An afternoon of Renaissance men

Salaam Mumbai...

How many Renaissance men can you fit into a Sunday Brunch? Sunday afternoon found a handful of Mumbai’s most illustrious multi-taskers at Partap and Sue Sharma’s art-and-book-lined apartment with a breathtaking view of the sea, where the talk ranged from Bach to Goethe to Narendra Modi’s pogroms.

The occasion was the release of Dilip Chitre’s latest collection of poems, ‘As Is Where Is’.

Chitre, a stocky, beret-clad man with the face of latter-day Picasso, is a poet, film-maker, musician and translator who writes in English and Marathi and has a worldwide following as much for his muscular, lucid poems as those that he has translated of the ailing Marathi poet Namdeo Dhasal.

In attendance were other luminaries from the world of art and literature, like Gieve Patel, poet, painter, sculptor, one-time doctor and now, itinerant teacher of poetry for the students of Rishi Valley school; artist and savant Laxman Shresta with his painter wife Sunita; seminal photographer Adrian Stevens with his erudite wife Hira who lectures on literature at Sophia College; Pradeep Vijayakar of The Times of India, an expert on sports with the soul of a poet; Vijaya, Chitre’s multi talented wife; the unsettlingly beautiful actor Tara Sharma and her INSEAD-educated fiancé, actor Roopak Saluja, and a force of nature who goes by the name of Anand Thakore, a Hindustani vocalist, poet and scholar who has blazed on the literary scene with his dazzling presence.

Presiding over this electrifying salon were hosts Partap and Sue. Partap, for long the defining voice of Indian advertising and documentary, has made films, written internationally acclaimed, award-winning plays and novels, acted, rode horses bareback, is a black belt in Eastern martial arts, and - as was revealed during the course of the afternoon - is also a Hindustani classical vocalist with panache. Sue, his devoted wife, daughter of one of England’s foremost publishing families, has put her own talents on the back burner while tending to her extremely talented and versatile family: daughter Namrita lives in China, where she works as a freelance journalist and of course, actor Tara, an ex-investment banker, who returned to India to pursue a career in Hindi cinema.

What does a crowd comprising such luminaries do on a balmy Sunday afternoon in Mumbai over kebabs and white wine? Going by the trajectory of events at the Sharma’s, it indulges in insightful observation, the written word, the resonant alap, the soaring aria.

After a little initial hesitation, Chitre is persuaded to read from his masterly collection of poems, and he chooses a series on his experience in Germany on visiting Goethe’s birthplace and then a vestige of a concentration camp at Buchenwald. Reading with passion and intensity, his simple but searing words vividly evoke the experience for the listeners.

Anand Thakore then reads another poem from Chitre’s collection, after which Gieve Patel thanks Chitre with fraternal graciousness.

Later, after lunch, Thakore, Chitre and Partap break in to a spontaneous jugalbandi of various gharanas and their voices imbue the afternoon with an ethereal element.

In a city fraught with malls and high rises and an evaporating cultural context, Sunday afternoon at Partap and Sue’s was an oasis of civilization.

s_malavika@dnaindia.net