In one of those halcyon pre-pandemic years, 2014 to be precise, when watching a play in a packed house could be a weekend high point in Mumbai, I remember being totally impacted by the 100-minute-long solo piece devised by the immensely talented actor Jyoti Dogra. Her Notes on Chai at NCPA’s Experimental Theatre, prompted the audience to decode the seemingly surface-level banal conversations around tea. As Dogra fused familiar chai talk with the sonic textures of chanting Tibetan monks, she made me reassess the words I mouth while sipping tea with friends, neighbours, colleagues and strangers. Do we speak as a matter of everyday rituals, teatime being one? Does the spoken word matter at all? Those were the questions put forth by Notes on Chai.  which will, incidentally, resume on February 16 and 17 at Prithvi Theatre.

Six years later, as I greet the lockdown-impacted January 2021, Dogra, 50, again presents another set of soul searching and even more intimate questions. This time, her solo performance, Nihayati Niji Baatein With Geeta Tyagi, comes in the form of an online video, uploaded under the aegis of Serendipity Arts Virtual fest. It is curated by Anmol Vellani, founder-director, India Foundation for the Arts; IFA grant has also been central to Dogra’s earlier acclaimed devised piece Black Hole, which explores the holes in the larger universe and the mysteries residing within the human self.