Offbeat performances mark debut book release of young author

Nagpur: Freaky figures narrating twisted tales had the audience glued at Vasantrao Deshpande hall, on Saturday evening as artists from Mumbai and Bangalore performed poems from the book ‘Circus Folks & Village Freaks’ written by Aparana Upadhyaya Sanyal. The event was presented by the Centre Point Group of Schools.
The debut book of the young author is a mélange of 18 tales written as racy rhyming couplets which are at once brutal yet ride on sensitive thoughts. Aparana delves deep to pull out grotesque, bizarre and absurd characters like the Siamese twins, a homosexual duo, the bloated man, girl with a beard and also a clown, whose stories endear because of their soft underlying emotions.

Read out and performed by accomplished artistes like Bharath Savitri Divakar, a well-known spoken word performer from Bangalore who brought to life the story of Miss Rita- the mustachioed women, Mansi Multani and Poorna Swami who brilliantly executed the acts and emotions of conjoined twins who lose half their hearts after a surgery to separate them, and actor Vinay Pathak who gave a fine rendition of the story of Pablo- the clown, who made it big in Hollywood. But it was Neel Bhoopalam as ‘Jeeva-the elephant man’ who had the audience riveted to the pathos present in his story as he forced them to look within by holding up a mirror literally and figuratively.

With the help of sounds, lights, subtle music and suave renditions of portions from the book, the ensemble cast created a surreal experience that carried the audience to the otherwise imaginary environment of the book.

Adding charm to these aesthetically designed acts and the stories that they told was the innocence and honesty which remains intact even in the presence of depravity, insanity and blinding revenge. What also works for the author is that she manages to retain the humour in situations and also touches them with worldly wisdom so that the tales however quirky still retain an inherent humane quality.