By Graheet Shenoy
"This is where all these whores belong", he slurs pointing at his junk for the fifth time lifting his head up at the guy across the table, then towards his man tool and up again. An utterly futile attempt at imposing as the entire bar anyway had their undivided attention to the drunk and his liquor-act. Spectating eyes had glued onto him, like a silent audience exchanging glances over a major wardrobe malfunction bestowed upon by the universe on an unfortunate second grader in a well-crowded school play.
The server trotted towards the scene, confused whether to hold this stumbling, falling man or to call someone and rid him of his misery. As the server approached, the ‘friend’ of the man in question (a right man at the wrong time, as this ‘friend’ was no kin to the drunkard) beckoned him not to get any closer as no one can really know what might trigger the creature into scornful feats. 'Friend' then fused the situation by holding the drunk mess up to his chair.
The ruckus had been on for quite a while now, way before awkward exchanges, way before vomit-fueled-happy hours and heartbreak-fuelled-bar tabs. The ruckus had been on, way before the clothed flasher even set foot in the bar. Not just inside the bar, ruckus had surrounded him that day, it moved with him. Like flies over a basket of rotten mangoes.
The friend had enquired that the dipsomaniac was an artist — a theater artist. From Macbeth to the caesar, Hamlet to Lear, he had been stabbed, cheated on, neglected, swindled, broken and betrayed over and over for the last 21 years, right from the day he was eight and had for the first time played the role of a pillar that cracks and breaks away as Hiranyakashpu strikes it with all his might fretted by his son’s devotion over other gods. A skit that was financed explicitly on forced donations and oganized by a bunch of unemployed lads supporting the municipal councilor in the wake of an impending election.
Pity had abetted this alliance between the ‘friend’ and the liquor breath-man. A stranger, completely intoxicated approaching a random person(the 'friend') and babbling with great pride “An artist is like water, transparent….. embodying the shape of anything the world puts us into…… and… they… they make me do… what !” before almost fainting and ironically asking for water with his dehydrated, simmering voice.
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Awoke, fortunately the next bright day right at his doorsteps with a sharp pain on the upper back of his neck and a nasty hangover, he glides his hands flailing through each thread of his trouser pockets in search of a lighter to light the discarded cigarette stub he had just found on the pavement. Following an unspoken ritual of beginning the day after a wild night with intangible hope, he tries to recollect the incidents that had conspired. Unfortunately, everything after his squabble with the director, who was also the owner of the theater he worked at, was vague. He reaches over to the banister near him and tries to wake his discombobulated body. Rocking back and forth twice and then launching himself up. Fused with a head rush he is reminded of a complete stranger with no recollection of his face, whom he had befriended somewhere along his bender and was convinced that this human form of an angel had promptly delivered him to his doorsteps in the middle of the night. This newly acquired information troubles him. He thrusts his hand into his jeans to inspect if anything was missing or had been fiddled with, but other than an unwelcome erection which was pushed to make a breatheEasy space; the goods more or less (less mostly) seemed intact. He let out a sigh for he had escaped yet again from the clutches of our bad bad world absolutely unscathed.
Dejected, he makes his way to the bed knowing very well that he is pushed again in all swing, back to the same place he was toiling in before: bottom of a dark, self loathed well called unemployment. He throws himself on his cot like a lifeless corpse and sinks into a deep slumber.
-
A new theater gig in the city had become his resuscitation. Even though he had somewhat of a decent stature back in his hometown with a recognisable amount of fanship from the nearby villages, all thanks to the drama tours and Harikathe plays he had indulged himself in; The city seemed to have no such facilitation waiting for him. It treated him no better than hundreds of other talented artists waiting for a break.
Lonely nights were haunted by the memories of an old life of fame and respect which had been shattered by a riot mob that decided to burn down the one theater in his village that only ever premiered Shakespeare plays with an accusation attached of not promoting the vernacular. Even though the plays were never in English but actually an adaptation translated verbatim and performed in the local dialect, the rioters believed that this overshadowed numerous important artships passed from generations to next in the local language and left hundreds of families starving jobless, who did not understand the tone and how to act in a foreign play.
He was pushed to the city inevitably, like a thousand others, in search of ways to fill his stomach. It was a stifling, famishing struggle until his talents were finally recognized by a director through the word of mouth of a friend who had learnt of this striving artist's past from another friend.
The director liked him straight away and took the man in with open arms. He even provided him with a dingy but sufficient place to stay and also handed him a decent concession to get him up on his feet.
But how could an artist with such aptitude who in his prime had captivated people of all ages purely with his talents, be given a role so demeaning, a role so fruitless and talentless, a role of a lascivious woman, the manipulating slow poison of our society. Out of all great characters that should have brought him honor and fame, this was by far the worst. He was once as a kid given the role of a tree, a bloody tree that did nothing so to speak, and he still considered this, to play a promiscuous woman, his complete low.
" A dog, no matter how close to one's heart, can be allowed free for a little while to roam around, to cuddle, to play. But the moment it gets too friendly, it must be punished and disciplined. It must be put back in its place. It exists for us. That is it's purpose ! It's the same with women. You start showing her, her place. Your time too shall come!" He had once declared to a poor guy whose only mistake was asking what the time was.
Had someone brought up two months before as to what he felt about acting as a woman on stage, he would have shrugged and thrown at them proudly the women-pet analogy which he had come up with all by himself. But now, not so much, now not so clear, now not so sure.
The play was of 90 minutes stretch, with a brief break in the middle. It played 3 shows a day for two days a week - the weekends. Now the play itself was quite simple, a woman in her 20’s, mesmerizingly beautiful (as much as a middle-aged ragged human palette with male features can be made to look) is travelling back to her home along her usual commute. But one grave day she is abducted by four of her co-workers as she had once been hostile towards one of them. Lashing back at him for having continually tormented her, stating his attraction for her. They then force themselves on her bound body one by one, leaving her raped naked corpse stranded in a pool of blood and tears; at which point the play ends and the curtain drops.
He was at first set a little aback about the request of playing a woman's role, but as his own lips had whittled away “Artists are but water” and so to do justice to his words and to heed his crying stomach, he was up and ready, ready to do this and be done with it. How hard could it be? A woman after all. Just a thieving, manipulating, lust filled woman. A woman who whored around so much, who played with so many men's hearts that she got herself raped by her own colleagues. "She probably even enjoyed it. Being ploughed by 4 aroused men. Having that sort of attention. That's what she wanted anyway, right?. That's what women do... allude to something and blame the world when things don't go their way. She asked for it and she got it.. Just a little crocodile tears to act coy at the end… women are something… aren't they?.. Lord!! ", he spoke to himself when he was told about his character in the play.
The director wanted to bring out a rough and improvised way of dialogue rendering and hence had only explained the plot of the play, the basic storyline and had asked the actors to try and immerse themselves into their respective character's mindset, without handing them a script of any sort.
A lot of scrupulous examination and screening had been put into the selection process of these fine actors and he knew he must not chain their artistic spirits to a piece of paper. But on the first day of rehearsals he did hand them each over with a written copy of dialogues, not detailed but more of an exoskeleton,
"Just a blueprint which needs cement, bricks and rods with beams and pillars to build a skyscraper of a show.", he had said.
To the astonishment of our problematic booze-barrel, his role of the young fleshy woman whom he had thought her to be asking, tempting and teasing poor young lads to the extent of mauling her like sex-raged boars, was actually a kattar subservient Muslim.
Women string poor men like puppets. Women are to blame every time. But his script spoke a different language. It said his character had never touched a drop of alcohol, offered her salat every day, attended hajj and paid her homage to the holy Mecca at least once every four years. And also she wore her hijab. She covered her precious body from the eyes of evil. Is it irony or tragedy? She never asked for it. She revealed nothing to woo these poor men on the stand. What made her co-workers inflict pain on a person while looking at her come to work daily under a burka paying her respects to the lord every day lawfully, even when she was drowning in heaps of work? What kind of evil deed had she committed to have met with such barbaric fate? These were the thoughts that reverberated around the whole day in the artist's head.
But he brushed these mysteries off for the moment. He would not let these questions ruin his performance or even a single second of his peace. He shook them all off and went about giving a heartfelt portrayal of his character. But these questions, these were boulders, boulders that stormed onto the thought puddle of his brain and struck every nerve. Dug deep and demanded answers. They did not disrupt his acting as he had thought, they actually empowered it. Filled his act with the right emotions. It made it convincing. It was only now that the ice was finally melting. The thick, agelong glaciers were turning into water, water that embodies all the containers of the world, water that the artist himself had spoken of before.
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The rehearsals and the plays went on for hours and then days, which turned into weeks. Weeks and weeks of him racking his brain trying to figure out what? Just what? Did she do wrong? How was the poor innocent in any way wrong? What should she have done better? What could she have done better? She kept to her work. Did not hurt a soul. Had God in her heart, then why? Why? Why was she being punished? Is this the fate of every woman in this world? He couldn't find a moment of peace anymore. He could not sleep anymore. He felt as if he woke up daily, freshened up just to go get stripped naked on the stage in front of everyone.
His fellow artists undressed him on the stage, the audience's lustrous eyes tore his apparels, pierced through his bare skin. He would get ready, get dressed, get raped and go back, not sleep, get dressed and get raped again and again everyday. This was his new life. He couldn't find a shred of hope to keep going. He felt as if everyone was watching him all the time, on or off the stage. He had started noticing the eyes, hundreds of eyes, just staring everywhere he went. These eyes that stare, they have always been staring, they have been staring at every woman of every age, of every culture and every religion. Nothing mattered, what one wore, how one behaved, how good or bad they were, how well shackled to the rules of society they are. None of it mattered in the end. Even if the tiniest fesh was visible these eyes would stare. How were they hidden from his vicinity until now? These many years he had survived on this ugly wide earth and how had he not once seen them? These monstrous eyes that stare while waiting on a bus, that stare at a vegetable market, that stare at their students, their maids, their relatives, their mothers and their sisters, no one seemed safe from the oppression of the eyes. He was drained from within, estranged from his soul, stranded so far away, he could see no return.
But he kept living this nightmare. He kept marching. Because he couldn't see a way out. He was dependent. He needed the money. He needed the place. He sat when he was ordered to, stood when he was told to, barked when be was asked to until one day, he couldn't keep it all in. He started pouring it out, broke down right in the middle of the play; on the stage. The director who confused this for an exuberant act almost teared at the sensational performance until the man had missed his cue to stop and the sobs hadn't seized even after the curtain was down. The director, genuinely concerned, walked closer to the torn artist and put his hand on the man's shoulder for comfort. The actor jolted the director's hands away, roared at him, screamed and stormed out of the room. Sipping on his liquor flask he rushed towards the road and started walking aimlessly, which had been the genesis of his alcohol filled bender which then had led to him into a bar with a stranger('the friend'), create a scene, and had landed him on the threshold of his door and now on his bed hungover, unconscious and probably unemployed.
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The doorbell rang once, twice and thrice. After a pause, on having no response, came an alarming continuous bang on the door. This struck the artist plunging out of the bed with a murderous headache. He looked at his pillow which was soaking wet, he had cried in his sleep again. He picked up a towel lying on the floor to wipe the moisture off his face and flipped the wet side of the pillow down. He slowly inched towards the door and opened it, it was the maid. As soon as he opened the door ,she channelled her gaze towards the bottom of the door hinge waiting for the routine string of taunts and insults and to ignore it all and get to her work as usual. But nothing happened today, the man just manufactured a slight smile, let the maid in and went right to his bed and then into an undisturbed nap.
By Graheet Shenoy
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