Flowed out of the cup

Continuing from my previous post… (Read Saving Bapu Privately – a DreamWorks production for context.)

I climbed out of bed, as early as 7:30, brushed my teeth and decided to make myself a hot cup of chocolate. I had a good number of pages left to turn and needed something to put me on track. I put the milk on the hot plate. With nothing better to do, I stood gazing at my coffee cup.

Putting shape,
to an amorphous cloud,
here I was,
drawing lines out of
drawn lines and curves.

Top-left, I saw -
Rain,
pouring down,
encasing,
putting behind bars,
the past and the present.

Bottom-left, I caught -
Rivers,
of freshness and fertility,
of thought and joy,
flowing,
quenching,
meandering,
surrendering.

Top-right, I envisioned -
Ra himself,
As a wily merchant,
selling warmth and light,
for valuable vapours,
to adorn his abode.

Bottom-right, I imaged -
something incoherent,
with the rest,
something incoherent,
with itself,
for the lines met,
further the lines crossed.
It was out of place.
It felt human.

Just as the flow from the cup stemmed, (you guessed right :o ) the flow of milk began. It was a rather generous overflow. I ended up spending the next half an hour with the electric hot plate, struggling to get the dried cakes of milk off the coils and the crevices. My Sunday morning was going as per plan. A plan governed by Murphy’s laws.

Saving Bapu Privately – a DreamWorks production

It was the 30^th of January, 1948. The sniper was crouched up between two huge branches of the pupil tree that stood outside the garden, where Gandhi held his daily prayers. He had found his target – Nathuram and was following him closely through the scope (with Mk3 telescopic sight) of his World War II Rifle. He adjusted and repositioned every second, to make sure he had Godse, exactly at the point of intersection of the perpendicular lines.

The sniper also kept an eye on Apte, whom he was sure, would give a signal when it was time to make the move. Eventually none came. Finished with his round of interviews, Gandhi was returning for the evening prayer, and was surrounded by a human corridor. Mr.Sniper was dead sure that before Nathuram made his way through the crowd his bullet would make its way through Godse’s skull. Unexpectedly, Nathuram started moving. “This was not a part of the plan” thought the sniper, and fearing the worst he loaded the 10 round detachable box magazine into his No.4 Mk1(T), aimed and positioned his index finger on the trigger. Godse entered the corridor and mingled with the crowd. “Damn that bastard!” cried the sniper, as his fears realized and he lost his target. He could feel his heart beats on his stock, and the blood gushing to his brain on his cheek rest.

An era of seconds later, he found his prey again, but to his astonishment Godse was already in front of Gandhi, bowing down with his hands clasped. Before the sinper could steady his rifle, Nathuram brutally pushed Manu, who came forward to say something, with his left hand and exposed the black Beretta pistol that lay in his right. For a second the sniper wondered, “Will my bullet travel the distance fast enough to save the Mahatma. Mine had a good three hundred metres to travel, while his had to travel only the barrel length, that too a Baretta”. The trigger was pulled………Teeen wooon teeen wooon teeen wooon teeen wooon, went the siren alarm-tone of my mobile, freaking me out of bed. It always gives me the feeling of being chased by the police, and invariably I wake up at its first ring. I snoozed it and saw the time. It was 7:00 a.m. What was wrong with that? It was 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday.

Why the f*** dudn’t I disable my wake-up alarm? Telling myself that I had to buy a mobile with “Only on weekdays” alarm, I went back to bed (I know that sounded stupid, but I guess one can enjoy the luxury of being stupid, when he is sleepy). Why is that dreams never have an ending? Determined to dream-direct the climax, I closed my eyes. The images were loading and the stage was being setup, and Kraaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnn went my door bell.

It was the maid. My room-mate was not in town. I had to open the door. Punching the bed, and kicking the floor, I got out of bed. With closed eyes (to avoid the sunlight), I walked to the door, feeling my way like a blind man, unlatched it, and sleep-walked back to bed. The maid, industriously, took the broom, came right into my room, switched on the tube light, opened the windows, switched off the fan and started sweeping. Arrrrgggggghhhhh…..Like a drug addict seeking his needle, like a “-10 spherical” looking for his glasses, I searched the floor for the blanket that I had kicked off, and covered myself up to the head. Did I scare the maid? What would she have thought? How did I look doing it the frantic way? – I didn’t have time for these. Come on, Gandhi’s life was at stake.

Result of the manoeuvre: Realization of the fact that my blanket and my eye lids were translucent :(. Gandhiiiiii…..if you wanna save yourself pray to thy lord to give me sleep. The bullet is out of my rifle. (identity revealed huh! ;o ). The video is paused. I am not even able to do the 360 degree Matrix kinda camera work to see the state of Godse’s trigger… Sweating under my blanket (why the hell din’t she switch on the fan and turn off the lights after finishing), I tried to mentally shut my eyes. Gandhi’s three monkeys flashed in my mind. Concentrating hard I was about to get the video to stream…..and dhud dhud dhud sirk sirk sirk sirk dhud dhud dhud clug clug clug clug sirk sirk sirk…. Well what can I say? She washed away every trace of sleep in me, and with it went the dream like the bubbly foam into the gutter. Hey Ram ;-(

PS: Prelude: I was determined to finish “Freedom at Midnight” by midnight yesterday. This book seems to have a wireless link to the circuits at the power-station. Every time I sit down and open the book, the circuit there opens up too, and pop goes the power. The same sequence of events happened last night too. I was not going to accept defeat and resign to bed this time. So I lit up two candles and placed them on the window sill behind, on either sides of my chair and started reading. I was hardly through 20 pages and one source of light burnt down. Now I had to position the book in such acute angle, so that I could avoid the shadow of my head and at the same time get maximum light onto the pages. How far can a flight with a failed propeller, limited fuel and poor visibility fly? I had miles to go before I sleep, but I managed to cover only two more, and zzzzzzzzzzz I crashed.

Am sure the artist had a hearty laugh...

This is just an interpretation of me by a caricature artist.
The only things that we (me and the caricature) share:
1. Table Tennis
2. Spectacles
3. Hair Style (to some extent)
....nothing more.


^ My Caricature

“I can’t believe I spent those 9 months of mine in brine..."

“I can’t believe I spent those 9 months of mine in brine…
and Olives. If not for their uncertain origin, I would actually eat them.”

Wondering? Well these were lines of Giovanni, the protagonist of “Can’t Pay! Won’t Pay!”.
Before I get into the details of the play…

Half the fun is in getting there…Isn’t it? So here goes...

Aware of the code that the gates would be closed by 7:30 p.m., we (me & K) left office early. From the strong petrichor cooked and from the beautiful rainbow painted by you-know-who, I knew he was right behind us. The past five evenings of storm, thunder and lightning had made him predictable. So much so, that I have even made a calendar entry in Outlook. “Meeting with Mr.You-Know-Who. Location: Bangalore. Time: 7:00 p.m. – 9 p.m.”. Since we (me & you-know-who) have an IST synchronized calendar entry, just as the reminder comes up on my screen “Ding”, it precipitates on him that, it’s time he took the leak, and off he starts pelting poor Bangalore.

Coming back to where I was, I had no intentions of sitting through a play in the air-conditioned auditorium for two hours, squirming with wet jeans, soaking feet and a dripping T-shirt. Fearing this, I stepped up the gear and put my foot on the gas pedal. Zoooooooom we went. (before you put a picture to it, its better I tell you that it was only an auto-trans scooterette).

“Ranga Shankara”, it was called. The first impression I built from the name was somehow equivalent to the one I had after reading “Satyabama Engineering College” in “UG colleges that I could join” list (I had no intentions of being associated with it for four years. It would have been even worse if it had found a place in my resume, for life. My reflex action was: Satyabama. Satyabama-ites, please disconnect your heart from the web, take no offence). When K shared this same opinion (about Ranga Shankara) with me, the reply I gave her was a totally different one.
“Hey, don’t you dare! Ranga Shankara sounds just like Kripa Shankar. And nothing is wrong with it.”

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” - William Shakespeare
That reminds me…
I will take yet another detour here. Last week I saw this film titled “Kya Cool Hai Hum”. Its very easy to share my experience with you. All you have to do is:
Step 1: Take a huge piece of ginger (who after taste will last for 3 hours).
Step 2: Put it in your mouth.
Step 3: Go look at yourself in the mirror.
That’s exactly how I was throughout the movie. There was this one dialogue in the movie that stayed in my mind though. It’s between Tushar Kapoor and his manager and it goes like this:

TK: Sir, here are my designs.
M: Good.
TK: Will you put my name on these, this time atleast.
M: Don’t you know that William Shakespeare said: “What's in a name?”
TK: Yes Boss, I do. But even below that quote he put his name. Didn’t he?

Returning to the main road. Hmm…ya, we reached the place, and went searching for this person named JAM for our tickets. Thanks to Mr.S that we got to book tickets in advance. We didn’t have to search for long, as we found a person at the entrance with a bunch of tickets, two of which had our names on it. Peace.

We entered the hall, well before the first bell and took our seats at the front. I was impressed with the place. My friend quoted again: “It is such a stupid name for such a nice place”. True. It was a small auditorium that could house 300 (we actually counted the people in each row and the number of rows..LOL!). Dim lit. Wall of bricks painted in black and dark brown. I had the all the three things that it needed: the air, the ambience and the audience. I liked the rules they wanted audience to adhere to; like – switching off mobile phones, being punctual and entering the hall before the third bell, not taking eatables inside and stuff like that. You know how annoying it gets when you are trying to concentrate and imbibe the words that are being spoken and you hear the ringtone of the “Manmada Raasa”s, or the crunch-munch-glurg-burp. Since it was a small theatre it did not need the artificiality of the microphones. Lights, music, sound effects all were exactly of one kind, "mild, pacifying and soothing".

Now about the play. It was actually a work by Dario Fo. To sum it up in a paragraph:

Fed up with high prices in the supermarket? (Antonia)

Frustrated by constant strikes? (Giovanni)

Frantic at rising train prices? (Luigi)

Take the law into your own hands!

That’s the message it conveyed.

Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! was a hilarious, sharply satirical take on individual responsibility and politics, challenging today’s audience to abandon political cynicism and take to the streets. It depicts working class women who have rebelled against the cost of living by taking goods from a store without paying. The plot concerns their efforts to conceal their bold decisions from their men folk and the police who are blundering figures of fun.

Vijay Arvind’s portrayal of Giovanni was outstanding and natural, and Surabhi Herur (Antonia – Giovanni’s wife) carried herself fluently across the verbose and long-winding sentences that her character had to deliver. Malathi Nayak’s (Marguerita) “Hoooaaauuuuuwwwww” version of the word “How” that she kept crying kept bringing the laughs.

The poster presents a few scenes from the play, like the women trying to hide the stolen goods from the super market in their bellies (In one of the scenes Marguerita and Antonia try covering up their steal from Giovanni by announcing that Marguerita is suffering from labour pains and it leads on to a situation where a packet in her stuffed belly breaks and it starts leaking brine and olives…That explains the title of the blog. Read it again. Haaahhhhaaaahhhhaa).

There was this other scene where Giovanni and his friend Luigi (played by Sanjeev Nair) are running away from the police on a bicycle. They actually managed to get a real bicycle on stage and Giovanni was cycling (with the stands on) at such a pace that I was waiting for the stand come off. Instead of enjoying the scene, my eyes were focused on the hinge in the stand and I was expecting a crash. Good for them that no such thing happened. In fact the stand was so strong that they had trouble taking it off even when they had to drive the cycle off the stage.

All in all it was very good play for a good cause too (as the proceedings went to a charity organization named Dream-A-Dream).

I managed to get a few pictures of the same play enacted at the Derby Playhouse by a different group though. Those who have seen the play, rewind, play, reminisce, and enjoy.

^ Antonio & Marguerita

^ Giovanni, Inspector and Luigi

^ Giovanni and Luigi in a moment of peril

I came out of the theatre, and saw that my old pal, you-know-who was awaiting my return. He had tired down after waiting for 2 whole hours. Though a mere drizzle now, he was cold enough to make my ride back home a teeth-chattering, goose-bumpy one. Nature always has the last laugh doesn’t it?

Short & Straight

He brushed himself up,
and peeked at the mirror.
The mirror could view itself on him.
He was ready.

Turning to his mate,
He gave an approving nod.
It was play time.

The playground was dark,
The drizzle had moistened it.
I could hear him say,
With a glint in his eye,
“Just the way I like it”.

Briskly, he started warming up.
While his collaborator was busy,
Grazing, evaluating,
and plotting a plan,
that they were going to execute.

They entered the field together.
The beast in him came to life.
He was a juggernaut on a mission,
with a partner in crime,
who was more than willing to abet.

Making all the necessary moves expertly,
He cut across the field swiftly,
grinning as he progressed.
The more he advanced,
The more he gleamed.

As the boundaries drew near,
He slowed down.
Cognizant of the end,
he knew he had to finish,
all the good work done,
with an expert touch.

Through with the game,
pleased with his crusade,
he retired,
back to his bunker.

He was smiling,
mouth wide open,
with his teeth,
reflecting and radiating light.

He was always a winner.
And symbolizing him,
with fingers,
I could see that,
he depicted victory.

You might ask,
Where was his ally all this while?

That fellow was busy running,
ironically ahead of the victor,
giving him all the opportunities,
to do the damage.

You might ask,
Where was I all this while?

I was a silent spectator,
sitting right under the playground,
waiting impatiently,
to hear some understandable* music,
from the radio at the hairdresser’s.

*My language competencies are: English, Hindi & Tamil.
And it kept playing Kannada songs, followed by Kannada songs, followed by Kannada songs…