Kaleidoscope

Mummy often narrated instances from our childhood. Each one of us had been blessed with a gregarious nature; singing songs and telling tall tales was our forte. Manoj, all of four was once narrating a story about a king. With his mop of curly hair and angelic countenance which quite belied the naughtiness within, he was everyone’s favourite story teller. ‘Raja aur rani ek din jungle mein ja rahe the. Jaate, jaate…’ He paused here and everyone waited with bated breath to learn about the lion which suddenly pounced on the brave king or the enemy’s army which had them surrounded from all sides. Taking a deep breath, our hero continued ‘jaate jaate…unko bhookh lagi’. You didn’t need a crystal ball to divine that so early in life his priorities were very clear--Food was hero number one in every action-packed melodrama.

I’m sure this pragmatism is a family trait. As a child, Bhaiya was fond of singing ‘ek pardesi mera dil le gaya’. Instead of the nebulous ‘gham’ he preferred the realistic ‘aam’, because to him it made more sense that a person would give a mango rather than an abstract notion like pain. So the second line, as per his rendition, went, ‘jaate- jaate meetha- meetha aam de gaya.’ I always sang ‘dar badar ki khaate hain thokar’ with a lot of feeling. Despite the melancholia inherent in the song, the audience could be seen stifling a smile or two, as I would bang my head on the nearest wall every time I came to ‘thokar’, to ensure that there was no room for doubt in anyone’s mind about the singer’s plight.

During family get-togethers, we used to have full-scale programmes, comprising plays, songs and the like. On one such occasion, Jiji and her band of sincere cousins were presenting a song about a boat rowing out to sea-- ‘kishti chali re, daan sambhalo re’. The lyrics were serious, exhorting all on board to ably man the vessel. Though the tone, tenor and tune made it sound suspiciously like a poem being recited, the enthusiastic girls had rehearsed it for hours, with unabated vigour. Sadly for them, at the finale Manoj decided to sit on the steps and present his own version, with actions to match the words. The audience was thoroughly captivated by the cherubic performer and hardly noticed the group warbling onstage.

And then there was the magic show. An upturned table was kept on the stage, its four legs draped with a sheet, below which Manoj sat, concealed from view. The sheet had a hole in its middle. Bhaiya, the conjuror, dramatically plucked out flowers and such stuff from thin air, the items being passed up through the aperture by Manoj. Thunderous applause greeted the performance and with graceful bows to the highly appreciative audience, the magician withdrew from the scene. His assistants—perhaps smarting over the damp squib of their group song-- were clumsy in removing the table, and a wail rent the air. ‘Bhaiya, chot lag gayi’ said a quavering voice from under the sheet. Before the assistants could get their act together, the disembodied voice was followed by Manoj clambering out, tears et al. The cloak of invisibility was not so invisible after all

Manoj may have earned sympathy here, but he sure got on the wrong side of Mummy the next time round. Sweety Jiji was supposed to wear his bright red outfit in her role as the postbox, but he kicked up a huge fuss. He wasn’t going to lend anything to anyone he said, and did his usual song and dance to drive home the point. One of Newton’s laws of motion unfortunately swung into play and Manoj’s actions had an equal and opposite reaction. Mummy the disciplinarian was not standing for the tantrum, no way. The doting aunts tried to step in and suggest a via media but Mummy’s mind was made up. The lad was put into the safe custody of our faithful retainer and he missed the entire show. The rest of us youngsters, if at all harbouring notions of mutiny, decided to be model children thereafter.   

All the World's a stage

Bhaiya and Jiji were keenly involved in dramatics, and during the vacations, would regale us with stories of the plays they had acted in. Papa surprised us one day by saying that he had a flair for the theatre too. Now Papa was the quintessential man of few words. Even discounting the fact that opportunities to get a word in edgeways were few and far between, he was basically the strong, silent type. So, a statement from him on his penchant for acting had us all slack-jawed. A rare hush descended on the family. Then the questions flew, thick and fast--when, where and in what? It emerged that when he was studying in BHU, IT, he had acted in the play, ‘Baiju Bawra’. Again, open-mouthed wonder and stunned silence in the room.

One has gracefully omitted mentioning that though we were all reasonably good at singing, there was one notable exception—tunefulness had given Papa quite a wide berth. In such a situation, the very idea of him acting in a play, where the interlude between one intricate song of Baiju and another, was one complicated song of Tansen close on the heels of the last impossible one, had us dumbfounded. He described the play scene by scene, building up to the dramatic moment of the historic contest between the two maestros. “And then”, he said with a flourish, “I come onto the stage responding to a clarion call of ‘Sipahiyon, Baiju Bawra ko giraftaar kar lo’, being one among the posse of policemen who drag Baiju away.” 

My own tryst with acting commenced with our presentation of Snow- white and the Seven Dwarfs. Jiji was going to be Snow- white, while Manoj and I were among the seven dwarfs. The roles were being hotly debated when one budding talent--probably the wicked stepmother-- acerbically commented that since Manoj was fairly plump and rosy-cheeked, he’d be a good choice for ‘Greedy.’ Well, I may have called him that any number of times, particularly in the context of toffees which invariably turned out to be the last of a vanishing breed, but I wouldn’t stand for anyone else implying the same. A cold war broke out then and there which almost jeopardised the whole thing. Anyway, the upshot was that Manoj was cast as Sneezy and I was Grumpy, while some new recruit, blissfully ignorant about the connotations, was ensnared into the role of Greedy. Manoj's lines comprised an awful amount of sneezing; I had to look and sound quite sullen, which was alien to my generally sunny disposition, but we enjoyed ourselves immensely all the same.