Pirates of Shivaji Park

A dear friend of ours plans to do a story on nautanki.tv in a prominent magazine and the title that she has planned for the story is "Pirates of Shivaji Park"! For those of you who do not know what Shivaji Park means or are unaware of the cultural importance of this open ground in Central Mumbai - Shivaji Park is where major political parties hold their rallies and protests in Mumbai. Dr Ambedkar - the social reformer's birth and death anniversaries are celebrated at this location. It serves as the meeting place for hundreds of love birds starved of privacy and these love birds are looked down by the hundreds of upper middle class citizens - majorly the last true representatives of the 'Marathi Manoos' - the Marathi man - of Mumbai.

nautanki.tv operates some 100 meters away from THAT Shivaji Park. It is kind of a skunk operation. The building is residential and the office had an old bone surgeon's clinic (we still have a ceiling anchor which kept the xray machine in place). We have wooden stairs and the floor of the office has a very faded rexine covering thats keeps peeling off. Like true startups everyone shares the space and everyone is everywhere. If you need a place to sit then you need to come in early and hijack someone else's chair. Amar Singh (am not joking) our VP Pantry makes great tea and we get requests from very known people about the secret of his recipe.

Somewhere along the last three months we have begun to function like a Pirate operation. We have done what others take ages to do in an operation that has been quite and stealthy.

The only thing missing are the pirate bandanna and the skull flag. Some of our guys are getting that ready too. Soon Shivaji Park will have a huge Pirate flag in front of one of it's buildings.

watch out you your out there!