La Lecon

After endless rounds of bitter fighting, I finally got my way. The English one-act play had been saved from the evil, unimaginative hands of Samarth and was now my sole responsibility. It was to be the second production of the year, after we realized that Art (Yasmeena Reza) though a great play simply wouldn’t win us anything. And in those early days, winning an award in the university theatre circuit was on top of our agenda. After all no one took a bunch of SRCC nerds seriously, we were supposed to crack the CAT, not concern ourselves with the theatre of the absurd.

And what a bunch we made, GP, Uma, Tanvi, Sanyal, Madhvi, Kunj, Kalindi, me and a few others. When I look back now, and I am sorry – this is going to sound corny; when you really want something, and we wanted for those two months nothing more than to put up the best play DU had ever seen - the whole world connives to make your dream come true. We suddenly found in each other our best friends and lovers. Nothing made us happier, nobody and nothing else existed but the play and us. For those few months our lives revolved around the costumes, the sets, the lines the competitions, The Lesson.

But it all began with Dattani’s Tara – that was the play of my dreams the one I really wanted to do. I had reworked the dialogues and Uma and GP were excited too. We auditioned and somehow managed a cast of six. But I think even before an hour of line reading I knew this would be a disaster. I could almost hear the LSR girls laugh and boo us off stage already, just like last year (well almost, economists are known to be remarkably thick skinned.) Hmpf.

Responsibility is a scary thing, if I screwed up – damn I could almost hear Samarth laugh too. And then in one of those strange things that happen regularly in life, Sanyal decided to walk by grinning and exposing 80% of his dental ability. After assessing the damage, Sanyal, the eternal optimist decided to blurt –

Why don’t you do The Lesson? You’ll only need three actors, about all you can find here, plus we only performed it twice last year –
(Now, last year The Lesson had been performed by Vishal and Shikha, the deities of SRCC Dramsoc. Nobody, surely none of us could match up to them…)

And who will play the Prof???

You!! I thought you could do it last year itself, but then Vishal made himself available…
(Okay. The deal is I really wanted to play the role since last year, but I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. Hmm – but Sanyal was showing me the way, it was difficult for me to hide my excitement.)

Well. Erm.. I don’t know… Uma? GP? Guys??

Listen – IP (Indraprastha College for Women, they had a theatre competition) is only about two weeks away… we haven’t much time. I’ll help you guys.

Okay – well if you say so. Do you have a script??

In about fifteen minutes I was taking a bus to New Friends Colony, to meet Shikha and get a copy of the script. In the meantime Uma and GP were to talk to Madhvi and convince her for the role of the student. They had to pull her out of her house; her dad apparently was averse to the idea of her being in the audi till late in the evening. On my return we were to have the first of our line readings. The lines were to be mugged by the next day. Sanyal disappeared for CAT lessons, and from then on was called CATman, and welcomed to the audi with a burst of his own signature music. Tana-nana nana-nana Tana-nana nana-nana Taen Taen. CATman!!! Tanvi (Mummy) was taking care of everyone and everything while Kunj was being aloof, cracking absurd jokes and being vague. Kalindi I think was as usual the only dignified entity amongst all of us. Thus began our production of Eugene Ionesco’s La Lecon.

I went over the lines feverishly on my way back to college. I decided on how I would stammer till the first time I’d get angry with the student, and how I’d slowly grow into a loud, clear and booming voice. I thought of how I’d sit with my ankles twisted inwards (something that I still do), and that I’d grow a beard, and wear suspenders, and scratch myself with my knuckles every now and then, and how I’d be fidgety and nervous. That was some ride back, I was rocking back and forth, shaking my brain and ideas kept falling into my lap, on my script.

But when I got to college and the line reading began, I realized that I didn’t sound any where near what I had in mind. Somehow I didn’t want to do it then, like that, so I asked a visibly irritated Madhvi to go back home and meet me the next morning, really early, alone.

The next day, at the audi steps – I delivered the dialogues and I think it was near what I delivered eventually on stage during competitions. Like I said things were falling into place, and rapidly so. We had our first run through in six days and we knew we had come up with something…

Madhvi – she was by far the most innocent, and nicest of us all. She isn’t someone you’d typically imagine as being perfect to play Ionesco’s student. She called straws, pipes – she pronounced ‘v’ as ‘w’, much to GP’s disgust, and when we asked her to come dressed in a long skirt she came in her younger sister’s frock!! And ‘aai hai’ was her phrase of choice. But she had the look, and bit by bit, with Uma and GP putting in hundreds of painstaking hours into her, taking her through the play line by line, giving her notes, she took the character to a level of her own. By the end of it, I think she gave me significant cause for worry, I mean at the end of a run through they would hug her and tell her she was brilliant, while I’d be left in a corner, knife in hand. Eh eh, psycho, go get some tea. Hehe. I don’t know if any of us could ever imagine anyone pull that role off in the manner she did.

Uma – every morning, you’d see this ball of hair spinning and bouncing towards you. And once the movement stopped, a silly laugh was followed by a sillier joke. Sinha, you, what are you, the rust peeling off from an old unused tap. And I’d reply with these single sharp cries which for some reason all of us found hilarious. After which Uma would arrange tea for everyone, take Madhvi in the corner and give her motivational gyan and protect her from evil GP. Uma managed The Lesson, all of us – everything. She was the one I’d turn to first with a doubt on my face after every performance and she’d shake her head and bounce in approval. And then arrange tea and maggi.

Sanyal – he wore a single maroon jacket and a grin throughout. CATman!!! Where would we be without him - Sanyal understood theatre better than all of us put together. He is the one who always pointed out stupid glaring mistakes in our performances, yeah, he wanted us to tow his line, but being the arrogant bastard that I am, I always had my way. One day it irked Sanyal so greatly that he left the audi for three full hours. But during the evening rehearsal, as I was twisting Madhvi’s arm and making her cry, I saw a small patch of white with a cigarette in it sitting in the final row. And after the performance, the loudest applause came from that patch of white. I don’t think any of us were as selfless about the whole thing as Sanyal; he was there without any agenda other than a love for theatre, Dramsoc and the audi.

GP gave us his car, drove us to competitions, he bought me my lunch and evening snack, he carried the heaviest props, also he brought The Lesson to life with his music! In the beginning, while we would be practicing our lines, he’d sit with his guitar and then his tabla and for hours make random noise that just sounded like he was tuning his instruments. And then suddenly, one fine day, he declared he had the music all figured out. To this day I can’t think of the play and not think of the music. The professor’s nervousness and his intent were both captured by his gloomy guitar playing in a constant loop. The chaos that surrounds the room as the professor drags the dresser to the student -

Okay… We’ll come then… We’ll come… The lesson is almost over now… almost… over… Knifey… say Knifey… say it… K-N-I-F-E-Y!!!

- and kills her. That savage end would not have been half as insane had it not been for GP’s tabla that climbed into its own crescendo of madness. Oh one can also not overlook GP’s contribution to by far the most delicate cog in the entire production. My throat! It was and still is affected by Staphylococcus Aurous, a flesh eating bacteria, most often found to be living harmlessly on human skin, but which somehow had attached itself to my throat. Now I love to talk, even after rehearsals, I love giving directions, making unnecessary repetitions of the same plan, going over the next day, giving useless suggestions, cursing Samarth. Without fail, I’d lose my voice, and this would happen, quite strategically on the eve of a competition. After which, GP would carry me to his house, where he and Pushpa aunty, would put me on a diet of Sualin, Strepsils, Vicks vaporub, hot water, hot chocolate, gargle, Betadine, and absolute silence. We would communicate with our hands. Then I’d be wrapped in a muffler and two blankets and put to sleep. The next morning, I’d wake up to GP putting two Strepsils into my mouth, then making me gargle with Betadine and then just saying – relax, it will be okay. And somehow it always was…

Tanvi – she played the role of Marie, the maid. And it was one thing we never had to worry about. She didn’t even allow us to make a suggestion once. She was perfect right from the beginning. I think once Uma was pissed with her for something else and so she pulled her up for not looking sufficiently suspicious. Uma and her moods!! Tanvi, took care of all of us, I think she was the one who was most attached to what we shared as a group during The Lesson. In fact after it was all over and the rest of us returned to being nerds, she felt slightly strange that things ended so abruptly. But Tanvi, came up with I think the best analysis of a rehearsal, I think she made most sense, most practical sense when she spoke of the play and our performances. She would sit at the edge of the stage and I could see her look at me during the rehearsal, she would hold her head in her hands and squeeze her eyes harder and harder… I don’t know, you could look at Tanvi and during the rehearsal you knew how it was going…

Kunj – he didn’t know whether he was coming or going. But we knew we were incomplete as a unit without him. He did the lights along with Sanyal I think, and also gave the pep talk in the huddle before a competition. Kunj never really gave me a huge compliment but you could gauge from his involvement in the proceedings that he was happy with the way things were shaping up. He sat besides Tanvi during a rehearsal and made obscure faces – hehe. Hmm, I don’t remember much else, other than the fact that he was there, and it mattered. Kalindi – too was there, she was most often the only voice of reason, and by then hadn’t really become completely a part of everything, which was a great thing. She sat there as an outside observer and gave us much needed objectivity in understanding what we were doing with The Lesson. And I remember in LSR, when I went into the wings, she gave me a glass of warm water; my throat was nearly gone as usual.

The sets were bare, a set of chairs, one with a bare back. A knife that Sanyal brought for us lay in a dresser that somehow was part of SRCC property. On the dresser we placed a candle stand, and for a table we used a wooden block. My costumes were more elaborate, I wore a warm vest, then a thick hand knitted sweater, and then a full sleeved warm shirt and I wore suspenders and then a blazer. Most of these were bought on a trip to Daryaganj one Sunday morning before rehearsals. Oh yes, the chowkidars were all smitten by our passion and opened the audi for us at all odd hours and even on holidays. So the point of the multiple layers of clothing was to make me sweat. I don’t know, it somehow got into my head that all the perspiration brought out my character. And I’d torture myself with all the clothing and then get the stage fans turned off and torture everybody else too. But really it made the rehearsal something of an athletic feat, each time at the end as I’d carry the body into the wings I would actually genuinely breathe heavily like the old professor.

Very soon we were to have our first competition – we were going to IP, or so I thought…

Uma and almost all others thought that we weren’t ready yet. And that we shouldn’t go to IP. And we had the first of our historic wars. Me versus Uma plus everyone else minus GP, it was something I tell you. I yelled, and saw only my point of view and threw a royal tantrum and ruined my throat and finally had my way. Deep down I felt we were ready, plus I wanted to know whether others thought as highly of the play as we did. We had been showing it to test audiences, two at a time, but they were always people we liked, people who were too sweet to be objective. The fight cost us one rehearsal but we were okay pretty soon.

And Sinha, what are you, a three month old rotten carrot.

We spent that evening at Irfan’s, the chai-wallah. We had taught him to make sookha-maggi and that used to be our staple diet. We’d also steal his ugly ceramic cups, because in one of the scenes I had decided to crash a cup on the table to scare the pupil. It was very funny, because the first time I did it I didn’t tell anybody, so when it happened they were all shocked. Tanvi I thought would burst into tears. Anyway, that bit of the play was what I think we used to look forward to, at least I used to (yes – the character was seeping into me). And I wanted to really break a cup every time we rehearsed so poor clueless Irfan bhaiya lost two to three of his ugliest cups every day, till Uma decided to buy us two dozen cups of the ugliest variety.

I don’t remember much of IP, it was a strange stage, small and the audience seemed too near and too involved. I remember Kunj and Sanyal did an outstanding job of the lights. We won an award for Best Performance but the important thing was everyone stood up to take notice. Finally we knew we had created something. The judges gave us a lot of ideas, some okay, some outrageous, but we began to think again. We reworked the end; we made it more violent more crazy. I worked once again on the character. Uma and GP invested days of work into Madhvi.

By the time Rajpal came (St. Stephen’s) we knew we stood a great chance of winning – Best Play. We worked hard, made good use of the tech run through and hoped for the best. I remember walking into Stephen’s a day before the performance and this large woman of gothic appearance grunted at me. So another one of those existentialist plays huh? Now, I’ll be frank, apart from Sanyal, none of us had a clue about existentialism, or the theatre of the absurd or the fact that in the actual play the hysteria at the end actually involves the professor raping the pupil. God, if we knew that we’d be scandalized I think and shelved the whole production, haha. It’s crazy and absurd; we did The Lesson without knowing any of these things, and did a great job of it. In a way I think we paid our own tribute to absurdity. I’m sure Ionesco would have approved…

Hmm at Stephen’s we ran out of hair paint, so Uma took evil pleasure in plastering my hair with some sort of normal oil paint. Of course I was wearing my eight layers of sweat inducing clothing. So towards the end, when the sweat flowed down my face it carried with it all of the white paint. It went into my eyes and I couldn’t see for the last ten minutes. I could only vaguely make out where I was by staring into the various lights or by the hazy outline of Madhvi’s red dress.

But it was a great performance and the response we received was tremendous. The IP girls had gone berserk too, but it was difficult to take them seriously. However after Stephen’s we had the approval of the theatre outfits from most other colleges. Plus we won again for Best Performance. Man we were on a high. We went to Friend’s and Uma ate continuously for an hour. And Sanyal grinned throughout and talked about CAT and Beckett. And Kalindi continued to maintain poise. And I couldn’t stop talking and ruining my throat. And Kunj and GP were pulling Madhvi’s leg in the meanest manner, only she thought the joke was on Tanvi. And Tanvi was lapping her tongue, and being most happy and willing to smother anyone who would allow it.

Disgusting things were happening back in SRCC. People were questioning how we gave Tanvi the role without auditioning. And why Uma and GP were the only ones involved. So I did what I am best at – assumed my rabid dog role, took on Samarth plus everyone else in the Dramsoc minus us. Within minutes they knew I was too much of a lunatic to fight with. So they all took their petty issues and disappeared into thin air.

Tarang, LSR - that was the big one. Everybody from DU would be there. We had practiced harder and we were all set except for one thing. My throat! It gave way on the eve of the competition. Immediately, GP put me on the strict regimen I spoke of earlier. We got to LSR early next morning, and I couldn’t say whether my voice would hold or not. Nervously I looked at the stage, memories of the previous year came back to haunt me. The LSR audience was probably the meanest bunch after AIIMS. I sat in one corner wrapped in two mufflers and coated in Vicks Vaporub. Before we had the huddle, I took Uma to the field and tested my voice, it was okay. But there was a heavy chance of it giving way half way through. Anyway we went into the huddle and I prayed to God.

The LSR girls are strange, if they are happy they laugh, if they are sad the laugh, if they are scared or angry or bored or hungry or tired – they laugh. So half way through it was difficult to make out how things were going. But towards the end we knew we had the audience wrapped around our fingers. I remember being most kicked about the fact that the three candles went out one each at the first cut to cut, the second cut to cut and then eventually when I shoved Madhvi’s face into the mirror. It was some kind of a divine approval, as if things were going to be on our side. And when Madhvi fell to the ground, and GP’s tabla stopped, we got a standing ovation. To this day I get goose bumps thinking of that. We had really stepped it up, and the audiences I later discovered had loved it all through. I just wish they had made it more apparent, like Tanvi would.

We were announced to have won the award for Best Performance. And frankly we hardly cared – then the judge said, the play that won today, the best play, had not just the best performances, it had the best sets, the best lighting, the best costumes, the best music (okay he didn’t say this, but GP I swear it couldn’t have been an intentional omission), it was the most creative and the most powerful – The Lesson.

The seven eight of us created enough ruckus to bring down the whole audi. There hadn’t been a happier day in my life till then. We hugged, and jumped and cried and bounced and laughed…

The SRCC competition came in last, and by then we were on auto pilot. It was an emotional experience I think, performing The Lesson for the last time. The huddle was something, guess everyone spoke and all. The performance was sublime; we couldn’t go wrong on home ground. And the best thing was Madhvi, who by now had become perfect – won Best Performance. We won Best Play, again and Best Director as well plus a special commendation!! I really don’t know what we did to celebrate, but it must simply have involved hanging around together. I

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The Lesson left a lasting impact on me. Apart from the twisted ankles and the mannerisms which I still maintain to some extent – it was crucial in me deciding that I’d want to make movies, that I’d want to direct at some point of time in my life. I guess though, it wasn’t the play, or acting or theatre that I got so attracted to; it was the people I was with. I think all the success gave me confidence in who I was, and also for the first time I had lost myself completely to something, and I enjoyed it. So much so that now, nothing I do makes me happy unless I put in everything into it like I did for the Lesson. I am guessing the others involved too were touched by it in some way. GP is now going to be reading for a PhD. in Economics. Uma is in business school and thrashing everybody and is soon going to be making a few millions. Kunj is working, absconding, travelling to fancy places. Kalindi is in Belgium, working, coming back to India soon. Sanyal is in Bombay, I think, working for Citibank. Tanvi is in MICA – in her first year. Madhvi, last I heard was working in Bangalore. Guess we have all moved on, I think me more than anyone. But there was a time when all of us wanted nothing more than to be at the audi, drinking chai, cracking silly jokes and working on The Lesson.
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Hmm - quite a long one. I don’t know the exact reasons for writing this. I wanted to revisit happy times in my life, a time when friendship and trust and other things could be depended upon no matter what. I wanted to remember all my friends.

Plus – life's a lot like an Ionesco's play, one character begins with the upper hand and then loses it for no reason to the other one, who was planning it all along. The good thing though is – that Ionesco’s plays come around and repeat themselves in full circle.

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PS – sorry, I am sure I haven’t captured everything, I did my best. But for those of you who read this and were there in that magical time, I am sure you’ll be reminded of everything?