Racing ahead
Come Sunday and all cars will swerve to the most happening place in town-the Race Course for the much-awaited Independence Trophy titled the Le Meridien Independence Trophy. This is, of course, as the city's latest high class hotel is sponsoring the trophy and in the bargain converting a mere racing event into a gala festival of sorts. Alongwith the race of fine thoroughbreds in Class IV on that day, on the anvil are a whole cache of prizes up for grabs for the lucky ones who can predict the first four horses past the post that day. There's a two-day stay for two at Le Meridien, Dubai with free air passage, a weekend stay at Le Meridien, Delhi, a 29" television and a whole lot of gift hampers.

Le Meridien has further contributed two lakhs towards the stakes with mementoes lined up also for the winning jockey, trainer and breeder. ``It's all a continuation of our endeavour to promote worthy sports event in the city by associating with them, '' revealed Julian R. Groom, general manager Le Meridien, Pune. ``This is the first of its kinds and we are looking at other events like snooker and billiards championships at the Poona Club in future.''

For the time being, it's the racing season that has caught the hotel's fancy. It is also offering a 15 per cent discount to all those in the first and members' enclosure that day. Needless to say, the RWITC is thrilled with the hotel's more-than-generous gestures and are all geared for a day of pulsating excitement in tandem with thundering hooves.

Be there! Motley crowd
``I don't consider English a foreign language. In fact, it's the only link language in our country, and I don't believe that doing English theatre is a betrayal of things indigenous,'' says Naseeruddin Shah, at an informal gathering at the FTII Preview Theatre, organised by Pune-based Indian Magic Eye. Shah did concede though that indigenous English theatre has yet to come of age in the country.

Shah, accompanied by Benjamin Gilani and Akash Khurana, talked of theatre in general and Godot in particular. ``I want to repeat what Satyadev Dubey says about theatre - Hum theatre karte hain kyonke hame khujli hoti hai (We perform because it itches). While doing theatre we try to provide stimulating theatre for the viewers and stimulation for ourselves. Our group sticks to original scripts, because we are fortunate enough to have the philosophy and words of great writers, it's enough for us to spread it. And there's a slight problem with translations - it's difficult to find a person of the same caliber to translate someone like say Shakespeare?''

Motley, the theatre group started by Gilani and Shah twenty years ago, staged Waiting for Godot as their first play. ``Besides the fantastic script, it had just a tree as a prop and no actresses, and as you know it takes money to stage plays,'' explained Gilani amidst much laughter. ``And it's only adults who ask us why we do a difficult play like Godot, children just sit back and enjoy it, respond and react to it.'' Theatre is to be enjoyed, like good music and good art (not necessarily `understood'), insisted the Motley duo.