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This kid was following alongside us as we were paddling up some Kerala backwater canals.

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Guess who we stumbled upon all the way over here in Bangalore? Josh Kornbluth, San Francisco author, actor, playwright, and star of Haiku Tunnel, one of my favorite films ever.

Josh is in town because his current one-man show, Citizen Josh, is touring a half dozen or so major cities in India. The show itself is about Josh’s personal reconnection with democracy, and there is plenty to laugh and cry about along the way – not the least of which was re-living election night, 2004, in San Francisco. It still hurts. The theatre was gorgeous too, we had not previously known it was even there, just around the corner from our new neighborhood. Big, well designed, spacious, with a lovely café and large, air-conditioned, well-lit stage, and not a bad seat in the house. We will be back, I am sure.

So, yeah the show was great, but if all Josh had done was to read the names of the CalTrain stops alphabetically, we would have sat in rapt silence, just soaking in the San Francisco syllables: “Bayshore,” “22nd Street,” “4th and King…”
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Afterwards, we were very lucky to have a few minutes with Josh. What a nice guy :) I was a bit tongue tied, having been such a Haiku Tunnel fan, but I did manage to ask him if there was anything we could do to make his time in India more pleasant.

“Thanks, but you couldn’t possibly have a pound of Peet’s Coffee laying around,” he joked.

Actually, we did.

Thanks to our dear friends back home, who had recently sent a pound in a giant care package stuffed with goodies from the Bay area, we had a spare pound sitting in the freezer just waiting for this moment. We dropped it off the next morning and had a really tasty breakfast at the theatre café.

Check out Josh’s blog here. It’s Quixotic !