This lecture is titled, Interacting Continuum of Classical Folk and Modern Drama. This of course requires close reading and understanding of the previous lectures, but I think we do want to move forward with these ideas primarily from the point of view of playwriting and therefore, we will also maintain a balance between Natak and Bhan or plays with many characters and monologues with a single character. So, let me share the outline of this lecture, so that you are able to see the point of view that I am trying to share with you. The first part is devoted to this idea of interacting continuum of classical folk and modern drama, where we will explain these terms clearly to you and we will also point out how this process has been a very complex set of exchanges between various countries and also within the countries between different languages and aesthetic practices. We will then move on to show the outcome of these encounters by way of textual details. We are trying now to develop momentum in terms of textuality, so that you can also have some sense of how a full script works out, due to copyright reasons we have not been able to do that to our satisfaction, but I think in the next two lectures we would have taken care of some of this difficulty. So, the second part will deal with postcolonial adaptations and interpretations and once again we would move from Natak to monologue and in the third part therefore, our focus will be on monologues. At no point do we want to give up the term dialogue, because I feel that theatre or drama is inherently a dialogic form in the sense of trying to develop a dialogue between the performers and or a performer and the audience. So, it is always a very dynamic process, we have shared these ideas with you earlier and therefore, even while talking about monologues I really do not want to give up this sense of dialogues. So, this is the way we have structured this lecture and first of all we would start with this idea of the continuum, why is it that we have been harping it time and again. That is because often students ask us and these are of course very earnest questions, they ask us about a worldview, how do we develop a creative outlook, how do we develop a creative worldview and that is a very difficult question to answer indeed, but it is as I said a very earnest question and therefore, you know when we talk about these encounters, these exchanges, these dynamic layerings between different kinds of traditions and historical periods, because many of them have emerged in different historical conditions, but the aesthetic forms have remained, the times have changed, but the aesthetic forms have remained. So, I think what we are trying to suggest is this need for a great deal of alertness in terms of locating yourself within the complex cross currents of your own location, the complex cultural cross currents and not really keep your options very very limited, this is what we are trying to suggest and we also feel very strongly that one way of trying to understand how to develop one's own creative outlook or a very sustainable dynamic way of dealing with one's own potential and creativity is to also read other important writers and realize or notice that there has been tremendous creative tension especially in the Indian writers, Indian playwrights by way of the indigenous traditions which are so rich, so prolific, but they come with a particular world view and also the impact of western forms which of course, within drama we will try and locate what exactly that means in the next slide. For example, when we talk about these key terms like the classical, the folk and the modern, we have also earlier mentioned to you how so far as drama is concerned, the classical was also invested in the dominant world view. Although it does seem to be inclusive when we read Kalidas, it is not as if it is a complete wiping out of different kinds of people, but the focus is definitely on dominant value systems of that time and I will not go into that in too much detail, but it is also linked in various other forms that developed around it apart from written plays, other forms like dance drama or by way of other theater practice, what it really continued to do is to have a vibrant relationship with ritual and devotional traditions. So, then this is what the Sanskrit theater evokes and even in contemporary practice for example, playwrights like Badal Sarkar have often had said in the 70s and I remember this interview that was published in an act while he was talking to Richard Shekna. He pointed out that he is not inspired by the classical traditions because they seem to him obscurantist, that was his position at that point in time. Of course, later on he developed the theater of rural urban links which actually went into folk theater and participatory forms, but I think that is a kind of predilection that many contemporary playwrights have expressed. People like Habib Tanbir on the other hand have taken some very vigorous elements from Sanskrit theater, but in other words I think the issue of content and issue of form cannot be separated very easily and that is why there are a lot of issues when we begin to talk about examining these forms and when we suggest to you that you should look at multiplicity of aesthetic practice that exists in country. It is really not an easy situation because each of these issues come with as I said the world view and also the attendant political cultural problems that may emerge out of this confrontation. Of course, so Sanskrit theater it does in its own way exists in practice even today and then you have the folk forms which we have discussed earlier. I do want to add to it though because during the period of colonization the folk forms were actually labeled as the intermediary forms because in addition to their loose structure the folk forms have been known for their episodic loose structure. What happened to these forms is related to the vigor of the political will of the people. So, the intermediary forms the folk forms became intermediary forms much more political in their intent. They were anti-British and they were powerful, they were robust and the British were shaken by them because wherever they applied censorship in other domains or they curb people in other domains theater had at that time become a vigorous mode of you know critiquing the British system protesting against it very very stridently. So, I think it is very interesting to note that this element also of constant change within each form because it reflects the will of the audience and the will of the playwright, the will of that historical period if you will. I think that is something that one should take note of and a lot of street theater that we see today is also in that sense intermediary. It is political in intent, it wishes to make a point and it also is very loosely structured. Modern theater on the other hand really was based on the influence of prose plays that were written in the west before they were written in India and these plays were often problem plays that is they identified like in the plays of Ibsen or in the plays of Strinberg and to some extent in the plays of Chekhov some important issues of social importance and they placed the individuals within those issues of some social magnitude and therefore I think this modern theater initially was highly influenced by the Aristotelian model which indeed Ibsen to a great extent, Strinberg to some extent and Chekhov to a lesser degree all of them function within the Aristotelian model of sort of fast moving plot and also a sense of causality that was very important in understanding the problems of the modern character. But gradually of course this also got modified and then you had in 1940's Bertolt Brecht the great German playwright who questioned the Aristotelian pattern very vigorously and created epic theater with its own outlook of you know sort of provoking the audience into thinking and he was influenced by the classical Asian model the no theater in Japan and he also was influenced by the range and power of epics and also some of the theater forms in India. So then in other words this is also not a very very simple scene and when we talk about the continuum I think we should also include this tension with western forms. It is a creative tension and I think in that sense it is a very very productive situation when you begin to write and you begin to think about the forms because the forms also in some ways will help you flesh out the content. So now this balance that I earlier talked about this balance between Natak and Vaan from Bharat Muni's category of 10 types of plays. We have singled it out primarily because it creates resonances for us in terms of drama as a full-fledged many act play with lots of characters and then Vaan with the focus on one single character. So please do not look at it in a very literal fashion but you know also see the wider ramifications of these two forms and see which one appeals to you although I think you need to understand both. So as I said the textually although we have a certain limitation right now but I thought what we could also do now is to show you how because it's not a simple process of looking at just any model you pick it up and you begin to use it it's not a simple process. So one way of doing this is to suggest some critical reading to you based on reading of Shakuntalam. Since we have undertaken that in the last lecture we thought we could we can build on this and so let's look at critical readings of Shakuntalam. We would like you to read the full play either in Sanskrit original if you can read Sanskrit or in translation but we would also recommend a play essay an essay by Rabindranath Tagore which we have listed here and we would only be able to give the excerpts from this essay. So you can try and build the total picture by looking or reading this essay after reading the play forming your own opinions reading this particular essay and then in turn we will place Romila Thapar's reaction to Tagore's essay on Shakuntalam. So that will give you some idea about the critical process that is involved in taking a position by way of combining various elements of existing traditions because the content and aesthetic form cannot be separated very sharply. So now this is what Tagore had to say about Shakuntalam. First of all Tagore went back to Kalidas' time and again that has been well documented. So this is what he has to say about Shakuntalam the play and Shakuntala the protagonist. Kalidas has let his hermitage bred youthful heroine follow the unsuspecting path of nature nowhere has he restrained her. He is trying to sort of map his response to the play and also the transformation that occurs in Shakuntala. Now as you know in drama it is very important for the play right to show a situation of conflict. I mean conflict is at the heart of drama and in that sense on the one hand he shows the you know childlike nature of Shakuntala in the beginning Kalidas portrays that. He also places her in the hermitage and according to Tagore initially this is this unsuspecting path of nature. She follows the unsuspecting path of nature. You begin to see that he is going to say something else about the next stage where Shakuntala is rejected by Dushyant and also then she undergoes certain kind of change in her world view or in her outlook. So now this is what he has to say and yet he has developed her into the model of a devoted wife with her reserve endurance of sorrow and life of rigid spiritual discipline. This is Tagore's take on the second phase of Shakuntala because you know she is forced to reflect about her own condition as a woman's spurn and also a mother. Then he goes on to say at the beginning we see her self-forgetful and obedient to nature's impulses like the plants and flowers at the end we see her deeper feminine soul. So at the end we see her deeper feminine soul. So of course this is Tagore's take and obviously Tagore took this play seriously enough. It had a deep impact on him and he raised some of these issues in another play that he himself wrote and let us see if we can find that. We will in a minute mention that aspect of Tagore but I think it may be useful to see how Romila Thapar responds to Tagore's point of view which of course we have constructed for you only through selected excerpts. So what happens is that when you select these excerpts you do it from your own point of view. So therefore if you read the full essay you will get many more angles to this discussion. In terms of Romila Thapar's response it is very visible from the title itself. Romila Thapar is a very well known very important historian and this is I think her sort of attempt to place a literary text in a historical context. I will not go into her methodology but right now she is responding to Tagore and this is title Shakuntala and Middle Class Nationalism. She says that Tagore trees the play as an allegory. He is of course free to read it differently. What is of interest is the degree to which Tagore's reading reflects the social and moral concerns of his own time and his response to both Orientalism and Nationalism. So two things about this one is that I think it shows very clearly that when you begin to read any text I think your own sense of self your own value system is reflected in that reading. Your own concerns are reflected in that reading and that is what makes reading very enjoyable and that is why now you will notice that the classics have been re-read from number of positions including the position of the marginalized people in terms of you know marginalized cast groups or marginalized gender issues. There are lots of re-readings of classical texts and of course Tagore you know she links reading by Tagore within the framework of Orientalism and Nationalism debates that were also very important issues of Tagore's time. Here of course the term Orientalism refers to the debates between the Orientalists and Anglicists during the period of colonization where the Orientalists emphasize the significance of Indian classical texts as opposed to the Anglicists who emphasize the need to introduce English language and literature. So there were these contending viewpoints and Tagore's reading of Kalidas is his response to this notion of Orientalism and Nationalism. So it is part of the national project to also discover the strengths of our own roots, our own culture but of course it is fraught with lots of difficulties. So partly this and then of course the other aspect of this reading of Kalidas by Tagore that Tagore not only wrote this analytical essay because that is really fascinating on the one hand he is very analytical and you know it sort of goes into his ideas in great detail in terms of his motivations, his understanding and on the other hand the creative impulse takes its own path and in that sense although he seems to read Shakuntala as someone who actually has fallen because of this Gandharva marriage with the Shant and therefore later on when he rejects her this period of reflection in you know enhances her status as a woman. It gives her another philosophical realm which Tagore seems to relish. Now that is a very, very controversial reading and a very controversial point of view and on the other hand what he did in Chitrangada is to raise these very issues in a very different framework though. You can have a look at Chitrangada on YouTube and examine the parallels but I think two things can be said here. One is that the problem that Tagore raised and the reason we mentioned these examples is to show that while writing plays and finding your own sources of inspiration you will realize that a very sharp critical process is also very, very active. So, in Chitrangada the problems that Tagore raised are problems again of Gandharva marriage and also the portrayal of the protagonist just as in Kalidas' Shakuntala. The protagonist's portrayal is very sensuous. You saw that in Raja Ravi Verma's paintings also and Kalidas is really sort of one of the greatest I think poets of Shanghara's. So, in that sense the sensuous portrayals also this issue he did not really run away from but I think what Romila Thapar has pointed out is that this sensuous portrayal in Indian art and therefore in Tagore also you know one can try and understand it in terms of its value as a symbolic value as a spiritual activity. Let me read this sentence. The sensuous in Indian art and literature was frequently justified as being symbolic of the spiritual. So, Thapar is also trying to understand this creative locus of Chitrangada while on the one hand Tagore is very judgmental about Shakuntala and her character and he places her in a way that I suppose many of us women today would find very troublesome. This punishment that is meted out to her I do not think we would be able to empathize with that as a source for spiritual upliftment but certainly she is trying to understand how Tagore views it and in that sense this play also is worth looking at. So, this is a kind of response to the play and in that sense it is a interpretation and adaptation of sorts also. There is one more idea that we just want to quickly foreground and not spend too much time over this. There is some kind of ambivalence in the way Tagore portrays nature because the ashram of Kanva for example is seen as a place where there is you know nature and life. There is kind of total harmony between the individual and nature and elsewhere he is also talked about the tempest where nature is an enemy with the you know. So, I think this contrasting view we want to develop some discussion of it not right now but later on discussion of his two short stories Lamb and Balai because I think that really grips one's attention and I think we can also place it within Shakuntalam and Shakuntala as nature's child and take the discussion forward but I think we will wait for that to happen later on. The other thing that I think one cannot quite ignore is the sense of a gender divide in Shakuntalam. As I said as contemporary women looking for empowerment I think it would be difficult to accept this viewpoint that the responsibility of the Gandhar marriage is totally on Shakuntala and therefore I think what I would like to do is to give you not just an analytical response but a creative response in terms of how this whole tradition of you know the classical sort of male gaze how at least personally I have responded to it because this is not just a response to Shakuntalam although it is a response to Shakuntalam and the weight of a tradition that she feels and on the other hand also classical Sanskrit dramaturgy with the Sutradhar at the center and again the absence of either a director as a woman or absence of the Sutradhar as a woman absence of a woman as a playwright in that period and in that sense I like to share this creative response very briefly with you from this play that I have written and in lecture 11 of module 2 some of the students had performed it. They had read the first act I am reading the prologue and the epilogue mainly to point out the attraction of Sanskrit theatre because it does have a better textual elements that are fascinating and at the same time the thematic weight and also the structural weight which is tilted in favor of men. So, this is a response I mean you can also view this response critically except or reject it that would be perfectly fine. So, here is the prologue of a dream in three acts locale near a forest the play begins with the appearance of the Sutradhar whose dressed in conventional style in impeccable dhoti kurta shining red turban a string of pearls on his neck and a formal silk shawl on his left shoulder a woman should play this part in an agonized manner she will reveal her actual female identity later on the Sutradhar in a compelling and authoritarian manner. Namaskar from Kalidas to Karnat I have invoked the gods for unhindered completion of our play imitates the prologue of Shakuntala eight forms has Shiva lord of all and king and these are water first created thing and fire which speeds the sacrifice begun the priest and times dividers moon and sun the all embracing ether path of sound the earth where in all seeds of life are found and air the breath of life may he draw near reveal in these and bless those gathered here pauses and then annex the mudra of Garnapati and resize the prayer from Karnat's high wedding after this meditative offering I am leaving out that prayer after this meditative offering the sutradhar's expressions change as he hears sounds of footsteps with a lack to say alacrity I hear footsteps the theater troupe has arrived after a pause but but where are the kingly men and their Bhartcharans the twisted Vidushaka and the Darseys instead I see actresses only two of them I am not trained to manage a play of this kind I refuse to be a party to it hides behind a luxury leaving the actresses anchor less and the epilogue that is the end of the play the sutradhar who has been hiding all this time watching the shifting scenes clandestinely appears on the stage again this time dressed in the same dhoti kurta that the silk dupatta is worn the vedupattas are worn with salwar commies instead of the turban her hair is flowing opulently the manner of talking is much more relaxed and communicative the voice is mellyfluous somewhat unschooled sutradhar oh I am so tired why was I hiding all this time I was partly awake partly asleep hiding from myself to play a role as per convention but the actresses presented presented the reality that I know of and dreams that grow out of them the play is over for the time being but the dreams flicker like a dia on a star b night I am affected by this freedom of expression now on I shall not abandon an all-actress play let me sing a new prayer for the audience a new prayer of my own to celebrate this play sing softly almost like a lullaby I am leaving out that prayer and with the gesture of namaskar the play ends so this is my response to this whole sense of tradition with also its thematic I would say weight I like to move on to other examples and as I said you do not have to accept whatever is being presented before you you can critique it you can also examine it critique is possible only after examining the ideas but you really do not have to accept them totally let us move on to other examples in part b we will look at some postcolonial adaptations and interpretations and we will mainly mention some because we will not be able to talk about them much I think it is really very interesting to look at Habib Tanbir's adaptation of Shudraksh Britsha Kartikam the title of that adaptation is Mitti Ki Gadi because as I pointed out earlier to you I think Tanbir and Girish Karnad both actually owe a debt hysterically and also in terms of the creative vision they owe a debt to Berthold Brecht which they have acknowledged and they are two very very different kinds of playwrights I think Tanbir is highly politically charged and his plays also are really enhance your awareness of political issues and on the other hand Karnad is much more into the cultural politics of his times but in Hayabadan and other plays I think again he has acknowledged that he came to the folk traditions via this notion of alienation effect that Berthold Brecht had developed with reference to his epic theater. Interestingly Brecht himself came to that notion by rejecting the Aristotelian prose plays of his own framework playwrights like Ibsen for example their work he completely rejected that model and he felt that for the age of science it was very important to write plays where the audience which had already begun to question things around them was provoked into thinking and so the playwright and the director of any you know such play should not take the audience for granted whereas in the modern Ibsen kind of theater the audience went to theater identified with the middle class characters or the proletariat characters that were presented if this was a play exclusively devoted to proletarian themes and through this identification they more or less confirmed their own way of looking at the world whereas the kind of theater Brecht wanted to build was theater which would awaken the audience into thinking so all the thoughts are with the audience but he through theater through aesthetic practice through entertainment their own consciousness would be awakened. So both Karnad and Tanvir in their own very very different ways acknowledged that they really came to the aesthetic structure of folk tradition which is as I said earlier also it is loosely structured it is also much more questioning in terms of the world around so they came to these forms via Brechtian notion of certain amount of critical distancing and also complex seeing. So therefore I think I would strongly recommend that you read especially these two plays and definitely these two playwrights but right now we would like to shift our attention to Bhan because we have already discussed Shakuntalam so we would like to move to Bhan because we are equally interested in monologue form and in that sense let us try and see why the monologue form has grown in strength in contemporary period although in terms of a sense of continuity at least so far as I am concerned I did not find any prose play written within the Bhan framework we have talked about Bhan earlier and his transformation but you know that is really a very different kind of path where it got transformed into Tamasha and certain aspects of Tamasha whereas Bhan by way of prose plays of the kind that we are working out these really we have not chance on any of these examples so I think we will soon begin to look at monologue and one idea that we are emphasizing is the incredibly complex braiding of traditions and counter traditions that unfold when you begin to look at folk classical modern continuum. I think we will sort of move on to the monologues and before that perhaps I can also point out to you one more idea which is related to the fact that I think I have already mentioned it but I just in case I have missed out and you want to pursue this further we have as Indian writers looked at western models and it's often linked to the colonization process but I think it is also important to know that the westerners have also examined Indian writing from very early stages and you know some of this became very very dominant post 60s in terms of theatre Brecht is the milestone in terms of breaking away from Eurocentrism in terms of search for new forms participatory theatre important ways of talking to the audience about contemporary issues changing the meaning of theatre space but you know later on for example 60s onwards another kind of theatre sort of work has grown around Grotowski who also actually interpreted Shakuntalam to find universal themes of relevance and then Peter Brogues produced Mahabharat there's been that feeling of certain amount of critical uneasiness that has been expressed about these movements and if you are interested in following this up I think you should look at Barocha's politics of cultural practice thinking through theatre in an age of globalization and I think the reason I think it may be important is because the question that you have to ask is whether you are only imitating a particular model or it goes beyond that in terms of what you really want to say and you know so those are difficult strands to separate but if you want to pursue this would be the line of action for you. I will now move very quickly to monologues that have been written in recent years and also you know talk about their significance. I have been trying to figure out why so many monologues have appeared many of the monologues that we will share with you are not like monologues in the way Daisy's monologue and vocation as a monologues has sort of unfolded. These are playwrights who in addition have also written monologues so that makes for interesting combination and contrast. We won't go over the definition of monologue again but you can have a look at it in terms of what we have said earlier by way of a single character being at the center of this creative work and therefore now let us see what is this new idea that what we want you to consider. So, in trying to figure out the reasons for this unfolding of monologues I felt that may be this idea that talk will had mentioned in democracy in America and Robert Corrigan went on to foreground it in his excellent reading of modern drama in the book Theater in Search of a Fix. I think if we foreground that idea maybe we will begin to understand something about contemporary monologues in India or the use of monologue form in fairly distinctive ways. Talk will has actually mentioned in his famous book Democracy in America that in democracy drama would and this is seen as a prophetic statement that he made that drama would inevitably begin to focus on the individual divested of external trappings on the individual alone. And I think what he was can trying to emphasize is this unit of the individual which is so very important for any democracy and in that sense perhaps if we place this idea with reference to the monologues and the focus on a single individual and the ability of the playwright to sustain that monologue by way of a performative activity which people go and see. I think we may be able to see the kind of turmoil that exists in our own democracy you know or has existed for quite some time. And then also this the deep sense of the individual different kinds of individuals and the conflicts that they encounter what are the kinds of conflict conflicts that they encounter. So, I am not saying that a thesis can be built round it a predictable pattern can be you know worked around it, but certainly what I am suggesting is the emergence of this monologue in terms of this growing sense of democracy and the turmoil that the individual faces. So, then I think the two monologues in this session that I will present are both written by Girish Karnad an important contemporary Indian playwright who actually started his career with writing in Kannad, but he wrote Yayati he mentioned and this is a very vivid description where he mentioned that he wanted to write in English and he wanted to be a poet in English, but when he sat down to write and he want I mean he was compelled to write he wrote in Kannad and also mythic themes just surfaced in his consciousness. So, that was the starting point of Girish Karnad's career but in 2004 he wrote these monologues for the first time in English that is a big big surprise and also the other big surprise so far as I am concerned is the kind of I think ambivalence that I notice about the characters this certainly a sense of a conflict but both the plays that monologues that we will share with you by way of just giving you some lead questions are monologues that really end up raising doubts and confusion and so I really feel I wonder as to what is the locus of this creative effort. The first one flowers in some ways is very reminiscent of Sanskrit theatre both in terms of the ritual oriented religious theme, the protagonist at the center who is a priest and the sort of weight of that whole tradition that within which the conflict is located but of course it is based on a folklore the folklore and the folk tradition also contains elements of the sacred and then of course the transition to the profane is also something that occurs within that tradition. So, this is based on folklore and it shows the intense internal conflict in the character between his vocation as a priest and his longing alongings as a man and there are also two very different kinds of women who are placed in the play one is his wife and the other is the courtesan with whom he falls in love and he takes all his puja flowers and offers them to her after the pujas and finally you know he is indicted by the king for you know transgressing his role as the priest and the play ends with the ambivalent power of the priest's prayers and I would not go into exactly how this happens because I think I much rather that you discover it yourself and finally the play ends with self annihilation as a resolution of the priest's internal conflict all in all it in some ways it may not be Bhan but it somehow binds you of the trajectory of Sanskrit theater and it leaves you very very confused but it is in performance it really works quite strongly I saw performance where a very good actor played the part and the performance worked very well so it does raise questions but as I said the answers are very difficult to come by the second one is another big surprise so this two is written in English has been translated in other languages also this is called broken images and you may have heard of it because it has been staged quite frequently and some good actresses have played the part and they have liked the play very much it is a way it has a very high tech feel this play has very high tech feel and I think Karnad is exploring this contemporary ethos very actively. The locale here is the interior of a television studio and there is a big plasma screen which hangs on one side big enough for a close up on it to be seen clearly by the audience and the protagonist is Manjula and actually then the she has this television image which is her doppelganger that is it is her other self and it is the questioning self. Now in this play Manjula dissembles throughout and these acts revolve around creative writing in Kannad versus writing in English, politics of publishing, issues of authorship, ethics of interpersonal relationships, Indian writing in English, fiction versus drama. I think the character is loaded with too many issues of significance and I am not able to really fathom as to what kind of central issue of magnitude Karnad is trying to raise through the character of Manjula. Why the woman protagonist who actually used to write in Kannad but then she steals the manuscript that her handicapped sister had written and she passes it off as her own after the death of this sister and then she stakes the claim to all the fame, the money that comes with this and of course loses her husband because he finds out that this is an absolute fraud and so she loses on that front. What is the locus? What is the driving energy behind creation of this female protagonist as a fraud and also is this an allegory? If this is an allegory how does this work out? I think I will leave these questions to you but the play in a certain sense has dramatic moments where this exchange between Manjula and her doppelganger it sort of builds up and slowly Manjula is forced to tell the truth and face the truth and you know she is sort of from time to time explodes in great anger because she does not want to be questioned. She just does not want to be held accountable by anybody. So she is a very immoral, a very harsh cruel protagonist but this is the way I look at it some other actresses who did this part they have mentioned that they found the balance between Manjula and her sister Malini as you know equal in dramatic power. I am not able to actually see that anywhere in the play. So I think what we would do is to leave the reading to you the script is very good very well written but the content it really leaves you very confused. And that is where I mean I think this whole question of your own worldview what is your driving energy you do not have to give a message as such but I think they should be some palpable sense of your belief in your character or if it is a satire or if it is a parody or it is an act of questioning that questioning should be anchored so powerfully that you are able to understand what this is. It evokes that sense in you you know by way of a response. So I personally feel very dissatisfied with both the monologues although in some ways you can say these are very very democratic themes about different kinds of characters. You can wish away different kinds of people and different kinds of issues that have unfolded the issue of immorality may also be seen by Karnad as an issue of globalization. I do not really know. So I think you will have to figure it out and if you get a chance to talk to Mr. Karnad you can talk to him or you can have your own take. We are very happy to say that in the next two lectures we will be able to actually have a play reading by an important playwright Ramu Ramanathan himself and that is also an interlink monologues in that play. He is a very familiar figure in IIT Bombay because he has come here time and again and done lots of productions, professional productions plus also interacted with students. His play Mahadev Bhai was staged last year. So far as this particular play that has been presented to you in the next lecture and followed by a discussion with the students between the playwright and the students. This play is three Sakina Manzil. The research for which was done by Amrit Gangar and the play premiered in Prithvi theatre in 2004. I think you will enjoy that session very much and I think I really would like at the outset to thank Ramu for being so very generous with the script and the reading and Pooja Asher for participating in the reading and all the students who participated in the discussion. I think you will enjoy that way, way much and we are so happy that we will be able to share one full play without any copyright issues because the playwright has given us the permission and he himself is reading the play. So I sort of look forward to that session and you will notice all the things that we have already talked about. For example, hybrid language, interlink monologues and the rest of course you will discover yourself. Just place the work cited list for you and that is the end of this session. Thank you very much.


to introduce the first contestant. We have the lady Amazaya, yeah? Give her a round of applause for Ms. Amazaya. She'll be doing a song, leave them to age. Leave them to age. Amazaya. But this one, leave them to age. Juliana, you're around, right? Thought I'd try out your song, girl. Let's go. Hospital burning. I can see your elimination running. We have the same ticket in the hand, right? Same ticket. You buy the same ticket. Now, let me tell you. You see how the CSA nice?  Isn't the CSA the most wonderful organist? Can I get a round of applause, please, for the CSA? This artist is a man I know very well from the Irish boy school from the Ira Simmons, representing the Ministry of Commerce, the Bureau of... He is coming tonight to set standards in Calypso. Put your hands together to do a shadow favorite. Now, all the fellas in the audience, this song is preached. This one is just for you. And it's not often fellas as in request to you, right? But this one come in... No, this request come in from your father-in-law. It's one done by a shadow called mind your child. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the preacher.  Yes, reasons. Be doing, shake yourself. Right here, no, no, no. You're going to catch him, isn't it? Zendo, charol. Zendo, charol. Zendo, charol. Zendo, charol. Zendo, charol. Come on, folks. You can do better than that. Put your hands together one more time for the man, Tempo. Is St. Lucia a beautiful place or what? Anybody here from customs department, customs party, let me help you make some noise. Because we want to bring on the man, double trouble to do heavenly bliss. Put your hands together. Make some noise for the man, double trouble. The hottest dance in St. Lucia, the takeover tent. Noise for the man. Get through to do something entitled, Marsha Posse. The Marsha man, I come out in defense of my community and his peaceful residence. After all, from any odd, we determine to recollect that for so long, Marsha people, resilient and various. Let's give them some competition. Give it up for the lady, Brown Sugar. I always prefer Brown Sugar, you know. Trust me. No. Some people out there saying a while ago they never know police officers good wine. Obviously, you've never been to the police canteen. Because they only wanted, you know, they could rum and coke and cotton soda too. I notice a lot of people come out here today because of the next artist coming up. Can he give it two new verses, that fresh song? The worst thing to do is to go in a calypso show and meet up with, it looked like you have a lot of bolting on your mind tonight, Paul Bois. We ain't there yet. You know them brothers just make my work so easy for me. I tell you, I love them guys. We ain't going there yet, but they have a lot of people who, when they hear Haggai on the show, afraid Haggai put them in the new verses he have for this song. Now I want to tell you, Haggai did not practice with the band.  But not in our business. We ain't come here to judge Haggai. We ain't come here to judge Haggai. But to keep the CSA lively and ready tonight, I wanted to give a warm welcome to a real veteran in Calypso. Put your hands together for the man, Haggai, doing a nice medley for us tonight. Tonight, make some noise from the Ministry of Health to do something called warm noise for the man. We call the newspaper, and that is the crusader. The crusader. Oh, still not interested yet. One Caribbean. Thank you. The one Caribbean. Right here in St. Glacier, they have a lot of newspaper. The star and the mirror, the voice and the crusader. Well, listen here, everyone. It's one people does the champion, but it's yet to be done. Beyond it is called the one Caribbean to get all the news. Pretty one Caribbean. Good topics and reviews. Pretty one Caribbean. It is good down to the letter. Pretty one Caribbean. You can't buy anything better. Pretty one Caribbean. Real facts. Only one paper can do that. It does really inform you. The best newspaper for you. Whatever story that's on the cover, you can read it inside the paper and in depth look at the situation. Read it in the one Caribbean to get all the news. Pretty one Caribbean. Good topics and reviews. Pretty one Caribbean. It is good down to the letter. Pretty one Caribbean. You can't buy anything better. Pretty one Caribbean. Good topics and reviews. Pretty one Caribbean. It is good down to the letter. Pretty one Caribbean. You can't buy anything better. Pretty one Caribbean. Oh, what a quality newspaper. Much better than the others. No other paper can compare. One Caribbean down here. Pretty one. The St. Lucia Bureau of Standards to do something in time with my privilege. Make some noise for the man, the preacher. People put your hands together. Welcome on stage, the preacher. In the beginning, God blessed them and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that move on the earth. These are my words. Listen and take heed. To my right, that's my privilege. What people say, boy, you say just live safe and positive in this generation. Stand them angry. We have a right to pursue. The youths and them plan to sue. At my age, I have a right to my right. That's my privilege. And innocent woman got shot down. If we put away the violence, we have a right to pursue. I have a right to my right. That's my privilege. Thank you, people. By the way, I'm going to change. I'm going to play baseball now, sir. Empty two. Dispays the web. Plantation. Labor they now. It's like nothing to mention. Look like we're stuck at base. Our bosses, boys, we change. We work in blight and we work in man. They turn into like building man. We ain't striking no more. But I'll tell you, we ain't striking no more. Somebody workers have it rough. But they're fooling them in cloth. Of the occasion to dress up nice and drink. At least we're stopping late. And they didn't like it no more. We strike no more. It's time for us to make sure that we live right. We tighten up ourselves and we pull up our socks. Don't you agree? This is why I want to call on the man sleeping serpent to do something entitled pull up your socks. Make some noise at the man sleeping serpent. Ladies and gentlemen, from 1985, since the first case was diagnosed. My people. Condemnize. Condemnize. Condemnize. Condemnize. Condemnize. Yes. Condemnize. Come on, folks. We can do better than that. One more time. Give it up for the sleeping serpent. Now, the title of the song is Control HIV. Make some noise, people, for the man temper from the Saint Lucia Tourist Board. The symposium on HIV. A scourge is affecting the world today. HIV is killing our young population. We are killing, we are losing our vibrant citizen between the ages of 15 and 35. HIV can be passed on through any sexual activity, be it anal, vaginal or oral. It can be passed between drug users by infected needle and by unscreened blood transfusions from infected persons. The various symptoms of HIV include excessive tiredness, sudden weight loss, swollen lymph glands, loss of appetite over a long period of time and a persistent skin rash. Abstaining from sexual activity is a positive and sure way to prevent and rid ourselves of this disease. Maintaining a faithful relationship is a plus and the proper and consistent use of condoms which I will demonstrate. So, I say to you, in order to protect ourselves and love the ones, we must remember A, B, C. Abstinence, be faithful, use a condom and don't take chances. I thank you. It's as easy as A or control. Introduce the man double trouble. The man double trouble is going to be doing join the CSA. Give it up for the man double trouble. Join the CSA. Together for the man double trouble, representing the customs bossy. Join the CSA. The folks from the National Conservation Authority, let me hear you make some noise because we want to bring on the veteran, the man get through to do something called proud St. Lucian. Make some noise for the man get through. I hope he get through tonight. Calypso, one and one. Good one. Good chance to get up for the man. Struggler. Tonight, we're giving away a trip. Compliments to CSA. That is a surprise package. You have number one. All right. If you impress people, you're going to win a trip to show them where you're winning a trip to. Open it up, man. Show the people. You win a trip to where? I hope it's somewhere nice to Barbados. Give the man a round of applause. You might win. You may win yet. You might win. The audience is going to judge whether or not you deserve the trip. You know anybody in Barbados? You know people in Barbados? I started to worry about you already. No. Number two, you win a trip to where? Show them people cut style, man. Oh, God. This boy is beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, give the man a round of applause. All you carry, Germany, that there, Germany. Win a trip to Germany. You could speak German, sir. You could speak a little German. Say something in German to the people. What do you say that? Vigates. What do I mean? How are you? People, the man ask you, how are you? How are you? You're all right. All right. And who's number three? Number three. Yeah, tell your man. You deserve that trip, sir. Show the people. You win a trip to where? Show them. When you win a trip to. The audience will decide who actually hold that, sir. Right. Go back in the audience. By the end of the show, we go decide who go and where. So enjoy Barbados, Germany, and I, Kabul. Right about now, folks. We want to bring on the reigning Royal St. Lucia Police for skiing. Make some noise for the man, the mighty Kakaal. We're going to give the top three trophies first. Top three. Second runner up with a total of 309 points in third position. Make some noise for the only lady out here tonight, Amazeia. At number three. Second position with a total of 312 points. Tourism on pass. Make some noise for the man. A Calypso Monarch happening in a lot of 328 points. Make some noise for the sleeping. Performer gets a participation trophy. So let's call on first of all, well, let me just tell you, he came in in fourth position with 303 points. The man get through. Can we get the trophy for the man? Get through. Get through in position four. Yeah, get through. Come forth. With 294 points in position five. The customs passe. The man double trouble. 181 points in sixth position. The mighty preacher. And in position seven, 268 points. Make some noise for the brother. And in eighth position with a total of 264 points. Let's put our hands together and say thank you to the man. The web. Here you have it folks.


I'm Marsha Joyner, and we are navigating the journey. Navigating the journey is dedicated to exploring the options and choices for the end of life, and to assist people to talk about their wishes. It's time to transform our culture so we shift from not talking about it, but to talk about dying. It's time to share the way we want to live our lives at the end of our lives. And it's time to communicate about what kind of care we want and don't want for ourselves. Today, we're going to take just a detour on that journey. To talk about a journey that so many of us went through, so many of our people in our audience have no idea about. And for me, being the wife of a Vietnam veteran, I am going to talk about the 50th, the Welcome Home Anniversary for the 50th year since the Vietnam War. It's time to talk about it openly and honestly. We're going to commemorate those veterans. We're going to talk about what, if anything, they went through. And for me, as the wife and mother, who had to struggle with little kids through that war. So, enough of me in the tears. This is about the Welcome Home. Can we see that? Can we see this? It is so beautiful, and it's going to be a beautiful event from May 23rd until May 29th. On May 23rd, there will be a reception and registration because the veterans are coming from all over America. And then on the 24th, there will be the Taste of Hawaii at the Night Concert. And that's at the shell, of course. And on the 25th, Thursday, a Welcome Home ban quit honoring the many POWs and Gold Star families and those that are missing at action still. And that is at the Pacific Aviation Museum at Pearl Harbor. And you do have to make reservations for that one. Or on May 26th, a commemorative movie, Ride the Thunder, true Vietnam War story about the destruction of a bridge at Da Nang in 1972. And that's on the beach at Waikiki, and of course, that's free and open to the public. On May 27th at the Pacific Aviation Museum, there will be, of course, all of the planes and all of the things that were in the Vietnam War. And at 1 p.m., there will be a Vietnam symposium.  And of course, you know, all parades in Waikiki take up the whole day. And the parade begins at 4 p.m. in Waikiki. On May 28th, the military unit will, all the bases will be open for veterans and anybody else that wants to go see all the military units. And then finally, on Memorial Day, a combined city, state, National Memorial Day commemoration and at the National Memorial at Punchbow, and that's at 8.30 a.m. till 10.30 a.m. So you're invited, the public is invited to everything, and this is a time, at least for me, who still has trouble, remember in those years.  Thank you so much. Aloha. My name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I'm the host of Shrink Wrap Hawaii, where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. You're watching Think Tech on ThinkTechHawaii.com, which broadcasts five live talk shows from noon to 5 p.m. every weekday, and then streams our earlier shows all night long. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Hi, I'm Carol Cox. I'm the new host of Eyes on Hawaii. Make sure you stay in the know on Hawaii. Join us on Tuesdays at 12 noon. We will see you then. Aloha. Freedom. Is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is it an idea? At DiveHeart, we believe freedom is all of these and more, regardless of your ability. DiveHeart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, DiveHeart has helped children, adults, and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. DiveHeart has helped them transition to their new normal. Search diveheart.org and share our mission with others. And in the process, help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities in their lives. 3 p.m. On We Talk About Things of Interest to Those of Us Who Live Here, folks can be found at kawelukas.com. Okay. I didn't... Wankers off. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner and we're back. And we are going to talk about navigating the journey. And you know that in the 20 weeks we have been on, we have talked about, we have talked about many, many traditions and cultures. We had Buddhists and Muslims and Christians and everything else in between. And today we are going to talk about the Jewish tradition. Pearl, I will never be able to pronounce your last name right. It's okay. It took me a few years. After I got married, it took a while. Yeah. She is from Shabbat of Hawaii and she's the co-director of Shabbat, Hawaii. And that's a Jewish educational social service agency tending to the needs of the Jewish community. Yes. And so, again, like I said, we talk about our traditions, different traditions, different cultures and their choices and options at the end of life. However, with you, since I know nothing about the Jewish tradition, we will start at the beginning and talk about the Jewish culture. Now, what I do know about is Abraham in the beginning. That's a good beginning. That's the beginning. Yes. That's a good beginning. Yeah. Well, I think it's going to be a little difficult to cover 5,000 years of Jewish history and tradition. But before we do that, who is this young woman? Okay, this is my grandson, Dov Khazanov, and his parents were, for seven years, they led a branch of our organization on the Big Island called Shabbat of the Big Island. They just moved over from Kona six months ago, so I'm really lucky to have them near me now. And he's with me today because I love him and I want him with me. Very good. And how old are you, sweetheart? Seven. Seven. Great. He just turned seven. He just turned seven. Happy birthday. Yeah. Happy birthday. This is his little birthday treat. Happy birthday. Thank you. Okay. So, well, okay, now we can't go through 7, 5,000 years. Right. Right. So, I actually- Yes. What is the Jewish year? What is the year? Okay, so it's interesting that you asked that because as you may or may not know or some of your listeners may know, the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar. It's not a solar calendar. And according to Jewish teachings, the world is actually 5,777 years old. So we are in the year 5777, and Jewish history began, like all human history, with the beginnings of time with Adam and Eve. And the Jewish people became a nation in the Jewish calendar year of 2,448, when they accepted the Tenka Mountains on Mount Sinai. And that was good 3,329 years ago. Now, so I read on your web page about the children receiving the Tenka Mountains. Yes. Yes. And you're having an event. Oh, okay. So, also very interesting that you focused on that because that's coming up shortly. I believe it's May 30th and 31st, and Hebrew is called the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which means weeks because we count the weeks from Passover, which we just celebrated a month ago, the Exodus of the Jewish people, to seven weeks later when they stood at Mount Sinai and received the Tenka Mountains. Now there is a tradition and a teaching that when God wants to give the Jewish people the Tenka Mountains, he wants to be fear. So he didn't want to only offer to the Jewish people, and he went around to all the nations of the world and said, I have a gift, and the Torah is its name. The Torah is what we call our Bible. And each nation asked, well, what is it saying in it? And God told one nation, well, it says, do not kill. And they said, no, no, no, no, not for us. Then he went to another nation, and they said, well, what is it saying in it?  And they said, no, no, not for us. Then he went to another nation, and they asked, well, what is it saying in it? And he said, honor your father and mother. And they said, no, for that we've got Father St. Mother's Day, okay? So then he came to the Jewish people, and they accepted it unconditionally. They said, we will do and we will hear. In other words, we're going to accept it. And then God said, hey, not so fast. I want to guarantee. This is a covenant between you and me forever that you're going to keep this forever. So they offered our patriarch, the forefather, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the foremothers, and God didn't accept any of them as collateral. And finally, the Jewish people said, we offer the children, because obviously this is where we get the idea that the children are our future. If the children will continue to study and observe and keep all the traditions, then we know that Judaism has a future. And then God said, okay, you've got a deal. And that's why it's important for children actually to be in the synagogue and hear the reading of the Ten Commandments, even if they can't intellectually conceptualize what's going on spiritually, we believe their souls understand. Now there is one piece of the Jewish tradition that I have repeated year after year, event after event, and have made it my own. And that is the Seder. Oh, nice. And the commandment that God says the young people will, not shall, not maybe, will tell the story in every generation and in the present tense. And I think, and I have taken that, and I think that if all of us told that story, our story in every generation and in the present tense, so that we all understood what it is, then the world would be a better place. So that's why we have chosen the navigating this journey and having people in different cultures in different religions and different traditions to tell their story in the present tense. I find it very interesting, Marcia, that you bring that up and hence my bringing exhibit aid here at the matzah. And I'll explain why I do that. You speak about Passover. Because yes, Passover has a universal message of liberation. That is, on the one hand, particular and specific to the Jewish narrative, the Jewish people. On the other hand, it speaks to a very universal human need for freedom. That we are slaves to no one but God. We are all created in the image of God, all of humankind. And again, the Jewish people accepted the commandments at Mount Sinai, but maybe a little bit later I'll talk about. There's something called the seven Noahite laws, which are seven universal laws, morality that applies to all of humankind. And the history of that is that all of humanity are called Noahites. Why? Because after the flood that's described in the Torah and the Bible, all of humanity descends from that one as children. So there are seven moral principles that apply to all of us. All the Jewish people accepted a particular code of law. All of humanity is bound by this code. And if I may briefly run through them, okay. So one is to acknowledge that there is one God, an infinite being, and we do not worship idols. We do not believe in many deities. We believe in one God, all of humanity. Number two, we respect God's sanctity by not cursing in His name. We do not use His name as a curse word. We don't take His name in vain. Number two, we respect human life, which means every human being is created in the image of God. So murder is absolutely to sell out. Unless we're talking about a case of self-defense, but that's the exception rather than rule, murder is no, no, number three.   Number five, respecting the rights and properties of others, being honest in our business dealings, and acknowledging that God is the provider for all of us. Number six is respecting God's creatures, which means cruelty to animals is forbidden. So for example, the laws of slaughtering animals and Jewish law is a whole body of very specific laws are all geared towards being humane in the slaughtering process. But each and every one of us, you know better than me, maybe. There's a lot of laws all over the place, so you may be right. I don't have a chapter of verse. Okay, I call Leviticus the Bible's health department. Oh, I like that. Very creative. But it may very well be probable. Because it makes sense. And even those of us that are not slaughtering animals, Leviticus talks a lot about sacrifices that we've stopped bringing animal sacrifices. They last existed when the temple stood in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. But kindness to animals is an everyday possibility for all of us, harming cats and dogs. The Torah has laws.  So cruelty to animals takes many forms. And again, that's a universal law that's applicable to all of humanity. And the last one, finally, is maintaining justice. In other words, we need to have a system of justice in order to have a civilized social construct called society, where we respect each other's rights. There's the rights of the community. There's the rights of the individual. But nonetheless, all societies need to have laws and courts of justice. And in this way, we maintain a just society that's pleasing in the eyes of man and the eyes of God. I did want to go back, if you don't mind, Marcia, to something you said about Passover. So I come from the Hasidic spectrum of Jewish observance, which the media might term ultra, ultra orthodox, which means we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and we try to keep it as much as humanly possible, or the laws we believe they're still applicable. So in any case, you spoke about Passover, which on the Jewish lunar calendar was exactly one month ago today. And there's a fascinating law that is applicable only today. So I woke up, and I thought, how interesting that Marcia asked me to be here today. And today is the full moon. Okay. Today is one month from Passover, and today in the Bible. In a lunar calendar, though, you would say that today is the full moon, which was exactly a month ago. A month ago was Passover, and today is called the second Passover. And that's why I brought matzah, because we eat matzah on Passover. Not only did I bring the regular matzah that people are used to seeing, the square kind of matzah. But I brought the matzah that the way the ancient Israelites made it. What? Open it. Let's see. Okay. Let me show you what I've got here. Exhibit A. I'll give everybody in the studio a little taste. Okay. And I will tell you what it is, why we eat it, and the special spiritual significance today has for everybody. Wow. So this is round matzah, hand baked. Trust me, it's worth its weight in gold. Exactly the way the ancient Israelites made it. Well, not exactly. They made it on their backs. What do you mean on their backs? And they carried it out of Egypt. They were rushing. They had no time to bake bread. So they baked matzah. This particular box, believe it or not, comes from the Ukraine via New York to Hawaii. So it's traveled around the world. This is made in 18 minutes from scratch to finish. It's just flour and water needed, rolled, punctured with holes so it doesn't rise. Have a piece. Eek. Take it. Take it. Well, take a little bit more than that. Would you like some? Okay. After? Okay. A little bit later. Okay. So now what is this matzah? So Jewish mystical sources, we all know we eat matzah on Passover. And as I just mentioned, it's because when the Jews were leaving Egypt, they left in haste that no time to bake a full loaf of bread. So it didn't rise. And this is what we ended up with for the last 3,500 years. Mystically, this is called the food of faith. Now what's the whole idea of a second Passover? We didn't go out of Egypt twice. So what happened? When the Jews were leaving Egypt, there were some people that were carrying the bones of Joseph, Joseph being Jacob's son, the ruler of Egypt, right? And when he died, he said, very me in Egypt, but when you leave, there's going to be a day there. You're going to come out. And the Israelites are going to go, the ancient Jews, are going to go to the land of Israel. Take my bones with me and bury them in the land of Israel. So there were people that were carrying his coffin, which was a wonderful thing to do, but in Judaism and the Jewish tradition, there is spiritual impurity that is associated with death. So carrying the coffin conferred upon these people spiritual impurity. So when the first Passover was happening, they could not bring this. No, wait a minute. You went over that. But that's beautiful. Okay. That carrying the coffin does what? Okay. So on the one hand, they were doing a really, a good deed called a mitzvah, which is something good in a commandment. On the other hand, they became spiritually impure. Any connection with death and Judaism makes you spiritually impure. It's not a physical thing. It's a spiritual thing. And there's a spiritual remedy for it. So actually the matzah that we eat today on Passover, it's not only to commemorate the fact that they could not make bread when they left, but it's also to commemorate the sacrifice of the paschal lamb. So we don't do sacrifices anymore. So we just eat the matzah instead of the paschal lamb that was sacrificed at midnight the night they left Egypt. So those people that were carrying the bones of Joseph said, hey, this is not fair. We can't do the paschal lamb every year. It was a year later now. They're in the desert. They're traveling. It's a year later. And Moses gives the Jewish people a commandment. Every year on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan to commemorate leaving Egypt, you are going to sacrifice a paschal lamb. So the men that were carrying the bones of Joseph came over to Moses and said, this is not fair. We're doing something good. We're bringing the bones of Joseph to Israel. But we're spiritually impure and therefore we are not allowed to bring the paschal lamb as a sacrifice. So Moses said, you got a point. Let me go ask God what to do. So Moses turns around, goes and has a meeting with God and comes back and says, okay, this is the deal. God said, you're right. You have a point. Because you're spiritually impure on the date that you were supposed to bring the paschal lamb, you will now be allowed to do it one month later. One month later, you have a chance to make up. You can bring the sacrifice, which is a way of connecting with God. Again, this is something that's very difficult for the modern mind to understand because we no longer have animal sacrifices. But the idea was in bringing a sacrifice, one sacrifice part of his animal energy, animalistic tendencies. And we become more refined spiritually. So these people that couldn't bring it, God said, I am giving you another chance exactly one month after the first Passover, which is today. You can bring the paschal lamb. And ever since then, we celebrate a month after Passover. We no longer bring sacrifices. So eat the matzah, which is in place of the paschal lamb. So what else? Is it a ceremony? Do you have? Is it a dinner? So interesting. So the only thing we do is we actually eat the matzah, which as I said, mystically is termed the bread of faith because it nourishes our faith. But the powerful spiritual lesson behind the actual act of the physical act of eating is that it's never too late. There's always a second chance. And everybody in this world, we've all messed up at one point or another in our lives. So when on today, now, would you have a dinner? Would you have a? We could eat at dinner. We could eat at lunch. We don't make a whole big ceremony like the first Seder. Right. But do you have a Seder? Do you tell this story? We tell this. So this youngens understand what today is about. Dad, do you know what Pesachini is about? No. No? He just heard it. It's the people that were tummy, that were impure and couldn't make the first Pesach, made the second one. See that? A month later. And what's interesting is the phraseology that Moses uses to convey to the Jewish people, the commandment of the second Passover, he tells them, if any of you were impure or you were physically far away, you couldn't come to the temple and bring the paschal lab. And you know, sometimes it's your own fault. You still have a second chance. That means we could have done something in our life. We could have messed up in our relationship with God, in our relationship with other human beings. We, it could be our own fault. We could be far away on a journey where we're not supposed to be. We've gone really astray. And God says the lesson, the powerful lesson of today, because every day Jewish teaching teaches has a different spiritual energy.  Today's energy, by eating the matzah a month after we originally ate it, we're demonstrating that we believe and that we know that we've got a second chance to make it right in God's eyes and in other people's eyes. This is an incredibly beautiful packaging. And this comes from the Ukraine? It does. They're made in the Ukraine. They're made in Israel. They're made in Europe. They're made in New York. They're not made in Hawaii. Of course not. We brought in over 100 pounds of this for the Passover Seder. For the first Seder. Right, right, right. This is part of what's left. Okay, so at the Shabbat, what exactly do you do there? I mean, you said it's a social service agency and a religious agency. In other words, we try and meet every spiritual need in the Jewish community. And when people from outside of the Jewish community come to us, you know, we do what we can as well. In other words, we have, like every religious agency and temple, we have prayer services. We have Sunday school for children. We have Bible adult education classes. Every holiday. We have communal meals and we invite the community. We do education about Judaism outside of the community. An example would be here. Twice a year I go to lecture at the university at UH Manoa and talk about Judaism. I speak at the School of Nursing and the intersection between Judaism and the medical profession where Jewish law might interact.  You name it. All across the spectrum. That's then real quick now, and then you're open to anyone, not just Jewish people, but anyone. Okay. So the focus of our activities is obviously Jewish education, Jewish religious education. So that applies to people with a Jewish belief. But we've had many people that are not Jewish come and wanting to explore what is Judaism about, either for conversion or pre-conversion or just out of interest. And we try to satisfy their needs for knowledge and explain to them what they want to know. This is wonderful. And I am so happy that you came real quick now. Where is Shabbat, Hawaii? Where are you located? So we are actually located right at the edge of Waikiki across the street from the convention center. We're in the Alamoana Hotel. For those of you that have lived here long enough, we're in the former Hawaiian hut. Hawaiian hut went from being a nightclub to a house of God. That's interesting. So it's a bit of a transition. And my grandson here is being comm schooled there with my other grandchildren. So we're kind of an all purpose, we're a temple, we're a synagogue, we're a place of learning, we're a place for children and adults. And like I said, whatever need is connected with Judaism. We're here to try and fill that need. Thank you so much for coming. And thank you sweetheart and happy birthday. Thank you. You're welcome darling. And thank you so much for spending this time with us. And I am delighted. Would you come back? My pleasure. Thank you Marcia.  Yeah. I can't chew because it makes noises in the microphone. Whenever you're ready in the microphone. Whenever you want to have it. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. Aloha.


Hello everybody hoodedCoverCommander788 here and welcome back to another class of Fridays. This time we are looking at the G.I. Joe classified series Gabriel Barbecue Kelly. This is G.I. Joe's firefighter and this is a figure I'm very surprised to see. Yes, Barbecue has a following and some fans even consider him to be their favorite character, but Barbecue was never a main character aside from maybe a couple episodes of the animated series. It's pretty deep into the roster if we have a Barbecue six inch figure. Let's look at the packaging. We have the window pane showing the figure and the accessories. This isn't the special mission Cobra Island target exclusive set. We have the G.I. Joe classified series logo and his name is Gabriel Barbecue Kelly. There's some nice artwork on the front of the box that continues to the side with some cool flame and ember effects which shows he is a firefighter. He is number 32 in the classified series and on the back we have the generic Cobra Island artwork. On this side of the box we have the symbols that represent his specialties. This one means he prefers Captain America's first shield. This is one of those electronic turkey carving knives. This one means his favorite muppet is beaker. This one means he is in possession of Marcellus Wallace's briefcase. Let's pull out the figure and take a look at it. Here is classified Barbecue out of the packaging and I'm going to stand him next to a vintage Barbecue figure from 1985 and you can see this is a very faithful update of the vintage figure. The details are all mostly the same. The colors match very well and even the accessories are mostly updates of the vintage accessories. I'm very impressed with the work they did on this classified figure. Looking at those accessories he includes a long axe with a silver blade. That looks really nice, really wicked. It's the perfect accessory for a firefighter. In addition to that he has this smaller hatchet also with a silver blade but also with a silver spiked knuckle guard. This one is closer to the vintage accessory but updated. I like this a lot. That hatchet can hook on this clip on the right leg at least I guess that's how it goes. There are no instructions with this figure. On the left side he has this gun looking thing with a hose that connects to the backpack.  He puts out fires. He doesn't start them. This is another callback to that vintage figure which had an accessory that looked almost the same, served the same function and connected to the backpack in exactly the same way. If you pull that nozzle out of his left hand and it is a tight fit so he grips it very well, there is a holster on that left leg and you can fit that nozzle in the holster. He has storage for that accessory. That is yet another feature copied from the vintage figure which had a tab on the left leg for connecting that nozzle. There is a black soft plastic hose that connects to a peg on the back of the nozzle and the other end connects to a peg on the left side of the backpack. It does fit on there very securely, more securely than the hose on the vintage figure but it does connect exactly the same way the vintage accessories did. The backpack is in a base dark gray plastic color with orange painted canisters and some additional warnings painted on the center one. This is a single piece backpack rather than the two piece accessory on the vintage figure. It has that peg for the hose on one side and on the other side it has a clip and that clip can fit the axe. I think that's how this goes. Again, there are no instructions with this figure but you can store the axe that way and that means barbecue can holster all of his accessories. The backpack pegs onto the figure with this peg that fits in a hole on the figure's back and that fits pretty securely. That's pretty standard. Here it is side by side with the vintage backpack and you can see it's not exactly the same but it is a nice update. With the accessories out of the way, let's take a look at the articulation on this figure. He has almost standard classified articulation. It's a little bit different but not very much. He has a very nicely articulated neck with articulation at the base of the neck and at the base of the skull with the ball joint and the hinge. So an excellent range of motion on the head. His arm will swing up at the shoulder. Pretty good range of motion that is not hindered by this vest piece. He will also swivel at the shoulder all the way around. There is a twist at the upper arm at the top of the bicep. He has double jointed elbows. He has a twist at the wrist but it does not look like he has hinges at the wrist so that's a little bit different. He has an ab crunch but that is hindered by this vest piece. He still twists pretty well at the torso. He's got a good leg split. You have to pop his legs back in their sockets when you move them back but his leg can move forward very well back not quite so much. He has a thigh cut. He has double jointed knees. He has a boot cut. He also has hinged and rocker ankles. Let's take a look at the details on this figure and these details are impressive. This figure is making me enjoy a barbecue action figure. The helmet is not removable. The details are nice but for an updated barbecue figure I would have been happy to have a removable helmet. The vintage figure also had a non-removable helmet so it's no worse than the vintage figure. Okay this is updated six inch scale so an alternate head or a removable helmet would have been nice. In the animated series he had his helmet off so another head that had a resemblance to the animated appearance would have been a really nice update. The chest has details that are very similar to the vintage figure. It is in grey, black, and red. That chest is more of a red color than the base orange plastic of the figure and that is a vest piece that is over the figure itself. So those details are not sculpted directly onto the figure and I do like this way of adding details. It does add dimension to the figure although it does impede the articulation as I pointed out before. He has orange arms with grey shoulder pads. He has some black bands around the arms and a pouch on the left arm. He has black and red gloves. It looks really good but my favorite detail on this figure is this silver paint tampo on the right arm. That symbol there is taken directly from the vintage figure and this is beautiful. This is why I am enjoying the classified series so much. These small subtle callbacks to the vintage era this easily could have been overlooked but they did not overlook it. The lower half of the figure is a bit more plain in comparison to the top half but it's fine. That's the job done and it has some details. He's got these bands around his upper legs for holstering the nozzle and the hatchet. Those are separate pieces. You could remove those. He has orange legs and red knee pads and some black boots. What a fascinating figure and I say this not because I'm a barbecue fan. I'm not. And certainly not because this is my favorite classified figure. I don't think this would even be in the top 10. It may not even be in the top 20. And this is a niche character. There are some GI Joe fans that will love this figure but this is not a main character. This is not Duke. This is not Snake Eyes. This is barbecue. We're getting pretty far down the list of GI Joe characters for barbecue and yet a lot of effort and attention went into this figure. I have to applaud the GI Joe classified team. Credit where it's due. Well done Hasbro. Even so we should be able to take that helmet off. I should be able to see barbecue's face. That is my biggest knock on this figure. That was my review of the GI Joe classified series special mission Cobra Island Gabriel barbecue Kelly action figure. I hope you enjoyed it. As long as they continue to give us GI Joe classified series figures we will continue to do class of Fridays every Friday on this channel. Please subscribe to this channel for vintage GI Joe toy reviews. I have a huge back catalog of vintage GI Joe reviews. Please check those out. Support the channel on Patreon so I can continue doing these videos. You can find me on social media on Facebook and Twitter and I have a website HCC788.com. Thank you for watching. I'll be back soon with another GI Joe toy review. Until then remember only GI Joe is GI Joe.