Clubbing with the Bard

In Chennai, on April 23, there won’t be any Shakespeare look-alikes walking on the streets. Nor will there be marching bands, readings on the pier, sonnets on the ferry or men and women walking around with Elizabethan ruffs around their necks – all common sights on the Bard’s birthday in his town, Stratford-upon-Avon. What the city will see is a day-long international seminar called ‘Shakespeare Forever – How, Where, Why’ at the Cosmopolitan Club. And if you’re wondering who has brought it all together, you’d have to thank the city’s own Shakespeare Millennium Club.“It is particularly special for us because we started this club on April 23, back in 2002,” recalls Dr Jamuna Kalyani Sridharan, the founder coordinator, the fondness evident in her voice. Though most people would label the club a ‘senior citizens’ outfit’, that may be disputed as they have a member as young as 15 years old. “We were a small group of people who enjoyed and wished to propagate Shakespeare and that’s how we decided to form a club,” she says. They have managed to stick to their promise of meeting on the 23rd of every month for an hour-and-a-half at the Cosmopolitan Club, rather studiously, for the last decade.With about 50 members now, the group is quite varied and has academics, doctors, lawyers, engineers and people from almost every walk of life. “There is a little bit of Shakespeare in every conversation. It is almost impossible to not use a phrase borrowed from his work. We believe that this has to be preserved, celebrated and enjoyed,” says the now retired Professor of English.So what do they do during their meetings? “There are no readings really,” she says, “We have informal discussions around pieces of his work that one of us has read and it goes on from there.Sometimes the discussion eventually leans towards politics, but the moderator always brings us back,” she adds with a smile. And has it always been only Shakespeare? “Strictly Shakespeare,” she says, “People have asked us why we don’t debate about Tamil poets for a change. Though we don’t mind drawing parallels in their work, we are particular that we will not discuss any other poet,” she says firmly. Looks like the Bard has found a firm abode in this circle.