Drama was freedom for me. I could be me in so many flavours of characters; express the silence lurking within in so many different ways and yet be removed from myself.
I could be actor on stage who was telling his own life’s story in the guise of a character and I could use the audience as my own personal shrink.
And the audience could laugh at me, pity me but never judge me, for it was the character they were emoting for and not me.
And so I decided, I wanted to be an actor.
Now since this story is set in India, naturally my ambition had to be qualified by parental consent.
On the subject of parents, I would like to talk about the incident of the cricket bat.
When I was a child of seven, as many children of seven, I had a rather strong fondness for chocolate. As I grew in years, my fondness grew with me as did my girth.
In those years, I was much of a loner and my favourite pastimes were reading, sketching and listening to music.
In consideration of my growing girth and what he considered as my rather “silly” hobbies, my father presented me, one fine day, with a cricket bat.
Now I have to tell you, I have absolutely no interest in sports. They make you sweaty, tired and generally full of misery.
Anyhow, I accepted the bat with a false smile and a “Thank you Papa”. Soon thereafter, I happily relegated the bat to the darkest and dingiest corner of my room that I could find.
That bat however, had a life of its own.
In school, when I joined the choir, the bat moved mysteriously to my study table. When I took up art lessons, the bat found itself resting against my bed. When I took up sculpture, the bat crossed all boundaries of decency and crawled into my bed.
The day I told my father that I had decided that acting was my life’s calling, there was (perhaps portentously) an India-Pakistan one-day cricket match being broadcast on TV.
My father looked at me and said nothing.
India lost.
That night, he picked up the bat, tested its weight, and let me have the best strokes that my body could take without breaking. Bleeding was a permissible evil.
And thus, my ambitions of becoming an actor were somewhat postponed.
3 comments:
wonder if you'd have gotten thrashed if India had won.
or if you wanted to be a cricketer instead.
the last part of your post reminds me of the lyrics of my favorite meatloaf song:
" and my father's eyes were blank as he hit me again and again and again"
cos he was "...dangerous and drunk and defeated and corroded by failure and envy and hate."
good posts, both of 'em.
woa..didn't see that coming
Good stuff varun.
Thank yous.
"wonder if you'd have gotten thrashed if India had won."
The character. Not me.
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