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.