Some names are just a natural fit in the context of literature. For years, this writer would find the name of Gieve Patel alongside his peers like Arun Kolatkar, Eunice De Souza, Dom Moraes or Nissim Ezekiel in the course literature of Indian English studies. It turns out, so did Avaan Patel. 

The daughter of Gieve Patel, and a theatre maker herself, recalls with humour, “I would often have students in school tell me about dad’s poems that were part of the ICSE syllabus. I would often think, ‘I hope I don’t have to study it.’ I love the poems, but at that age, one doesn’t always want to study your parents’ work.” Time changes everything, they say. Tomorrow, the director will join some members of the original cast of the plays, Princes and Savaksa, in a dramatic reading at the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation Gallery in Fort.