once a shed? But I’m not rid of the house and the memories it holds within its walls. They stay with me. In fact, every inch of the place has a story. Walking back through the compound is like crossing a minefield. I am not sure when I’ll step on something that will blow me into the past. That’s what’s so strange about the past and the present, that’s what’s so strange about time. It has a way of slipping through the fingers or is it that we slip through time? I can’t tell the difference anymore. Maybe I never could tell the difference. I remember as a child getting confused. One moment I was playing out on the sand and the next I was sleeping in the shade of coconut palms and then again when I opened my eyes I was eating mashed dal, rice and crispy pieces of fish from my mother’s hands. I slipped in and out of dreams so quickly that I sometimes couldn’t tell whether I was awake or asleep.
