Event Details

The Dramatics Students of St. Xavier’s College

The NCPA Library in collaboration with The Dramatics Students of St. Xavier’s College

The Dramatics students of St. Xavier’s College present readings and enactments of stories from Rochelle Potkar’s story collection Bombay Hangovers that weaves a multi-layered tale of, for and by Mumbaikars. Join the Velvet Curtain – Jasmin Thakar, Suraj Divakaran, Ved Iyer, Melissa Mathew, Vineet Bhave, Joanne Panicker and Chriselle Fernandes as they follow the fussy dhoban (washerwoman) Purna knocking on doors, giving back not just fresh clothes but fresher tales, where each door opens into a household that carries secrets and unfurls the hidden lives of its inhabitants. Behind one door, we meet Sneha who wishes to undergo plastic surgery to change her face and identity to marry the man of her dreams. Will she succeed? Behind another door, we find a girl studying for her 10th-standard board exams while coping with her parents’ domestic violence, relating these battles to World War I, II and III. And the third door reveals Nina Tivan—a workaholic, who battles the glass ceilings at home and in the family business against her father-in-law. When Nina befriends Muthu, the ingenious dosa maker, and Naeema, a pub bouncer, we know that the bustling, industrious city of Mumbai always manages to collapse class and religious differences toward a hand of friendship.

Come join us as we city-watch the lives of a few of its citizens.

Bombay Hangovers is a collection of 16 short stories by prize-winning poet, author and screenwriter Rochelle Potkar, an alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP), a Charles Wallace Writer’s Fellow, University of Stirling, and a creative-writing teacher for IWP’s summer programmes.

Admission on a first-come-first-served basis.