The circus called life

drawings that appear in the book. Illustrations/Rachna Ravi

At heart, all of us are freaks. Those who we consider outwardly freaks possibly are the ones who are simpler to understand, whereas what lies in the heart of the common man can be confounding," says Pune-based Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal, as she explains the title of her book, Circus Folk and Village Freaks (Vishwakarma Publications). A book of narrative poems, it revolves around the stories of people from a circus and a village that exist side by side, somewhere in India.

drawings that appear in the book

Told through the format of mostly metered, rhyming couplets, the narrative verses remind one of Vikram Seth's poems that explore a gamut of human emotion through stories with animals as protagonists. "Through these couplets, my aim was to talk about several issues that I find personally relevant and are still considered taboo in rural India - rigid caste hierarchy, repressed sexuality and mental illness," Sanyal shares. "But there is a vein of dark humour that runs through the book. So, you have the tale of Pablo the dwarf clown and how he makes a career in Hollywood."

Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal

The idea behind the launch this Saturday, which features dramatised readings by Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak and Jim Sarbh, music by Mansi Multani, and dance, is rooted Sanyal's background in theatre. She co-produced Rehaan Engineer's rendering of the award-winning play, One Flea Spare, which premiered in Mumbai this June. Theatre personality Sanjna Kapoor will release the title.

Rajat Kapoor with Kalki Koechlin

"When I browsed through the book, I realised it has clowns in it, hence the attention and attraction," quips Pathak, who, along with Sarbh, has acted in several of Kapoor's adaptations of Shakespeare's classics that use clowning as a theatrical expression. "It's a metaphor for life. We all feel we are simple people.

From left (fourth person) Jim Sarbh

But that's at the surface of it, because things do get complicated. The way I look at it, we all have a clown inside of us, who could be a demon, a reasonable person or anyone. Plus, it's a book of poems, and who writes poetry today? So one should do whatever one can to aid the medium," he adds.

Vinay Pathak

About the recent development where book launches are often combined with performing arts, Sanyal elaborates, "We need to create an interest in people to give poetry a shot. They shouldn't read about a poetry book launch and feel it's not up their alley. Poets are trying to build that accessibility towards their work."

On: September 22, 6.30 pm
At: G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture, Mahalaxmi.
RSVP: info@g5a.org
Call: 8879208475

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