An evening of Love, Letters and Legends

It is past midnight or I should say early morning. I just got back from the Clarks Amer Hotel. I was there for the show on Sunday – An Evening with Aparna Sen: Love, Letter and Legends - in which Aparna Sen, actress and film director, read out some of the famous love letters accompanied by thematically matched music from You and I duo Soumyojit and Sourendro.

The first in the series were the letters of former Isro chief, Vikram Sarabhai, to his classical dancer wife Mrinalini. Next were George Bernard Shaw's letters to the love of his life, Ellen Terry, whom he had hardly met. This was followed by the letters or the love notes of Oscar Wilde to his ‘forbidden love’ Lord Alfred Douglas and the long distance marriage proposal by Miyage - one of central characters from the Aprna Sen-directed movie The Japanese Wife - to her Bengali pen pal Snehmoy. Nargis' plea to her `Darling ji' and Ronald Reagan's Happy Anniversary letter to his better half Nancy were also read out by Aparna with aplomb.

The event was organized to commemorate the 4^th Anniversary of DNAin Jaipur. DNA is the English daily of Dainik Bhaskar Group.

I had the honour of setting the mood for evening programme by reciting the famous lines from Shakti Chattopadhyay's poem that was used by Rituparno Ghosh in his film Raincoat and translated into Hindi by Gulzar.

“Gaye sawan me ye deewaren yun seeli nahi thi,

na jaane is dafa kyun in me seelan aagayi hai,

daraare pad gayi hai aur seelan is tarah behti hai,

jaise khushk ruksaaro pe geele ansoo chalet hai….’

The evening was appreciated by the Who’s Who of Pink city.

ess bee