And then he was left alone. His composure collapsed, and you witnessed the degeneration from a poised prince to a broken man — a moment that was meant to be intensely private. On a dark, solitary stage, he crumbled to the floor, ravaged by his grief. And that’s when you recognized the voice. And you were amazed by the emotion in the scene, the complete, utter desolation in the words as his pain tore him, the melancholy of one man struggling to come to terms with his loss. And that was when you told yourself, “Oh my, they are really performing in front of me!”

And that’s when he stopped being David Tennant. He was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

It was very fitting that my first experience of professional theatre had to be Shakespeare. Performed by none other than the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-Upon-Avon’s Royal Courtyard Theatre — a company that has had illustrious names like Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ben Kingsley, Sir Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart associated with it. Stewart, of course, was Claudius to Tennant’s Hamlet in what I can now call MY show.

This particular production has come to be know as the Doctor Who Hamlet, which perhaps was unavoidable though also understandable. Its sci-fi appeal was fuelled by the presence of Patrick Stewart of both Star Trek and X-Men fame. For me, personally, it was watching Tennant and Stewart on stage that was the highlight. While Patrick Stewart was undeniably the star of the show — cold, suave and calculating as Claudius, and commanding yet ephemeral as the Ghost — David Tennant did make it a little bit more special.

But even taking them away, the rest of the cast was excellent. Three theatre shows later, Hamlet is still the one that impresses me most. For one, I cannot get over how hard the actors must need to work, learning all those lines and bringing them to life, and performing up to five days a week. Some of the actors play more than one role in a season (Tennant, for instance, will also be Berowne in Love’s Labour Lost October onwards). Edward Bennett, who was fantastic as Laertes in his RSC debut season, was Tennant’s understudy, and it would have been interesting to see him play the title role too. Penny Downie (Gertrude) and Mariah Gale (Ophelia) were other actors whose performances stood out. Oliver Ford Davies was an endearing and bumbling Polonius, tending to go off on a tangent by himself. He got a lot of laughs from the audience (and he was very nice when I got my programme autographed!).

Humour is one thing I never expected from a story as depressingly tragic as Hamlet’s, but there was an ample amount of it. Whether it was the obvious laugh when Ophelia finds condoms in her brother Laertes’s case just after he has given her a speech on chastity and abstinence, or the result of the actors using a line a certain way — Hamlet’s lazy “He will stay till you come” when the attendants are rushing off to find Polonius’s body had the audience in splits. There was also a slapstick moment when he went “Whee!” as he was wheeled off at the end of that same scene.

Not that I’m particularly equipped to judge, but Hamlet is widely acknowledged as one of the most difficult Shakespearan roles to pull off and Tennant did appear to be a very engaging Hamlet. (Thankfully, it was modern clothes, and this Hamlet even wore jeans and a beanie; I don’t think I could take Tennant in one of those frilly Elizabethan costumes — he is too skinny — though he will wear one in Love’s Labour Lost!) Even though the sheer presence of Patrick Stewart stole the show, Tennant held his own end up memorably. He brought into it a physicality that is one of the trademarks of his role as the Tenth Doctor on TV. When he goes to greet Horatio, running up to hug him, one is amazed Horatio didn’t keel over and land on his behind! As Hamlet, Tennant is constantly on the move, pounding the stage, even with bare feet — a lot of the scenes, especially around the time of his madness, saw Hamlet barefoot — which added to his tormented existence and his vulnerability, and went quite a way to engage more fully the audience’s empathy.

This particular Hamlet is fidgety, physical — very physical. He flits from being frighteningly intense to flippantly off-hand, and even humorous, in seconds. When he is ranting maniacally and leaping about madly, you wonder if he really is mad or he is just pretending. The most famous lines of the play are performed most naturally — quite low-key and without any fanfare. When he drapes himself across the throne with the crown on his head in a cheeky angle, you can almost see the Doctor again. When he makes some suggestive gestures towards Ophelia, you cringe at his lewdness but laugh nonetheless. When he confronts his mother in her bedroom and drags her across the floor, throws her on the bed and proceeds to rail, you wince with Gertrude, and almost feel the pain as his fingers dig into her arms and he shakes her and batters her with his relentless tirade. Moments later he has his head in his mother’s lap and is being comforted, and you never noticed the change.

Tennant’s acting ability has never been in doubt, and Doctor Who certainly does not showcase the extent of his skill. Whether prancing around the stage trying to convince the world he is mad, weeping curled up in a ball of woe, or whether it is that supremely memorable and intense scene where he confronts his mother about the incestuous relationship with Claudius — it does make you see how much TV and the big screen can sometimes take away. Certainly, the impressive sets and realistic locations on screen add to the glamour, but it is when you sit barely 10 metres from the actors and watch them perform in real life and real time that it hits you, that this is it— these individual men and women and their skill, brought together by a story well told and directed, performed in front of you, for you.

The actors’ faces when they took their bows told a story all of their own, something that is so difficult to put down in words. It was the David Tennants and Patrick Stewarts of the world thanking you, when all you really wanted to do is thank them for giving you a night you’ll never leave behind.

~PD

Well, Cardiff, as fans will know, is the Doctor Who city, so no surprise that my day tour was a total fangirl trip! Photos later, but in short, I did check out the Millennium Centre and Roald Dahl Plass from “Boom Town” — and subsequently other — Doctor Who episodes, and all Torchwood episodes. The restaurant they stopped at in “Boom Town” was also pretty obvious. Oh, and explored Mermaid Quay and found the tourist office entrance to the Torchwood hub!

There are a lot of other Doctor Who/Torchwood locations in Cardiff, of course, where both series are mainly shot, many times impersonating other places. I thought I’d found one of the buildings Jack Harkness likes to stand on top of (and give us all vertigo!), but I may be wrong. I also found the docks where (I think) the start of the DW episode “Love and Monsters” was shot, impersonating Woolwich! Oh, and of course, there was Cardiff Castle, where John Hart takes Jack just before he destroys the city (”Exit Wounds”).

There was a Doctor Who exhibition near the Millennium Centre, and an overpriced shop. It was interesting. The Dalek was cute — photos and video to follow, hopefully soon.

Altogether a quite fascinating experience, seeing for real locations that have been immortalized on TV. The scale and orientation of what we see on TV is often different from reality. Thus, it was equally fascinating to see how television can glamourize perfectly ordinary things!

~PD

So, here’s a (very) quick round-up of the highlights of my Great British (ha ha!) trip so far. This is going to be written very quickly, so excuse any typos, etc.

England

Without doubt this has to be Hamlet performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-on-Avon. It was just fabulous — both the performances and getting to see celebrated actors like Patrick Stewart and David Tennant in the flesh. (Yes, Stewart has terrific presence, and yes, Tennant is really skinny.) Not to mention the whole stage door experience with Tennant (Hamlet) and Oliver Ford Davies (Polonius).

Scotland

Wow. This shouldn’t be so hard. The Loch Ness was beautiful; Scotland itself was beautiful. Those lovely accents, the kilts…! All I can say is that the Scottish Highlands are still on my list of places to visit. There’s so much to see.

Edinburgh was vastly different from Inverness, where I spent three days. By itself it is a beautiful historic city. And if one is a Rebus fan, of course, it takes on a whole new meaning, like it did for me. With the Edinburgh Festival on, it was crowded with tourists and performers. Altogether a marvellous experience, getting caught up in the atmosphere of it all. Even for someone like me, who is a self-confessed recluse with a dislike of crowds.

The imposing architecture (oh, I climbed the Scott Monument and have a certificate to prove it; also walked the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace/the Scottish Parliament) gives it a beautiful skyline. Of course, it’s a big city, with a traffic problem :-/ … and I did get lost trying to find my B&B!

It’s fascinating how different the Scots are from the English. It makes you understand why the English are sometimes referred to as bland. The Scots, at the least the ones I came in contact with, take a lot of pride in their Scottishness (as different from Britishness, I mean). And that music of theirs is perfectly lovely and haunting — somehow blending just right with the surroundings, be it in the Highlands or the historic Edinburgh architecture.

And… just for the record, men look great in skirts (I could say kilts, but I won’t); I have no idea why they insist on wearing trousers.

Wales

Well, watch this space!

~PD

“I want not to have killed a person.”

Maya Subramaniam’s life is arguably far more complex than the average fourteen-year-old’s. As the youngest Halvard of the Sands of Time, torn between loyalty to her family and to her Watcher, and dogged by a prophecy that predicts her to be the cause of the destruction of time… Honestly, how much can one person take?

An adolescent caught in a world of grown-ups, Maya finds herself in the middle of a Warrior conspiracy to see the Ai’diyar Prophecy to its conclusion. Homeless and confused, convinced that she wrecks the lives of those she loves, Maya finds herself doubting her ability to see right from wrong.

As she and her friends stumble into the Timeless Land, she is faced with a choice that could have a devastating impact on reality as we know of it. In this third and final book of the Halvard series, Maya finally comes face to face with the Prophecy.

The question is, will it be an end or a beginning?

(Read about the previous books: A Shadow in Eternity and The Key of Chaos).

~PD

1. Kale’s Folly (working title): You could technically call this book four of the Halvard series. It’s four years since the events in The Timeless Land, and… oooh! something’s happening.
2. Kinnel’s Prison/Azure Conclusion: Kinnel’s Prison was a short story I did based on an idea I had for a novel. I am currently working on fleshing the whole thing out. I have the basic story, all of the characters detailed out, the setting ready, but there are key missing bits.
3. Azure Conclusion/WiRE: No, it’s not a typo. I haven’t decided if I want to use the Azure Conclusion concept in Kinnel’s Prison or keep it for WiRE. I can’t say anything more about WiRE except that I really love the idea. I even have the characters, but they have no names, so they’re a bit like stick figures at the moment.
4. Kris and I (working title): This is going to be my first attempt at humour, if it comes off. I hope to work on this during NaNoWriMo 2008.

However, when all is said and done, if even one out all these ever gets completed, I will be happy!

~PD

For the uninitiated, Flock is more than just a plain old Web browser. If social networking is your sort of thing, this intriguing application is certainly worth a look at. With its integrated blogging, media sharing and “people” services, it should keep any online social bunny busy for a bit.

Interested? Check it out for yourself: Flock. The latest release is Flock 1.2, but a beta version, Flock 2, based on the Firefox 3 release is available as well.

Happy Flocking

~PD

Worldwide, the modern LGBT movement is largely acknowledged as having had as a catalyst an event referred to as the Stonewall Rebellion. On 29 June 1969, following a police raided on Stonewall Inn in New York City the previous day, violent clashes resulted as the LGBT community came together to resist police harassment. A commemorative march was held the following year in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Over the years pride parades around the world became more about the celebration of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and others in an increasingly inclusive society.

In the Indian context, though, we are far from that stage. Thus, Sunday’s pride event is not just a celebration, it is a stage for every human being who believes in a free, fair and inclusive society to stand up and say so.

From the poster:

New York, 29 June 1969: Following a raid on Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, five days of protest marked the Stonewall Rebellion, where people stood up for their right to be who they were. This landmark event is widely acknowledged as the beginning of the LGBT pride movement.

Bangalore, 29 June 2008: Times change, and with it, people. This is your chance to step up and claim your rights. Whether lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, hijra, kothi, intersex, straight — join us if you believe in reaffirming the right to live and love.

Silence is death. We need you to fight for what is right. Come and revel in the sunshine of Bangalore’s first pride march. Join hundreds from Delhi and Kolkata in celebrating this event.

In Bangalore the parade starts at 2:00 pm at National College, Basavangudi and ends at Puttanna Chetty Town Hall, J.C. Road.

In Delhi it starts at the corner of Barakhamba Road and Tolstoy Marg, just south of the Metro station on Barakhamba Road, and in front of the Intercontinental Hotel on Tolstoy Marg, and ends at Jantar Mantar. Time: 5:30 pm.

~PD

The high point of the meet was undoubtedly the cultural events put on by the children, but it was also interesting to know a little more about the sort of work World Vision does. There was a Q&A session where sponsors got to air their observations and grievances, but the answers were typically non-committal (”We’ll look into it”; “No, we’re not working in that area”; and so on) from the country director. The good thing was, when one approached Lily at the end of the event, she was far more helpful.

The figures, predictably, were depressing for a country of over 1 billion people, where over 800 million are tagged as “Below Poverty Line”. We like to beat the drums around the world proclaiming our 9 per cent growth rate, not highlighting the fact that the advantages accrued by that are only accessible to a negligible proportion of society, and certainly not to those 836 million who really need it, who struggle for basic needs such as food and shelter. With 40 per cent of schoolgoing age children out of school in that category, the future still looks bleak…

One is quite ashamed to note that while there are over 225,000 children being sponsored in India, only 23,780-odd among these are being supported by Indians. In all, there are only 32,582 active donors and sponsors who are Indian! (By the way, Bangalore accounts for 2,137 of the 32,000-odd.)

But as the poem goes, little drops of water… The children from Gundlupet showed that World Vision and their sponsors’ support may not have “ma[d]e our earth an Eden, like the heaven above”, but it has certainly made a difference in their lives. It has given them a future, and it has given them confidence.

When the sound system at the hall failed, the children just performed without the music, singing the song themselves! This from a group of children who had left their village for the first time, and were performing in a packed hall with at least 200 people. (Sorry about the picture and sound quality; and about the camerapeople obstructing the view.)

By December 2008, World Vision India needs 3,500 more sponsors. Do something meaningful and become one of those 3,500. It costs only Rs 600 (US$ 13) a month — an amount most of us don’t think twice about spending on a night out or on buying something useless.

Sponsor a child right now.

~PD

Most people know of the song-and-dance routines that are the staple of Indian cinema. Well, the following clip is not Bollywood, but a BBC TV series starring David Tennant and Sarah Parish called Blackpool. It featured a number of songs and a few dance-ish routines.

As you can see, Mr Tennant — wonderful actor though he might be — comes up a bit short in the dancing department. For the uninitiated, he’s the odd-looking, tall, skinny one, leading the group of cops. (Oh, watch him go the wrong way at 1:33!)

I was thinking of this while walking home today, and had the gigglefits on the road. Thankfully, I had my iPod plugged in and people probably thought I was talking on handsfree.

This never fails to make me laugh out loud — no matter how down in the dumps I might be. Enjoy!

~PD

The chances are, we have all unwittingly been involved in a fandom or dozen at some point or other. For me, since being a nerdy kid who read three books in two days, fandoms have, ironically, helped in hanging on to a semblance of sanity at times. Maybe a healthy dose of un-reality is the best medicine when one needs to get away in one’s mind. In fact, I would go so far as to say that being involved in a range of fandoms was critical in my choice of career. Whether what was right or wrong is another issue!

All things Enid Blyton

Frighteningly enough, it was the wholly inappropriate Enid Blyton books that saw me through childhood and early adolescence, and first made me question if I could be a writer. By the age of 6 or 7, I was totally into the Five Find-Outers and Famous Five; I wanted to be one of them. Soon I was going on make-believe adventures with Roger, Diana, Barney and Snubby; hanging out with Jack, Nora, Peggy and Mike in their secret island; or off with Phillip, Dinah, Jack and Lucy-Ann on an exotic vacation… Yes, well, I hear people coughing “obsession” about now! Hey, we moved a lot and I didn’t have many friends…

I must add that even as a child I found Enid Blyton disturbing and now that I think of it, given the sexism, xenophobia and (I can’t think of a better phrase) the bourgeois elitism, it isn’t something I would like to see children reading. People think that kids don’t see a lot of things, but some kids do. At least I did, and a lot of my contemporaries did too.

Star Trek

Sets made of plastic toys, William Shatner’s overacting, Captain Kirk getting it on with a different woman each week… honestly, it isn’t hard to see the detractors’ point of view. Sometimes, I get a nagging doubt about whether I really love Star Trek, or just fell in love with a pointy-eared half-alien.

ST: TOS has its share of critics, but it must be admitted that it was revolutionary in its own way. For the 1960s it was quite bold — featuring one of the first inter-racial kisses on TV — and touched upon a number of ethical issues that will hopefully remain timeless. That said, despite the imagination and vision employed by creator Gene Roddenberry, it is also an excellent example of how present-day values constrict our ability to imagine the future. The final episode, called “Turnabout Intruder”, showed a female Star Fleet officer taking over Kirk’s body because she had a compelling wish to command a starship, and in the 23rd century women are not allowed to hold command! Roddenberry expressed regret for inclusion of that idea later on, but generations of fantasy writers should thank him, because it gives us an excellent lesson in going where no-one has gone before.

Sport

Most of the significant relationships in my life have revolved around sport. The two games that I especially love are cricket and football, and was lucky enough to have gained a nuanced understanding of both rather than being limited to one of winning or losing. Lately, mainly due to a discontent with the way cricket is portrayed in the media and managed by the powers-that-be, I seem to be getting increasingly out of touch. However, I know it will take very little to get me back into it. I can still pick up, say, Stephen Waugh’s autobiography and smile when I read about something that I remember seeing or listening to (radio) or reading about.

I got into cricket at the age of 10 or so, and had a short and undistinguished stint as a medium pacer for my college in my late teens; football was a later development. I had always liked it, but it was the late 1990s/early 2000s that English and European football started getting beamed live into our living rooms. Doing the Goalpost was also a lot of fun. I miss it.

Remington Steele, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files

Only laziness and the fact that this post is getting longer than I anticipated that made me club these three together. I was into each of these series at different times, and they were all very different. While Buffy and X-Files fall into the SFF genre, Remington Steele was a detective series. It was aired in the 1980s, though we got to see it in the mid-1990s, when I was in my late teens. It all began when a private investigator called Laura Holt set up her own agency, but let’s hear it in her own words:

Try this for a deep dark secret: The great detective Remington Steele… He doesn’t exist. I invented him. Follow: I’d always loved excitement, So I studied and apprenticed, and put my name on an office. But absolutely no one knocked on my door. A female private investigator seemed so… feminine. So I invented a superior. A decidedly masculine superior. Suddenly there were cases around the block. It was working like a charm. Until the day he walked in, with his blue eyes and mysterious past. And before I knew it, he assumed Remington Steele’s identity. Now I do the work, and he takes the bows. It’s a dangerous way to live, But as long as people buy it, I can get the job done. We never mix business with pleasure. Well…almost never. I don’t even know his real name!

Pierce Brosnan, with his blue eyes and rougish smile, really wormed his way into our impressionable teenage hearts as Mr Steele. And Laura was pretty great too. The mystery about who Steele really was, and the tension between him and Laura kept us entertained for years, and we pretended all the unpleasantness that existed behind the scenes never existed. I’m sure I’ve seen all 94 episodes, and all of them more than once.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the next serial I really got into. To be honest, I’ve not seen much of Joss Whedon’s work apart from this, though have heard a lot of good things. I have to admit part of why I like him is that he identifies himself as a feminist, which is clearly visible from his work. His whole idea for a feisty young woman kicking ass (why is it “kicking arse” doesn’t have the same ring?) came out of the fact that he hated how the blonde is always doomed in horror movies. Well, not only did Buffy provide a great role model for young people, there were a number of interesting characters in the series, not to mention a pace and excitement that kept the plot going for a long time till — like all good things — it started to unravel.

As for The X-Files, well, what can I say, I absolutely and totally devoured it. It was the first time I seriously wondered about what went on in the making of a story like this, and did a lot of reading up on Chris Carter. I was intrigued by his work, and also watched Millennium while it aired here. (I wrote a loooooong essay on Carter, The X-Files and the then-upcoming Millennium in my entrance examination for MCRC, Jamia! I don’t know what they made of it, but I did get an interview call, which I bunked.) I always had a softer spot for Scully than for Spooky Mulder, and was often annoyed that her perspective got repeatedly steamrolled. To be honest, the later seasons ended up “jumping too many sharks” and got a little bit pointless and boring, but I’m hoping for good things from the upcoming movie, I Want to Believe.

The Wheel of Time

When it comes to books, I know that I belong to innumerable fandoms, but the Wheel of Time has a special place. People might complain about the one-dimensional main characters, too many side characters, the needlessly meandering plot, Robert Jordan’s style of writing, the similarities to LOTR, and, heck, even blame Jordan for dying before finishing the series… but such criticisms are commonplace for any work of fiction of this massive a scale. Jordan never denied being influenced by Tolkien, and frankly, I like his style of writing. I found the humour in the early books almost “British”, and that’s the highest praise I can give!

Apart from the fact that it is an amazing work of literature, and opened the doors to the wonderful world of fantasy for me, there are two other reasons why WoT is special. The first of course is that it is what made me decide exactly what I wanted to write about. I’d been meandering about writing fiction seriously for a few years, and had a lot of aborted attempts. After reading The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, and The Shadow Rising in quick succession, I KNEW I was going to write fantasy. I know my first book has a similarity to EoTW in its basic plot, and I’m not ashamed. There was an acknowledgement to RJ in that book.

The other reason is that I met a lot of people because of WoT, through the forum Moiraine’s World. (Oh, I can imagine Marie preening here…!) It was the first time I ventured into the world of online socializing, and I certainly don’t regret it. It’s been fun and annoying and amazing and a lot of other things all at the same time, and “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world”!

Doctor Who, Torchwood and Russell T. Davies

I still remember that evening when Swapna was being a total pain with those Doctor Who DVDs. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, but she left them on my table and said, “Try and watch them.” I did, and I can’t believe I was such a fool as to ever wonder if I’d be interested! Fine, so the Doctor I liked better left the show; fine, that most of the plots are thin to the point of emaciation. It doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t — it’s unadulterated fun, some typical British humour, lots of aliens, lots of running, some cool gadgets… oh, I love it!

The Ninth Doctor of the 2005 series was my favourite, but the stories in that season were mostly… um… bad, apart from the whole “Bad Wolf” story arc. Series two and the coming of David Tennant seemed to take things up a notch. Given my fascination with other kinds of fantasy, it touched a peak with the two episodes “The Impossible Planet” and “Satan’s Pit”, though “The Girl in the Fireplace” was a super episode too. Series three was very up and down, but the ups were very high indeed, with episodes like “Shakespeare Code”, “Blink”, “Human Nature”/”Family of Blood”, and the first two of a three-part finale.

Torchwood is a Doctor Who spin-off, very dark and aimed at an adult audience, especially with its in-your-face violence. It features one of the Doctor’s companions, the immortal Captain Jack Harkness. While Torchwood is undoubtedly a little thin in the class department at times, it has its moments. It also has an excellent cast, playing the roles of sweet, nerdy Tosh, sarcastic Owen, let-me-fall-all-over-you-Captain-Jack Gwen (okay, that’s mean, but I don’t care!), and the efficient Ianto for whom the term “still waters run deep” seem to have been invented.

Can’t talk about DW and TW without mentioning creator Russell T. Davies, best known for Queer as Folk before DW came back on air. I intend to write about him in detail later, so just saying here that I love how versatile he is. If only he hadn’t written that wholly regrettable episode called “Partners in Crime” for DW: Series Four (2008)…

Gaming

Oh dear… this is getting out of hand now…

Very briefly, more or less in descending order of how much I like them: Deus Ex, The Sims 2, Hitman, Diablo (all), Jedi Outcast, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, various football management games, Prince of Persia (the original; the first game I got hooked on, in the mid-1990s)… and more.

Reginald Hill and Ian Rankin

Arguably, among the the best writers of crime fiction plying their trade at the moment. With Hill it is his Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and Pascoe series, based in Yorkshire; and with Rankin the Inspector Rebus books, based in Edinburgh. Both have been made into TV series. Will not get into too much detail, but suffice it to say that while Hill is a master at wordplay, Rankin’s characterization is superlative. Both are excellent narrators, though neither have been able to reproduce the same sort of form with their other works. (For reviews of most of Hill’s books.)

Right, so before I can think of anything else that will make this post even longer, it’s time to wind up!

~PD