Monday, July 15, 2019

Khatarnak Kshatru !! A great experience from our play performed at International forum, 20TH BIENNIAL JAINA CONVENTION @ Ontario Convention, Los Angles


We, The Khatarnak Team!
With Grace, powerful emotions and magical voice, we helped and managed two powerful presentations or our great play in front of 1000+ viewers with pin drop silence! What an experience what a rocking performance from everybody! A team effort with great execution not once, but twice!! Yes, due to public demand, JAINA organization arranged our drama "Khatarnak Kshatru one more time on 6th July 2019 from 9:30 to 10:30 in Ballroom C @ Ontario Convention Center" in addition to one show that we had great success on 4th July 2019.


The expectation was high from all of us because This was not the first drama that our beloved director Rohak Vora directed, He had a long successful history of making wonderful plays and he has been making these types of play from last more than around 20 years. He has a proven history of raising bars every year by giving best out of best plays with a nice and inspiring message. This play was on Lord Rishabhdev, his son Bharat Raja, his mother Marudevi Mata, and his younger brother Bahubali Raja. The drama was on how they achieved “Keval Gyan” and what are our main enemies which are not letting us go on the right path for the liberation of our immortal soul. The name of the play was “Khataranak Shatru” (Dangerous Enemies). The play was compiled so nicely that each and every word had a deep meaning.
Panoramic View from the first-day houseful show
All the attendees at JAINA event had downloaded JAINA app on their smartphones. The app was sending push notification for our Drama as a reminder. It was around 4 thousand people across different part of the United States, Canada and also hundreds of people traveled from across the globe. My parents were in town and with us who traveled from India. They were so excited to see me performing the role of Bharat Raja who was one of the key characters in the whole play. We all were so tensed before our play as we were going to perform this in front of the international audience. We were not sure whether we are going to deliver right and met the audience and their expectations. There was a huge expectation from this play. The first show on 4th July was a houseful show, hundreds of people could not attend due to ballroom capacity. The whole ballroom was occupied in just 10 mins. The pressure was getting high. Everyone was hungry, tired and ready to call it a day. In spite, pin-drop silence throughout the play...and everyone listening to every dialog and every scene, It was amazingly performed a play together by every one of us. After the play, we received lots of compliments and have been still receiving it, What a great teamwork and success, Khatarnak Guys! I am really blessed and fortunate to be part of this team! Kudos to all of you! 

Family photo with the great director of this play Mr. Rohak Vora 
From the very first conversation about the drama, story or skit to the final moments of the performance, there have been many moments that have made us a family. We had our sine-wave moments, we mostly saw far more upside than any downside, if there was any. A family always have one path maker and we are fortunate to have King Uncle as our path maker along with Queen Aunty, guiding us, supporting us, teaching us, going along with us, laughing with us and above all, lifting all of us up. We will always be their students and we feel proud and fortunate in saying that. This show is dedicated to and belongs to the backstage performers, whom crowd didn't see doing what they did. To begin with, someone had a VISION from the story, someone THOUGHT of making a drama visualizing and CRAFTING characters, someone took the TIMEOUT from the daily routine spent TIRELESS hours in reaching out to each and every one, finding alternatives, CONVINCING on what-if scenarios, and making us BELIEVE that we can do it. Someone lost their sleep and spent nights and STOLE every moment from the work-day that they could to keep the momentum up and doing what was needed to be done. Someone spent and drove many places to find the right PROPS for each character. Someone WROTE each line of the dialogs on the blank paper, knowing nothing what word was going to come next. Someone had piles of rewritten papers before anything presentable came along. Someone spent hours with each character in making sure the dialogs were accurate and suited each character. Someone corrected, someone memorized, someone learned to deliver, someone brought emotions from the very first dialog, someone came along and put all the pieces together and artistically converted raw sand into a sculpture. Someone happily accepted the role that was given, Someone came to all practices just for one dialog, Someone helped behind closed curtain or AV systems, showing no pictures, no videos, no wows (what a selfless act!), Someone Crafted, Painted, Decorated (...again no direct-wows from the crowd, what a selfless act!), Someone made "What?-Really?-Is-This-Possible?" to real-life Elephant and Samosharana "Refuge to All". Someone showered the Petals showing another dimension was possible. Someone joined us with their unique expertise and no relation to our religion or show and yet didn't hesitate to help. Just imagine the hours from thoughts-to-real life props, This is YOU, This is you Someone, who made it all possible. Love you all Khatarnak Guys!! Kudos to all of you! Let's all celebrate this together and plan for the next project!! 🙂🙂
BharatRaja-MarudeviMata Keval Gyan scene on Elephant
Thanks to JAINA, JSSD and for giving us this opportunity to spread a great message on Jainism about A special thanks to my family, Lisa, and Aarav who managed all responsibilities while I was out for practicing this play, late-night practices for many days!! Parents were the town with us for vacation and you managed them their need and everything to make sure I get a good time for practice! Thank you for all your support, LisAnk-Aarav!


Love,
LisAnk-Aarav 💕