"The best thing about theatre is how inseparable it is from literature," says actor-director Pratik Kothari, as he recalls how a short story by Harishankar Parsai that he read in school, revealed itself to him in a new light years later, during a script-reading session. "In theatre, you are always discussing the world around you and its politics. And Parsai ji's stories fit right in," he adds, speaking of the renowned satirist of modern Hindi literature, who was born in the Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh and continued grappling with the quirks of human nature, and societal wrongs with his pen until he breathed his last in 1995 in Jabalpur. The Sahitya Akademi Award winner is said to have revolutionised the art of satire writing in Hindi, but somehow, Parsai remains largely unexplored on the city's performing arts scene.