“You find ingredients listed on bottles of masala, but not the recipe, so that nobody can replicate it,” says a young Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, himself looking for what turned him into Mahatma, Bapu. Father of The Nation. He believes it’s all in Mohan’s notebook, and if he traces it, he will get the secret recipe.

Manoj Shah’s new play is titled Mohan No Masalo a one-man show with Pratik Gandhi playing Mohaniya, the Gujarati boy from Porbandar who has no idea that he is marked for greatness. Shah has been working on interesting solo acts; not only does he come up with interesting subjects, he also matches them with good writing, and of course, strong performers. It takes immense confidence, not to mention memory power and stamina to hold an audience for the 90-plus minutes’ duration of the play. So Satchit Puranik in Karl Marx in Kalbadevi, Pratik Gandhi in Hun Chandrakant Bakshi and Dayashanker Pandey in Popcorn With Parsai, all brought their characters, their work, their beliefs and periods they represented alive on the stage, with minimal props and a large helping of humour.