Suruchi aulakh biography of christopher

  • Paresh pahuja

    •  
    I was nervous. I was terribly late for my tête-à-tête with Suruchi Aulakh. The door of her house was covered with a child's artwork. In the centre, was her daughter Ananya's sketch of her mother and herself, smiling the widest smiles ever. Soon enough Suruchi put me to ease. She was warm and forthcoming in the conversation that followed. The actress has been an integral part of Mumbai theatre for nearly two decades. She has worked with significant directors- from Naseeruddin Shah to Sunil Shanbag and has collaborated with new writers and theatre groups. She also runs her own company.


     By Gaurangi Dang

    Gaurangi Dang (GD): Tell us about yourself.

    Suruchi Aulakh (SA): I was born and brought up in Bombay. Then when I was in the ninth grade, I went to this boarding school called Rishi Valley in Andhra Pradesh. In a way Rishi Valley is like a regular ICSE school. You have to write your ISC and ICSE exams
    like regular board students. But the school is set in a beautiful space and there are things that it chooses to do differently. Later I wrote my SAT exam and went to the USA. It was incredible and I would recommend a liberal arts education to everybody. It's amazing what education backed by passion and funding can do to the culture of education. Every semester you have to take about five to six courses, which could span from philosophy to science. So you get to learn about everything and then do interesting things like a double major. For instance I'm a double major in Philosophy and Theatre whereas my sister did English and Pre-med. When I came back, I was amazed to hear things like, ''Oh, there were only twenty seats in Sociology, so now I'm doing Economics.'' That's playing with your whole life because the cut-offs in our education system are so high.

    GD: How did you decide on acting as a profession?

    SA: I think I was extremely sure that this is what I wanted to do from a very young age.

    1. Uncovering herbal beauty remedies: the green secret

      Vivek Singh, Mohammad Khalid, Shubham Pratap Singh, Megha Gupta and Dr. Ankit Kumar

    2. Pomegranatein breast cancer: a comperhensive review of its therapeutic potential

      Miss. Kanchan Rajendra Pawar

    3. Colored word order to facilitate l2 and l3 syntactic intuitions in basque: A longitudinal study

    4. Fruit classification algorithm design based on improved yolov8

      Changyou Wang, Qing Zhang and Jie Huang

    5. International approach in negotiation skills and relationship management

      Mr. Efstathios Marios Papakonstantinou

    6. Visual insights into gastric and hepatic mucormycosis: A pictorial overview

      Dr Archana Rajan and Ms. Aishwarya Rajan

    7. Sulforaphane: a powerful bioactive compound with chemopreventive properties and remarkable therapeutic benefits

      Resta, S., Riccardi, B. and Giacomo Resta

    8. English writing in indian education system and its implications: quantitative analysis of qualitative book reviews from www.amazon.in

      Vikas Gupta, IAS, Kausik K. Bhadra and Rhea Kapoor

    9. Analysis of competitive and cooperative relationships among securities companies based on the 3-species lotka-volterra model

      Changyou Wang and Yu Zhang

    10. Health risk factors among pregnant women in the maman mboualé neighborhood in talangaï brazzaville (Congo)

      BOKATOLAT EKANDZA Enock Jortial, KINOUANI Rodrigue and MOUNDZA Patrice

    11. Phytochemical screening of moringa oleifera leaf powder in methanol extract

      Shilpi Abha Toppo and Prof. Amia Ekka

    12. Using the cropwat 8.0 model to calculate maize water requirements in Jowhar-Somalia

      Abdiwahab Abdullahi Omar and Ahmed Abdulrazak Ugas Farah

    K-25, Hauz Khas

    I sit in front of a modern building,
    With modern balconies and modern bricks,
    Far removed from the alphasexual hub that Hauz Khas is.
    A building with no particular significance,
    So much so that as I perch myself on the footpath in front of K-25,
    All watchmen from the building there look at me in wonder,
    With heavy bouts of judgement.

    "They don't know" I say to myself.
    I wish I could go ask them if they know,
    But instead I set the cancer stick between my fingers on fire,
    And resort to the only form of escapism I know - poetry.

    "Ek budhiya chaand pe baithi",
    Gulzar starts speaking,
    And soon enough he's convinced me to dissolve all sounds around me and listen to the rhythm of her charkha.

    Now here's the thing about poetry,
    It's just a step away from schizophrenia,
    For your mind will make you believe in things, that even your mind knows don't really exist.

    Now here's the thing about love,
    It's just a step away from schizophrenia,
    For your mind will make you believe in things, that even your mind knows don't really exist.

    But as I sit in front of the modern building,
    With modern balconies and modern bricks,
    I'd rather embrace the mental disorder that is both love and verse,
    For where it stands, once stood
    The moon the budhiya sat on.

    K-25, Hauz Khas
    Is where Amrita Pritam lived.

    I see an Imroz stand there,
    Present for the demolition of the old house,
    And the demolition of a billion mixed feelings, of extreme pain and extreme peace,
    Feelings that I project on him, really.

    I see an Imroz stand there and try to see what he could have,
    An Amrita ascending the modest throne of the backseat of his scooter,
    Him almost anticipating the touch of her fingers on her spine, carving out his own 'manchaahi' death;
    An Amrita getting in and out of a car for her visits to the doctors,
    An Amrita in a window to a house always open to all Punjabi poems,
    An Amrita that l


     
    Shekhar Sen is a unique theatre persona in many respects. He is talented, he is committed, he is contented, and he has a clear vision about his work in the theatre. Almost a decade back he presented TULSIDAS, followed by KABIR and then went on to add VIVEKANAND to his repertoire. His musical solo performances bring forth his exceptional talent as singer, actor, director and writer. Here Jyoti Vyas tries to fathom the phenomenal success of his theatrical expositions.

     Vijay Shanker

    How did you land on stage?
    I belong to a musician�s family from Chhattisgarh and I came to Mumbai to give music to films. For five years nothing of consequence happened and this failure lead me towards spiritualism. I started giving devotional music concerts; recorded cassettes with research-based themes; worked for HMV on a five year contract. And things started shaping well. I went to the U.S A. in 1997 to attend the conference on Ramayana; it was an eye opener. I found that the epic was translated in 78 languages of the world. Plus I witnessed that in Surinam and in the West Indies temples, Ram�s idols are small while the one for Tulsidas was life size. It was then that I decided to recreate Tulsidas on stage.

    TULSIDAS was followed by KABIR and later VIVEKANAND. Is there any logic in the selection?
    No, none at all. Kabir has been my all-time favourite and Vivekanand comes much later. Tulsidas represents Sagun Bhakti (Idol worship), Kabir followed the Nirgun Panth (formlessness) and Vivekanand�s religious belief encompassed patriotism.

    You write, direct and act. Would you consider writing and directing for some one else for the characters of female saint poetesses?
    I was asked by Hema Malini to write the script for Jaydev�s Geet Govind and her guru-reincarnation of Meerabai. I tried but could not do that. And apart from these three plays I have not written a single line.

    How does the creative process of writing a play start
  • Amit mistry