Not too long ago, writer and playwright Avantika Shankar had staged a play, which took the audience into the lives of two couples, who meet at a high-end café in South Bombay. Like their gilded surroundings, the couples — one young and old — seem hopelessly out of place in the world they live in, and start to unravel their inhibitions, showing us how romance is not necessarily a fairytale, and probably a lot more ludicrous than most people like to believe. Now, Mahesh Dattani has come on board with another cyber romance story, The Reading, to ooze new life into the play.

Avantika Shankar and Mahesh Dattani