10 years. (Laughs) It seems to just fly by doesn’t it? When you look back? Who were you then?(Laughs) Who are you now? (Shrug).
I guess I am the same person. No, I don’t believe that people change. The only thing that changes is a capacity to want, to desire, (laughs) and maybe, even to love.
What did I want then. (shrugs) To be up on this stage. And now that I am, what am I doing here? Participating in a post-modern comedy about my own past, depressing life.
And so you may ask me, where does this comedy begin? Go ahead. Ask. (Laughs). If you don’t, the universal playwright (sotto voce: God) he’ll surely make me blurt it out in any case in his usual meta-fictional ironic style. Hell! He’ll even give this moment a name!
(Playing God) “Hmm. Let’s see, we shall call this moment an ee-mo-tional moment for the protagonist. We shall call his mental state de-pression. And just to make things interesting, we shall put him up on stage for the world to admire the absurdity of his life”
And so. Where does this absurdity begin? It begins as He has already made me admit. 10 years ago. It starts 10 years ago with the introduction of a Red Hat.
Why the hat was Red has kept me up on many a sleepless night, but you can’t fight fate. It was meant to be.
And so. This Red hat approached me and said with a benign smile on his face, “son, have you thought of dedicating your life to God?”. Now, let me tell you something about myself. (sotto voce: I never lie.) (Recovering as though the statement has taken the strength out of him) Yes. Go ahead. I know you want to. Go ahead and distrust me now. Everyone else has in the past, why should you be an exception?
Yes. A Red hat, pointy, with a yellow cross changed my life 10 years ago. Bishop Rodriguez was its name.
I was seventeen then. A devout catholic. Full of love, for God of course (under breath, nostalgic : and others). Sigh. And so, what could I do? I signed up! After all, she was in my catechism class!
Ah! I see now that you might be beginning to grasp what all this is about. Alright. I admit it. A teenager who professes a devout love for God and mentions a girl in his catechism class in the same breath is perhaps not the most reliable source for information. No?
Well, as I said earlier. I don’t lie. Both my loves were true. One had the mighty name of “JEHOVA!” and the other one, sweet, gentle, beautiful, Renata.
Now I had tremendously more success with one than the other. When I spoke, Jehova listened. Patiently, caringly, comfortingly. He was always there when I wanted to speak. He filled my heart with hymns of gladness; made my teenage soul rise above the clouds and be hopeful. He made me find a voice that I did not know I had.
The other muted that voice.
Oh! Friends, I’m sure you’ve felt that lump in your throat too. When you have so much to say but it gets lost in that endless chasm between heart, mind and voice box.
The hormones waged a mighty battle within me, my soul was a sea that He had parted to allow safe passage to his chosen people.
Only, I was the sea. I was the sea He was parting. I was not the chosen one.
I see recognition for the plot upon your face. Unrequited love? I hear you asking. No friends. It was worse. It was unconfessed love.
Thankfully, whenever a story settles into a rut, He gets bored and adds change to it. Renata’s father was in the army and he got transferred ending my long and sordid love affair with silence.
At around the same time, he sent to me a confessor. Now this confessor came to me with a handful of letters and heart full of love.
He was in love. He had been caught. The girl was his neighbour. Their love was a sickness that their parents would not tolerate. Letters were burnt. No place was safe for their teenage love, and so, he came to me.
(Poetic) With letters that he had saved, and bookmarks and dry, pressed flowers and other such relics of a blossoming love, he came to me. (Laughs)
With a sombre demeanour, and tearfully dry eyes, reflecting an untold future, he came to me.
What!? Poetry? Oh don’t worry. It’s just the me 10 years later mocking love. Tut tut. Really, sarcasm is lost on you.
So, anyway, his letters and relics were safely locked within my cupboard. A place so safe, that it has housed them till this day.
We became friends Deepak and I. We shared a common interest in dramatic irony. We would treat each other as if we were characters in a story that had absurdly brought two stories together out of the blue. We were playing a part yet we knew that it was merely a play.
Around the same time that Deepak and I were measuring our respective existences in terms of dramatic irony, our class English teacher decided to ask us to audition for our Annual English play.
I suppose God must have decided I had been loveless for just about long enough, for he made it “Come to pass” that I fall in love again.
This time, it was not a girl.
Oh God! Come off it. I know what you are thinking. Ridiculous. Besides, didn’t you notice the rating of this play? If there were gay themes involved, it would definitely not have a universal rating. (Very gay-ly) Shame on you.
No. I fell in love with drama.
(to be continued...)
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