CHERISH with HARISH

I jumped up, and I broke my knee. I jumped up, I fell on the puddle. I jumped up, and I fought for my rights. I jumped up, and I changed my city. I jumped up, and I jumped careers. I jumped up, and I was trying to touch the stars. I jumped up, and I questioned things, I jumped up, and I realised, that I can jump! I can JUMP... - KHS Sept-19, Mumbai

NID Kurukshetra 12:50 pm, I have some time from my lecture and I have announce a Chai-break. Time is definitely the best teacher.I have been moving through time and space in the last two-three weeks and it is super exciting. It has been drastic, as I have been moving from meeting an old friend in a big city to writing a film script in my lonely room, listening to the heavy rain outside, to celebrating an age-old festival/pooja with parents to teaching  and learning at a university. This is a journey I would love to choreograph, but it is just happening on its own. And that is the best part part! I am in that university and I realized that I still have a week to learn and teach here. I am blindly taking all the work coming my way and that is the best part for me. I have been travelling from Mumbai to Delhi to Kurukshetra to Chandigarh and all this happened in a matter of the last 4-5 days. In the process, I have been meeting my exceptional friends, who have been extra su...

In an effort to fly higher in the sky, little did the crow realise that it is going farther than the ground!

5th July'19, Mumbai. The Journey has been an amazing one. The fun-journey had started long ago when as a 17 year old, with an 'Engineering' seat and a 'Dental' seat, I took this interesting decision to follow my heart. The families then, were pretty new to this idea. I had very few reference points as I had no role models for myself, who had come from my level. I guess that was the beginning and I loved the road I took. A road less travelled, a road which gave me interesting challenges and somewhere midway, I fell in love with the whole idea of challenges! Today about a decade later I stand here, fully in love with the whole idea of challenges. After writing and directing theatre (Viz. Kamaan), after writing a book ('Gokul')... after taking numerous road journeys, I am back to the city which triggered the creativity in me. After my first brief stint with the city,  the lovely journey enters its second phase and I am all set, dreaming the impossi...

ABOVE ALL' The clouds covered me, made everything depressing, killed my thoughts, N made me sleepy. And then, fighting the clouds, Emerged the sun. The fire ball, had lots of messages for me, Lots of energetic rays. Giving me hope, It said that the negativity is closer to d ground, But positivity is above all. It said that the clouds, are closer to d ground, and the sun is, above all, above all, above all... - KHS July'19

NID, A-Hostel. Today, it is 50 years of the LGBT movement. It was July 2009. We had just had our dinner. We used to go to the hostel terrace for our post-dinner discussions. These used to be easy and laid-back. These post discussions used to be like the night breeze. There were no deadlines, no tensions, just the victorious feeling of the breeze entering your hair. There would be no questions , only answers. I used to love this part of the post-dinner conversations. We were a group of 3-4 young men and we had just started getting to know each other, through these discussions. We did not know that these conversations would make us the men we would be after ten years. It was one of those nights, and it seemed everyone was busy in the studios. Not many people had come back. It was just a friend of mine who had come to the terrace for the breeze. We continued talking and out of nowhere, he said that he is gay! I was shocked because I did not know hoe to react. I was straight and ...

It was a decade old guilt. Every night after my rehearsal at NID's theatre group,'Khel', I used to sit at the institute foyer, with this somewhat senior, Saheb. I liked him in the first few glances, because he would be busy doing his work, which has always been a positive for me. He never acted as if he had lots of work, he seemed to 'enjoy' it. I have always the company of such people. We started conversing and our late night conversations traveled from theatre to arts to ghosts and civilisations. These were interested topics for me and as soon as my rehearsal would get over at 12:30 or 1 at night, I would look for Saheb's company, and we would continue the chat. Our discussions started taking a new tangent and we did not realise about the rural-urban gap in the country or n opportunity for us NIDians to work on it. I got to know that Saheb was a 'Santhal', a tribe in the East of my country. In the mornings, we would just pass a smile or a formal ...