A four-act play

[Published in The TERI Times, December 2001 and January 2002 in two parts]

Act one:

I was studying in 7th standard. Our drawing master wanted one of his plays to be staged during the school annual day functions. After an initial screening he selected a few students to act in the play. I was one of them. The play had six acts in all. I had two appearances, one in the first act and the other in the last. In the first act I was a student. I fail in the examinations and run away from home after being scolded by my father.  I return in the last act (supposed to be many years later). I still remember that I was wearing the same shirt that I had worn while running away from home! While delivering the dialogue, I found that all the empty places where I could look during the first act (so that I didn’t have to look at anybody’s face in the audience!) were all filled up and I got so scared!

I enquired of my sister about father, and was told that he had expired. Unable to bear the shock, I become unconscious and fall on a chair. My sister, acted by a boy of my class, immediately ran to the green room, brought a glass of water and splashed on my face. It was a cold night, and I could not bear the sudden shock (this was for real) and I giggled. During all the rehearsals (s)he was using an empty glass and this time (s)he wanted to make it real! The audience must have really enjoyed the unconscious man laughing, minutes after hearing that his father had expired! In the next school working day, I heard that our producer-director-playwright master fumed in the other section and said that he would like to kick me so hard that I would reach my home, which was in another village, flying! (A more detailed of the account can be read here)

Act two:

I was, however, not disappointed with my performance. When I reached the high school (this was another school), I was again involved with the annual day functions and another play. This time, however, nothing extraordinarily happened. The hero of the play was a 60 year old school teacher and I was the ‘leading lady’, his 55 year old wife! We were later invited to stage the same play in a nearby school. The only memorable thing at this second instant was that being a privileged lot (specially invited artistes, you see) we had free and unlimited access to hot black coffee and vadas and none of us missed the rare golden chance.

Act three:

The third time I acted in a play was after my school days. We have a small temple in our village and the managing committee decided to celebrate the temple festival for the first time in a grand way. The easiest and cheapest way was to stage a play enacted by locals. So some of us got together, selected a play and started rehearsals in the large courtyard of a nearby house. I acted (again!) as the 55 year-old mother of two grown-up boys, who quarreled regularly. This was also staged for a second time, in another nearby temple.

Act four:

The fourth time I acted was a few years later. I had already secured a job in Delhi and had once gone home on leave. The festival in the temple in which we had first staged a play was falling the next day. A couple of hours after I reached home, my old acting friends came home to invite me to watch the rehearsal of the play they were staging during the festival. I was thrilled. They had come home to personally invite me! Suddenly I was the most important person around! I was on top of the world! I proudly accompanied them.

On reaching the venue, the trap was revealed. The lady who had promised to act as Kunti (they were staging Karna), suddenly had some problem and had informed that she would not be able to do the play. Who could they think of replacing that lady with, other than me, the eternal mother! We had time only for one rehearsal before the staging of the play. They were very kind and specially rehearsed my scenes once more!

There was some commotion among the audience while I was on the stage, and (fortunately!) most of them were watching the spontaneous drama being enacted by a drunken hooligan, rather than concentrating on the arranged play on the stage. Later on, I was told that I had been lucky, because I had not only missed part of the dialogue, delivered wrong ones, but also snatched a few sentences from Karna, thus confusing him as well!

And that was the end of my glorious acting career!