Some years ago, wifey and I bought tickets to a performance
at Chowdiah Memorial Hall of ‘Waiting for Godot’.
We cannot say that we were not warned. A theatre friend of mine said that ‘it was a
play waiting to be explored, possibly Beckett’s best.’ I had not seen Beckett’s worst and did not
know Beckett from Beckham, and therefore – foolishly – disregarded the first
part of his sentence. Wifey’s friend,
who is into cinema, said (with a sniff) that, while it belonged to genre of the
‘theatre of the absurd’, it was not the best in class deal (or words to that
effect). Another friend said, ‘How
nice!’ and I ignored this warning as well, being rather dense in the head when
it comes to interpreting subtle messages.
Our reason for wanting to watch the play was simple:
Naseeruddin Shah was acting in it. We
are big fans of his and he was coming to Bangalore after a while, and, we
reasoned, anything he acted in would be fun to watch. The ticket price was so high that it
justified instalment purchase, but I said, What the hell and paid up.
The final, though late, warning was when we entered the
auditorium. As we took our seats and
looked around for familiar faces, we saw a sea of beards (the men, of course),
thick intellectual specs all around, the kind worn by the crowd that debates
existentialism in college canteens, lots of kurtas and most women in starched
hand-spun cotton. All of this was a sure
sign that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we continued to
ignore the messages from the flight instrumentation panel and twittered
excitedly about what was in store. The
chap sitting next to me fetched up with a bag that he almost dragged along and
I guessed he probably had a Ulysees, an Odyssey and all of Emmanuel Kant in there. When I saw the description leaflet that was
on the chair, my enthu did pale, for it had all the stuff that I was mortally
afraid of: bits like ‘peregrinating ideas’, ‘marsupial folly’ and ‘atrociously
wicked’. By the way, do remember this:
if you come across anything that is ‘atrociously wicked’, give it enough space
for a blue whale to pass through. It
just means, if you can’t figure it out, don’t worry, others can’t as well.
And then the hush before the curtains were raised. A chap came on the mike and in a cultured,
measured tone, repeated everything that was on the leaflet, no doubt under the
deeply embedded impression that theatre goers who watch ‘Waiting for Godot’
have not cultivated the habit of reading (English, at least). After this Mr. Gibberish had done his bit, we
were treated to a few minutes of silence and then the curtains went up to a
sound applause.
Naseer and his pal, Benjamin Gilani, were facing each other
in ridiculous wigs and costume. When
they began speaking to each other, it was as if they were continuing a
conversation they had begun about twenty minutes ago and, when I confess that I
did not understand a word of what they said, I mean it. After about half an hour of enduring this
entirely unintelligible, almost impenetrable, dialogue, I stole a glance at
wifey and noticed that she was looking at me as well, as puzzled as I was. I then looked at the Emmanuel Kant next to me
and, well, he was looking at the chap next to him, and so on. You get the gist.
Occasionally, a couple of the soda glasses or kurtas would
burst out into laughter and the audience, that had just got a sense that maybe
they were supposed to laugh, would follow.
I looked at my watch.
Two more hours to go, with Naseer and Benjamin excluding me from their
private conversation. I tried to snooze
a couple of times, but just when I felt dreamy and cosy, Naseer would raise his voice with a theatrical
flourish, venting vengeful violence (all ‘v’s if you noticed, alliteration). It was positively creepy, almost as if he
knew I was trying to escape this wrath.
Then, all of a sudden, a woman entered the stage from the
left and walked right up to the mike. “I
have an announcement to make,” she spoke, her voice filled with the spirit and
tone of theatre, ignoring the two who were waiting for Godot and addressing the
audience, “a car with the number plate KA 02 MA 1234 (or something like that)
has blocked my driveway and we are unable to take our car out. The owner of this vehicle must immediately,
please, please, remove his car.”
We both sat up in our seats, alert. Was this part of the play? Certainly, if so, it was a most useful
adaptation, for Beckett, one guesses, would not have thought of a KA-registered
vehicle. I was tempted to stand up and
applaud, hoot and stamp my feet but desisted because I was not sure. And just as she finished, her husband sidled
up behind her, nodding his head and muttering into the mike, “We have tried to
tell the management at Chowdiah many times, but they don’t listen…”. He then backed off, allowing his fuming wife
to hog the mike.
We were all alive now.
Naseer’s face had turned a bright shade of red while the woman was
speaking and he now threw his wig on the ground, announced imperiously, “That’s
it. We are cancelling this performance”
and stomped off stage. Benjamin,
realising that he had not thrown his wig off, decided to mutter and growl and
stomped off too. Yet, nothing seemed to
upset the lady. She continued, “We are
sorry to disturb the performance, but, you see, we had no choice” or words to
that effect, while her husband held a banner in the background that read: Hell
hath no fury like a woman scorned.
(Actually, he did not do that. I
made it up. He just stood behind her,
hoping to leave the place in one reasonably intact piece.)
As you can imagine, we were now lapping up every second. This was true theatre, worth every
rupee. Then Mr. Gibberish’s voice came
on the mike and in his cultured, measured way said, “Ladies and gentlemen, our
apologies for this interruption. Do take
a fifteen minute break, and we will let you know of the status.” What he was actually saying, of course, was,
“Maan, we are up shit creek and don’t want you to enjoy the fun.”
We reluctantly left the auditorium and hung around for a few
minutes, sipping something or the other.
“Should we stay back, if the play is resumed?”asked wifey. “Should we?” I asked in turn. “Where is the car parked?”asked wifey.
And the rest, as they say, is history. We were home in about twenty five
minutes. I have long been tempted to
access Wikipedia to find out just who was Godot and why these two were waiting
for him, but I feel it will be a humbling experience and hence, best avoided.
