DT's thoughts - Holding Time Captive | book review

I belong to a generation where theatre breathed Ebrahim Alkazi, or Elk, to many of us! While my association with the Mumbai theatre world began in 1970, it was not till 1979 when I was casting for GANDHI, that I entered the precincts of NSD and encountered the hallowed presence of Ebrahim Alkazi.

But there was so much I was ignorant of until Amal sent me her biography on her father -- Holding Time Captive. As I went through the six hundred and fourteen pages that not only chronicled Elk’s life but also the history of theatre in this city, I relived those relevant decades of my life. Every page was a revelation of Sultan (Bobby) Padamsee,  Kulsum Terrace, and Theatre Group - all names that are synonymous with the beginnings of English theatre in Mumbai.

Amal Allana’s book takes us through Alkazi’s arrival at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai and his meeting Bobby Padamsee, the founder of Theatre Group Mumbai. Right from becoming a family member of the Theatre Group, to breaking away and starting his own Theatre Unit with wife Roshan Alkazi (nee Padamsee), to creating his Megdoot Theatre on the terrace of Vithal Court, marking his foray into Hindustani theatre, and finally to his move to Delhi when he was invited to start the National School of Drama in 1962 - it all reads like a romance. 

Author Amal Allana, through her father’s  biography, introduces us to this theatre legend with such sensitive acceptance and responses to all his physical and emotional tergiversations.  Here was a man not only immersed in stage and theatre, but also his knowledge and interest in the arts and poetry influenced all those around him and allowed us to expand the scope of our minds and embrace every discipline denied to students in institutions.

Truly, a must read for theatre aficionados and those who are beginning to take an interest in the artform!